(LifeSiteNews) — It is standard practice for abortion activists to treat each new pro-life law or court win as an existential threat to an abortion regime that has been protected by Roe v. Wade for nearly fifty years. With the hearing of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization earlier this month, however, the tone of many activists seems to have undergone a distinct shift. Their panic, this time, is not merely the fearmongering of those trying to gin up the base, suck in fundraising dollars, and motivate voters. There is a shrill note to all of this that indicates they think it could really happen this time.
There have been plenty of male media commentators opining solemnly about the sanctity of women’s rights, but none of them have had the guts to actually say what many of them mean: That many men want abortion legal so that women can be sexually available to them without having to care for any children that might be created by their casual unions. Activists have been saying for some time that it is time for men to speak up and talk about why abortion benefits men, but most have been understandably hesitant to do so. Even Jeffrey Toobin, the infamous Zoom flasher who once tried to push his mistress into an abortion, left those facts out of his monologues to CNN’s audience.
Enter Kaivan Shroff, a senior advisor to the Institute for Education, political commentator, alumnus for Hillary for America’s Digital Team, and possessor of degrees from Yale and Brown. On December 13, he penned a column saying the quiet part out loud: “Men like me benefit from safe abortion access.”
Shroff starts off by talking about his academic career, his future as a public interest lawyer, and how much he loves kids and wants to be a father. He even thinks he’d be good at it, eventually. But not yet — he can’t have kids while he’s so busy. That does not, mind you, mean he isn’t willing to engage in the baby-making act. It means that he needs abortion to be legal in case he gets one of the women he is using for physical gratification pregnant. If a baby ends up in her womb, he needs an abortionist to be there to suction it out, pronto.
“Women’s bodily autonomy should not be up for debate,” Shroff writes. “But men like me have also long been the direct beneficiaries of safe abortion access. Giving women the choice not to carry unwanted pregnancies often means we, too, can delay parenthood until we are ready.” In other words, the women who have the misfortune to sleep with Shroff are expected, if they become pregnant, to do the right thing. Which is, of course, the wrong thing.
“Since I’ve spent 10 of the past 11 years as a student, most of the women I’ve had sex with were also students, also progressive, and also not at a point in their lives where they were looking or ready to have children,” Shroff says. “I try to share responsibility for birth control and if a woman tells me she’s on it, I also trust that. If she still got pregnant, however, though entirely her decision, I assume we would both want the same thing: an abortion. In longer-term relationships, we’ve had explicit discussions about this.”
Read that line again for a moment: “I assume we would both want the same thing: an abortion.” Isn’t that just what every woman dreams of? It’s a good thing Shroff is so progressive, or he might just sound like a prick.
Shroff, however, notes that “to my knowledge, I’ve never gotten anyone pregnant” and that all of the women he’s been with have been as progressive as he is: “Admittedly, I’ve often relied on my female sexual partners to protect me from unwanted pregnancy. During my MBA, I recall panicking in an Uber to the train station after hanging out with a medical student I had met on Tinder and had seen a few times. She had a latex allergy. We didn’t use our best judgment. Then I got her text. She had decided to take plan B as an extra precaution. I was relieved.”
Men, wrote Shroff, should be “honest about the way we also benefit,” and admit what is one the line if Roe falls: “I admit I’m scared of what eliminating access to abortion would mean for my own life.”
Shroff is articulating what millions of men actually believe. I’ve had countless conversations with young men in my work as a pro-life activist in which they admit, when cornered in argument, that the reason they really support “women’s rights” is that they expect women to abort any children that come into being as a result of their sexual encounters. Roe v. Wade has been an essential decision for scummy men who want to treat women like trash for generations now. Men like Shroff are terrified — because they’ve grown up believing that they do not have to restrain themselves.
Their children, of course, pay the price.
