Abroad

Irishman in San Francisco: We can’t fathom how repealing Roe v Wade will affect our children

Women do not owe apologies for the choices they make about their health and wellbeing

Roe v Wade: An abortion-rights activist outside the US supreme court, in Washington, DC, after the court overturned women's federal right to abortion. Photograph: Nathan Howard/Getty

David Delaney
Tue Aug 30 2022 - 02:00

A woman’s right to choose is an issue that’s been on my mind a lot since the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, on June 24th this year. The ruling meant that the constitutional right to abortion, which had been upheld for nearly half a century, no longer exists. Writing for the court majority, Justice Samuel Alito said that the 1973 ruling and subsequent decisions reaffirming it were “egregiously wrong”, the arguments “exceptionally weak” and so damaging that they amounted to “an abuse of judicial authority”.

I disagree. I’ve been thinking about a woman’s right to choose many times as I’ve walked the many beaches on the west side of San Francisco Bay, from Half Moon Bay to Ocean Beach. I talked to my wife, Dr Kristin Jones, about the right to choose, and we concluded that asking more questions is better than settling for the unknown.

That supreme court’s decision, which came in the form of its decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organisation, rocked the nation.

When I write that, it sounds like an exaggeration.

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In the US, we quickly forgot about the women. It took a week, at most. We men should not forget about the women. But we do. The repeal of Roe v Wade has implications that we cannot fathom, not even how it will affect our children.

Let me put this in context. Where did the sexual revolution begin? The answer is in the US, in the 1960s. Freedom to choose partners and play the role that you wanted to play. Freedom to choose who you wanted and who you didn’t. Contraception was freely available.

Now the sexual revolution seems to be dying in the US – while in Ireland it is still in its infancy. Ireland legalised abortion only five years ago, of course, when 66.4 per cent of voters in the referendum of May 2018 cast their ballots to repeal the Eighth Amendment.

Wary that history tends to repeat itself, I wanted to write from a male (albeit white middle-class male) perspective. Overturning Roe v Wade is wrong. It is hurting people. It is setting a precedent, and its ramifications go beyond what we can comprehend at this moment. It is unsettling to think about the knock-on effects of repealing Roe v Wade on future generations, but we must now make ourselves uncomfortable and unsettled.

Seeing anything from a different perspective can be one of the most difficult things to do. It is painful to step into another person’s shoes and empathise with them. Going along with something that you don’t fully endorse is a scary ride, I know. But if we gave a fraction more of our time and energy to understanding others rather than thinking about what we are owed, our world would be a more welcoming place.

Women owe us men nothing in their fight to exist in the way that they choose. Women do not owe apologies for the choices they make about their health and wellbeing. Women do not owe us reasons for their thoughts. Women do not owe us an explanation for why they choose to have an abortion. Men instead owe them understanding. We owe them time to heal. We owe them a safe space in which we see things from their perspective.

We owe them, not the other way around.

David Delaney, who is from Dublin, left Ireland in 2017; he relocated with his wife, Kristin, to California. They live outside San Francisco, where he is a high-school English teacher

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