The Backlash! - October 1996

And then, in the living room, sitting alone on the couch a few minutes later, he feels it for the first time. Anger. Anger at her.

Three weeks earlier, she had come to him. "I'm pregnant," she had said with obvious distress. And then, quickly, "I'm going to have an abortion."

His heart had gone out to her. Though lovers for just three months, these two 26- year-old college students had begun to talk about a future together. She needed him now, and he would respond. He held her when she cried, accompanied her on doctor visits, drove her to get the abortion, and paid for it.

When it was finally over, though, sitting alone on that couch, he felt his own anguish, his own resentment, rise in his chest. Why hadn't she talked with him before she decided to end the pregnancy? Why hadn't she trusted him? Why had she left him out?

Such strong feelings are common for men in abortion situations. Faced with the life-altering possibility of becoming a father, yet without control over the final decision, many men feel powerless and angry.

Yet they usually don't admit those feelings. Overshadowed by the woman's more immediate needs, men often bury their emotions. At least until later.

Then, as in the case of this couple, the feelings smolder, flare, and bring the relationship down.

In the days after this abortion, the man did not confront his girlfriend with the anger he felt. He had been hurt once, and he didn't want to risk being hurt any more.

"With my bubble burst, it was hard for me to move back into the relationship at the same level," he says today, 15 years later. "We were in love. But in some way, her decision to exclude me (from the abortion decision) put parameters on the depth of our relationship. I believed a situation around pregnancy involved a couple, and the discussion about what to do would happen at a time when the decision had not already been made.

"The relationship never really got back to the way it was," he continues. "There was a distance between us after that, a hardening. For me, the relationship's potential had been diminished.... Looking back, the pregnancy was an opportunity for building trust. And we let it get away."

The couple continued to date, on and off, for more than a year after the abortion. Then, amid acrimony not directly related to the abortion, they broke up.

Today, he does not regret the actual abortion. He is engaged to another woman, and plans to have a family with her. But he still holds some bitterness toward his old girlfriend. He's also willing to take some of the responsibility for the demise of their relationship.

"I have both resentment and regret" about the whole situation, he says. "The resentment is that she didn't talk with me. The regret is that I wasn't aware enough of my own feelings to tell her about them."

MEN*TION

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