I recently discovered that my boyfriend of seven months and I have opposing viewpoints on the whole “life begins at conception” issue. He’s not a crazy zealot, but he is strongly against abortion. And while he won’t go so far as to say abortion should be banned, he does believe in the whole “personhood” concept, i.e., that a fetus — from the moment of conception — is a person with the same rights as any other person. This shocked me, and I almost broke up with him. He says that disagreeing on issues is fine in a relationship, but I am not so sure. I find his position abhorrent, one that ignores hundreds of real-life factors, and it opens the door for a litany of laws regulating my body. He’s a sweet, loving guy and progressive in every other way. But I’m suddenly unsure about a relationship I viewed as totally solid just a few days ago. I’m not sure if this should be a deal breaker or if this is just a disagreement. Please advise.
Love Is Finding Errors
Your boyfriend won’t go so far as to say abortion should be banned… or maybe he saw the shocked look on your face and realized that going so far as to say abortion should be banned to you would be a big mistake.
Here’s a good way to find out if your boyfriend is serious about not wanting to impose his personal beliefs on others or whether he’s an anti-choice zealot: Tell him you’re pregnant.
Some men blithely assume anti-choice positions because “personhood” and other anti-choice arguments appeal to them in the abstract and, hey, it’s not like their bodies or their futures are on the line, right? Most anti-choice-in-the-abstract men come to a very different conclusion about the importance of access to safe and legal abortion when an unplanned pregnancy impacts them directly.
So tell your boyfriend you’re pregnant. You can present it as a thought experiment if you prefer, LIFE, but I think you should flat-out lie to him. Then, once the news sinks in, ask him if he’s ready to provide financial support for a child and/or make regular, monthly child support payments directly to you. Ask him if he’s ready for the responsibilities (and the grind) of full- or even part-time parenting. Ask him if he knows you well enough — just seven short months into this relationship — to make the kind of lifetime commitment that scrambling your DNA together entails. Because even if you don’t get married, even if you don’t live together and raise this child together, you two will be stuck with each other for the rest of your lives if you have the baby.
I’m guessing his answers will be “no, no, and no” and he’ll offer to drive you to the nearest abortion clinic himself.
As for whether you should date someone who is anti-choice, well, women have to be in control of their own bodies — and when and whether they reproduce — in order to be truly equal. I don’t think I could date someone who didn’t see me as his equal or who believed that the state should regulate my sexual or reproductive choices. So, yeah, this shit would be a deal breaker for me, LIFE, if I had a vagina.
Actually, this issue is a deal breaker for me, even though I don’t have a vagina. I wouldn’t date a gay dude who was anti-choice. Any gay man who can’t see the connection between a woman’s right to have children when she chooses and his right to love and marry the person he chooses is an idiot. And I don’t date idiots.
If your hypothetical pregnancy doesn’t shock your boyfriend out of his idiocy, LIFE, you’ll have to ask yourself if you can continue dating this idiot.
This article appears in Oct 11-17, 2012.