Men don't have the same experience of rape as women (which isn't to say they aren't raped, its just not an identical experience, in some ways it may be worse, in others not as bad, for example they can't get pregnant), but that hardly means that men wouldn't or shouldn't get to participate in arguments about whether rape should be illegal, or now that we have (and long have) decided that it should be, what the penalties should be or what type of actions might be taken to assist the rape victim.
And that applies to all sorts of other areas, you don't just have bank employees decided on laws about bank robbery, you don't just have men, or parents, make decisions about paternity laws.
Society as a whole makes such decisions (and occasionally changes them in important ways). Ideas like "There is no way a male can possibly know about the emotional hormonal mood swing and attachment or DIS-attachment the occurs in the mind of a mother" are as irrelevant in terms of how the political process would or should make determinations on an issue. They may be relevant to the result the process ends up with, arguably they may be relevant to the result the process should end up with, but they aren't relevant to who gets to participate in that process.
The process in this case isn't what decision will be made in a particular unwanted pregnancy, its over whether fetuses are considered to have human rights or not.
Once you determine that obviously other decisions need to be made. For example if society decides not to recognize any such right there is still the separate decision about whether abortion will be legal or not. In the context of the decision not to recognize fetal rights than in at least in most relatively free and modern societies the obvious decision would be to make abortion legal, but even though its an almost definite consequence of the decision not to recognize fetal rights it is a separate decision.
And the "legal or not" decision is itself a separate decision from the decisions about 1 - Whether to have an abortion or not when there is an unwanted pregnancy, or 2 - Who gets to have input in to that decision and how much input to they get. You seem to be focusing on that last issue, and concluding that the final say is the woman's, but that final issue isn't what I'm talking about. If I made all the assumptions you make leading up to deciding that issue, I'd decide it the same way as you do, but the debate is about the leading assumptions and ideas, so it doesn't start off with assuming they are correct. |
