Cook: Apples to wombs: A vasectomy is not an abortion

David Cook

In Nashville this week, senators were discussing abortion when Sen. Todd Gardenhire began talking about his own vasectomy.

"When you start talking to a doctor about them whacking on you down there," he said, "you want to wait a while and think about it."

There in the Legislature, his point was this: Adding restrictions to abortions -- like informed consent or mandatory waiting periods -- is fair, since men go through a far more rigorous and stringent process for a vasectomy.

"They call you in the office. They meet with your spouse. They tell you the consequences," he said. "They tell you how it's almost impossible to have it reversed and that you better go home and you better think about that."

Yes, let's do.

Let's really think about that.

By bringing his vasectomy story into the middle of an abortion debate, Gardenhire implies that the two experiences are comparable in an apples-to-apples kind of way.

Women have abortions, men have vasectomies. What's under the hood may be different, but the surgeries are similar enough.

First, this suggests a real lack of empathy, imagination or humility in men. It's an insult, as if we are unable to step outside our own bodies and empathize with the maternal experience. It's as if the only way we can imagine abortion is through our own genitalia.

It also insults mothers.

In his story, Gardenhire casts himself as the reflective one. His narrative says that men are the ones wrestling internally with the consequences, as if women were ho-hum casual about abortion decisions.

What should we do today, Sally?

How about the shoe store, then a vanilla latte, followed by an abortion?

I don't want to dog Gardenhire too hard here, mainly for two reasons.

Casting him as a gender villain doesn't help us. Plus, within his vasectomy diaries, I think we can find something helpful. Without knowing it, Gardenhire gave voice to what many men may feel.

Envy.

By assuming his vasectomy tale is relevant to the abortion argument, Gardenhire indulges in the male fantasy that male pain is somehow equivalent to women's.

That when it comes to pregnancy and childbirth -- or abortion and vasectomies -- we share equal experiences.

That's simply not true.

Twice, I have witnessed my wife give birth. Twice, I was stunned to tears at the beauty and magic and bloody sacredness of it all. This life within her was now our child in her arms.

And twice, I realized my own inadequacy and smallness.

Yes, the labor nurses called me a "birthing coach" and gave me jobs to do: rubbing her back, refilling the cup of ice chips, cutting the cord. But the grand act of pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding and whatever supernatural bonding that occurs in the womb and then follows out into that halo of mother-and-child delivery room moment was, and will forever be, the exclusive domain of my wife.

Not me.

And no matter what I do, I will never have the life-giving power that my wife -- that women -- possess.

Somewhere deep in my subconscious, I feel envious.

"Envy of pregnancy, childbirth and motherhood," the psychologist Karen Horney wrote.

That's why part of me wishes Gardenhire was right. That somehow, vasectomies are equal to abortions. That somehow, men can feel like we play an equal role in the creation of life.

That somehow, masculinity is on equal footing with the maternal.

"Is not the tremendous strength in men of the impulse to creative work in every field precisely due to their feeling of playing a relatively small part in the creation of living beings, which constantly impels them to an overcompensation in achievement?" Horney continued.

Maybe this is why so many men seem so hell-bent on arguing about abortion. And legislating. And mandating. It's make-believe, genitalia politics. It lets us pretend to be part of something we're really not.

Contact David Cook at dcook@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6329. Follow him on Facebook at DavidCookTFP.