PERSPECTIVE ON ABORTION : Must Men Always Be the Silent Partner? : The stereotype of male indifference is only encouraged by women who choose to decide : on their own.

The 20th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade has passed with one crucial element of the debate still missing: the voices of men. No, I don’t mean the dictatorial ranting of “pro-life” human megaphones, or the smooth pseudo-Talmudic pronouncements from “pro-choice” politicians; no, I mean the voices of ordinary men who are deeply and profoundly affected by a woman’s choice to have an abortion.

Aside from the fools, deadbeats, abusers, rapists, murderers and other miscreants, there are millions of men who love women with a power and intensity that only they can understand. Like women, they have rent their lives asunder, destroyed their sanity, sacrificed, cried, loved unrequited. And they have, as Percy Sledge summed it up, “slept out in the rain,” all for the love of a woman.

Unfortunately, too many of my gender have too often expressed that feeling by fleeing, or denying, or pretending it never happened--all of which constitute some of the other reasons why a woman chooses to abort. But what complicates this emotional dysfunction on the part of men is the fact that many women never tell the man in question about the pregnancy or include him in their deliberations about what do do. And why? Because, apart from any justification that they may have about men’s lack of caring, there is also this pervasive image of men as eternal adversaries, reinforced by an electronic media determined to reduce the complexities of the abortion debate to bumper-sticker banalities.

Some of this is understandable. The Supreme Court has a majority of men who are eager to end a woman’s right to choose. Everywhere, there are male clerics turning Christ’s gospel of love and tolerance into the soft hammer of accusation and damnation. But there are so many others--men who want to know about the pregnancy, who want to understand, who want to be supportive, who even want to wait with the woman while she has the procedure.

I’ve been told that a woman’s decision to abort must not be impeded by the input of a man. But this attitude only gives men an excuse to play a role they think is natural or expected of them: that of the cipher, a zero element in the equation; or the absentee actor in what was once a dialogue; or worse, the apathetic stick figure thumbing through magazines in the doctor’s waiting room under the suspicious, condemning gaze of women.

A man should never deny a woman her right to choose or attempt to coerce her to make a different choice; apart from being an intrusion on her right, it’s folly because it won’t work. Yet it is equally foolish for a woman to assume that the man should have no knowledge about the pregnancy, or should be excluded in the discussion about an abortion, simply because of the party line that we don’t care.

So, as Roe vs. Wade enters its third decade, let us, men and women, declare a truce. Men, get your laws and bullhorns out of the faces of women who are attempting to conclude a very emotional and personal decision to abort. But, women, please never again tell us years after the fact that you had an abortion but didn’t tell us because, “Well, you know, I didn’t think you wanted to know or cared.” Some of us do care. In our fumbling, sometimes Neanderthal way, we are attempting to understand, to lend support, to know all the options, to be part of the darkness and to help find the light.

The abortion debate is a hair that even God can’t split. But the notion that men have no part in the debate will only serve to further polarize us as humans when we confront one of the most important issues in our mutual existence.

Women, don’t let men off the hook; but don’t think you know all there is to know about us. Because even when we decide to sleep out in the rain, we are still waiting for you to let us in from the cold.