Every Story Has a Beginning

Can a man have an opinion about abortion? I think so. As sure as a woman becomes a mother at the moment of conception a man becomes a father. If ever there was something worth fighting for, if ever there was a hill to die on, it is the battle to protect the helpless and innocent. Even men are a part of generation, a part of the human story.
Life is a series of developments, one no sooner completed than another looms ahead. Who are we to say which development must be completed before someone is a real human being?
The anxieties of modern life—the toll of too much noise and too much speed, too few trustworthy relationships, and too many uncontrollable events—will not be solved by killing the unborn. Women who have had abortions and the men in their lives have not escaped these burdens and insecurities. They do not know peace, and their freedom is always mixed with sadness.
I am only a man—what do I know? But when the mob is swayed to take human life into its own hands, even by killing it when it is so innocent and green, even men can rightfully take a stand, even if the killing is considered a woman’s right.
(A deep sexism lurks in pro-choice ideology. To construe abortion as a woman’s right is to prejudice the male role in procreation, to marginalize the male contribution in begetting, to deny the man his natural right as father.)
I am not an expert. I have never bothered to count the cells of an embryo, have never measured fetal spines with a millimeter ruler, or compared the human gestational period to that of camels or domesticated cats. The development from the second trimester to the third, brain activity, the size of the feet at any given