IT'S very difficult to know what men's attitudes to abortion are. Little scientific study has been done. A detailed summary of scientific research relating to the psychological and social aspects of abortion produced by the Psychological Society of Ireland makes not a single mention of the effects of abortion on men. As one academic put it: "People haven't asked men for their views".
An Irish Times/MRBI poll of November 1992 found that as many as 73 per cent of men (and 72 per cent of women) were in favour of abortion in certain circumstances. Some 20 per cent of men (and 18 per cent of women) were in favour of abortion for anybody who wanted it.
Thirty five per cent of men (compared to 30 per cent of women) favoured abortion if there was a threat to the physical life of the mother, while a further 18 per cent of men (and 24 per cent of women) approved of abortion if there was a threat to the woman's life or a danger of her committing suicide.
Only 17 per cent of men opposed abortion in any circumstances, compared to 23 per cent of women.
The polarised debate between pro life and pro choice positions in this country in recent years makes it next to impossible for the 70,000 to 80,000 Irish women and remember that may be conservative estimate who have had abortions' to contribute their experience to the public debate.
Similarly, the tens of thousands of Irish men whose progeny were aborted remain silent. Last Monday, Father Padraig McCarthy, writing in the letters page of this newspaper, seemed to suggest that he was sad that most women who have abortions experience more positive responses, such as relief, rather than such negative responses as guilt.
Such views are not conducive to some 150,000 Irish men and women to contribute the truth as they see it from the valid perspective of their own experience. All the Irish women interviewed by author Ruth Fletcher from one recent study considered they had made the right decision in having an abortion.
Women fear that if they admit to positive or negative feelings after an abortion their experiences will be hijacked and remoulded by one, or the other lobby as proof that its own strongly held position on abortion is The Right One. A woman's expression of regret after an abortion can be reconstructed by the pro life movement as remorse, while the same woman's value for foetal life as more than an inconsequential bunch of cells can be disparaged by the pro choice movement. Both lobbies can fail to recognise the complexity of the woman's decision and ignore the piebald truth that lies in that space between black and white.
Men can be very threatened by women's power to abort, says Domhnall Casey, a Dublin based psychologist and psychotherapist. "Men don't have a say in it. It shows the power of women. Women can kill you at a swipe." Domhnall Casey believes that men can be affronted at a subconscious level by the power their mother once had over them in the womb. In evolutionary terms it appears that women, not men, were in the dominant position. Mother and earth are fruitful, while men just exist. The words maternal and material have the same Greek root connected in mythology to woman as earth goddess.
The words geography and geology share the root Gaia or Ge, the name of the primaeval earth goddess - the first creature, a female born from Chaos. As such, the creation story in Genesis which suggests that Adam arrived first can be seen as a usurpation.
AGAINST this backdrop, men's concern to control women's reproductive capacity can be seen as a typical male defensive posture and an attempt to control the more powerful female.
Domhnall Casey says: "Abortion shows women's power to emasculate men. The woman has complete control." Up to the last 20 years, or, he says, society reinforced the isolation of men.
"Now, because of the prevailing ethos and consciousness raising, men are trying to be more connected to women and children. Parental duties and roles are increasingly being shared. Men more and more, feel connected to the foetus. They are connected in sympathy but not physically - they can't be.
"When the question of abortion arises, these men are frustrated, alienated, faced with their limitations and with the power of women. Before, women rebelled against men who tried to force their will on them. Now the problem is to accommodate the caring will of men who wish to be involved."
Ailbhe Smyth, director of the Women's Education, Research and Resource Centre at UCD, says: "Abortion as an experience is primarily that of a woman, psychologically and physically. It's not unimportant for the man, but it's not a primary experience. Up to the last 20 to 25 years we didn't know about that experience for women. We haven't yet started seeing how men relate to that."
Dr Sheila Jones, medical director of the Irish Family Planning Association, says it is good if both partners are counselled about an abortion. "While the decision is the woman's, the more involvement of the male the better." Dr Jones says quite a number of men accompany their partners to England, but often the woman does not want the man to be involved, especially if the relationship is over.
Dr Geraldine Moane of the department of psychology at UCD says that sometimes women have abortions because they do not consider the man they are involved with is a suitable partner (an explanation which could further explain why men keep quiet about an abortion).
"Some men have been angry at being excluded from the decision. Others have forced the pace. Others seem happy to leave it to the woman; [men's] involvement in the process influences their responses."
DEBBIE Morrissey has counselled men and women in England about abortion. She says men often have a bad initial reaction to hearing a woman with whom they bare involved is pregnant. They can also feel bad about the abortion - especially if they have been antiabortion.
Frequently, they do not understand the complexity of the woman's dilemma: "I don't want to have an abortion but I don't want this baby".
Ms Morrissey worked for almost a decade with the Marie Stopes organisation in Britain in the past. She says that men often fail to understand that a woman can be upset after an abortion. Men who accompany their partners can also be embarrassed to come into a clinic, she says. "They think it'll be full of stern women, making them guilty." Some men, she says, are really awful. They've dragged their partners along. A man's reaction can depend on what type of relationship the couple has. "It's frustrating for men, because it's the woman's choice."
"The woman has a lot of power. He has zilch, absolutely no power. Quite often women can feel quite empowered." Debbie Morrissey does not believe depression in either a man or a woman is caused by the abortion. "It's how they feel about themselves; or if they had spoor mothering or fathering," she says of women. "That's also true for men. Like anything significant, it can bump up stuff from your childhood."
If men got pregnant would they really allow the State to act like Big Brother vis a vis reproductive choices they might or might not want to make about their unborn child, wanted or unwanted?
Not for the first time this whole area makes one feel that were men able to conceive and bear children, society might be structured in a vastly different way.
