Changing abortion's pronoun

clipped from www.latimes.com 'We had abortions,' say men whose lovers ended pregnancies. It isn't just a women's trauma, they insist. But critics see a political calculation. Abortion is usually portrayed as a woman's issue: her body, her choice, her relief or her regret. This new movement -- both political and deeply personal in nature -- contends that the pronoun is all wrong. When men are widely recognized as victims, Rue said, "that will change society." The concept of post-abortion trauma is hotly disputed. It may be, she said, that women who have abortions are more emotionally unstable in the first place. Shostak encourages clinics to reach out to these men. But he views the activist movement with alarm. The men are urged to think of themselves as fathers, to name -- and ask forgiveness from -- the children they might have raised "They draw in men who may have a little ambivalence, possibly a little guilt, and they exacerbate those feelings," Shostak said.

I've often felt that the needs and rights of men are overlooked when it comes to abortion. And that the whole "my body, my choice" justification by women is lame and selfish. However, I'm still pro-choice. I have my own non-selfish justifications for abortion. That being said...
If these men feel some sense of comfort from coming together and acknowledging their pain, then that's what they should do. But recognizing men as "victims" to abortion? And asking them to think of themselves as fathers and name the children their partners aborted... and ask them for forgiveness? That's going to far. Doesn't sound healthy to me. I know a woman who runs a post-abortion group for women that employs that same method of "recovery". I think it likely contributes more to the need of recovery than helps anyone.
And this new men's movement is already being politicized -- encouraging men to tell their stories of post-abortion trauma in hopes of tugging at the heart strings of American voters. If the Christian Right can't scare us into believing as they do with threats of an eternity in Hell, then they'll create a psychological and societal crisis where none exists. Pitiful.