{"id":1311450,"date":"2019-06-15T16:20:00","date_gmt":"2019-06-15T22:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/okun-column-fathers-day-and-a-womans-right-to-choose\/"},"modified":"2019-06-15T16:20:00","modified_gmt":"2019-06-15T22:20:00","slug":"okun-column-fathers-day-and-a-womans-right-to-choose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/okun-column-fathers-day-and-a-womans-right-to-choose\/","title":{"rendered":"Okun column: Father\u2019s Day and a woman\u2019s right to choose"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The old bumper sticker, \u201cKeep Your Laws Off of My Body\u201d isn\u2019t old and isn\u2019t a bumper sticker. It\u2019s a chilling reality for women today. And Father\u2019s Day is a perfect time for men to wake up to women\u2019s reality \u2014 to stand up and speak out on behalf of women\u2019s reproductive health and rights.<\/p>\n

Several weeks ago two-dozen white male Alabama legislators passed a draconian anti-choice bill and where were the men opposing them? A rash of similar abortion bans\u2014most with no exception for rape or incest \u2014 passed across the South and Midwest and where were the men? Besides Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Kentucky, and Louisiana are denying a woman\u2019s right to choose; more states are poised to follow. Thankfully, all of these laws are being vigorously challenged in the courts. Are women wrong to believe men\u2019s silence represents tacit approval, is a form of complicity? If we want women to believe we\u2019re their allies then, to borrow a Missouri maxim, we have to show them.<\/p>\n

Whether you\u2019re a father, stepdad, father figure, brother, uncle, nephew, coach or mentor, it\u2019s way past time to find your voice and stand with women. Let\u2019s use Father\u2019s Day 2019 to publicly and loudly stand up women\u2019s reproductive rights.<\/p>\n

Here are a few things men \u2014 not just dads \u2014 can do:<\/p>\n

\u2022 For fathers: in lieu of a gift ask your family to make a donation to a local clinic, Planned Parenthood, NARAL, or all three. (Also, support the National Network of Abortion Funds at abortionfunds.org.)<\/p>\n

\u2022 Volunteer at a clinic, including escorting patients inside<\/p>\n

\u2022 Urge your faith community leader to deliver a sermon supporting a women\u2019s right to choose (or be the guest speaker yourself)<\/p>\n

\u2022 Write a letter to the editor stating your unequivocal support for women\u2019s reproductive rights<\/p>\n

\u2022 Invite a group of men over to talk about the threat women face and why men need to break their silence<\/p>\n

Insist researchers to accelerate work on developing male birth control<\/p>\n

If you have a son old enough, talk with him about respecting women\u2019s autonomy<\/p>\n

\u2022 Let your daughter know you unequivocally support her right to control her body<\/p>\n

\u2022 Alert anti-choice legislators that you won\u2019t just vote to unseat them, you\u2019ll work to elect pro-choice candidates<\/p>\n

We men have been complacent for too long, detached from women\u2019s reality, smug in our armor of privilege. But there are cracks in our armor. As Katha Pollitt wrote recently in The Nation:<\/p>\n

[F]or every woman with an ill-timed, unwanted pregnancy, there is probably a man who is unhappy about it, too. Men, too, can have their lives stunted by unwanted childbearing. They, too, suffer when a pregnancy pushes them into marriage, or into marriage with the wrong person\u00bcFor men as for women, ill-timed or unwanted children can mean giving up ambitions and dreams. It can mean decades of regret for not doing right by children you didn\u2019t mean to have or have no real connection to or perhaps have never even met.<\/p>\n

Of course, there are men in the reproductive rights battle but they\u2019re most visible on the anti-choice side. They lead or are prominent in organizations and protests; they harass clinic workers, patients and families, and they are the primary assassins, murdering not just doctors who perform abortions but clinic workers, too. Once these children are born though, like most anti-choice activists they are mute on the subject of supporting children outside the womb. Why aren\u2019t more men calling out their hypocrisy?<\/p>\n

Even if not all men are fathers, we are all sons. It\u2019s not too late to step up in support of not just the women in our lives \u2014 but all women \u2014 at a vulnerable time in theirs: mothers, wives or lovers, sisters, daughters, nieces, neighbors.<\/p>\n

Women are facing a full-blown emergency. The clock is ticking; a test case to overturn Roe v. Wade could soon be before the Supreme Court. With the flames of intolerance looming at our sisters\u2019 windows, men must join the bucket brigade to put out the fire. Now.<\/p>\n

Rob Okun is editor of Voice Male magazine and a member of the steering committee of North American MenEngage. Syndicated by Peace Voice, he can be reached at rob@voicemalemagazine.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n

via:: Post Independent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The old bumper sticker, \u201cKeep Your Laws Off of My Body\u201d isn\u2019t old and isn\u2019t a bumper sticker. It\u2019s a chilling reality for women today. And Father\u2019s Day is a perfect time for men to wake up to women\u2019s reality \u2014 to stand up and speak out on behalf of women\u2019s reproductive health and rights. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1311450","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-19 05:51:58","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1311450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1311450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1311450\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1311450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1311450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1311450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}