Rugby, Abortion, and Why I Got Off the Sidelines
The first time I remember saying the word “abortion” was on the rugby field at Guilford College in 1991. I was late to practice; guys were already in a circle, halfway through warm ups. “Sorry,” I joked, “I was taking my girlfriend to get an abortion.” Several teammates burst out laughing.
My coach Jaamy Zarnegar, red-faced and angry, bellowed: “That’s not funny! That’s not funny!”
I felt shocked to be called out by my coach, a man I respected, and ashamed at what I’d said, though I couldn’t articulate why. Paradoxically, I felt a thrill at demonstrating to other men that I could be uncaring and cruel.
But I couldn’t find the space to talk about any of that. Among my male friends, on and off the pitch, we never had serious conversations about our own behavior and attitudes, much less about women’s reproductive choices — it just wasn’t something we did. It wasn’t something we had to do. So we shook off Jaamy’s anger and dove into the ruck and maul of practice. Still, the fact that my coach challenged me mattered. I have revisited that moment many times over the past decades.
Looking in the Mirror at Men Stopping Violence
In 2000 I connected with Men Stopping Violence, a 37-year old social change organization dedicated to engaging men to end violence against women.
Men Stopping Violence (MSV) challenged me to look in the mirror to get real with other men about consent, coercion, and our choices around sex — and the effects of those choices on women. As an intern going through MSV’s 24-week men’s education class I was invited to examine my sense of entitlement to women’s bodies and to own the specific controlling behaviors I had used — jealousy, sulking, pressure tactics — to get sex. I had to ask difficult questions like, “How had my recklessness with birth control impacted my partners and their reproductive decisions?” Once I fully acknowledged that I had pressured women and been irresponsible around birth control, I could no longer sit on the sidelines and pretend abortion had nothing to do with me.
But I still wasn’t ready to act.
Movement towards Action: A Conversation
In 2012, around the time that Georgia debated and eventually passed legislation reducing the legal window for abortions, I sat with a colleague at Men Stopping Violence. I had known Dick Bathrick, a co-founder of MSV and former Dartmouth rugby captain, for more than 10 years, and often turned to him for feedback. I knew there was a connection between efforts to limit access to abortion and violence against women, and I asked Dick to help me connect the dots.
Dick reminded me of our work directly with men who have used coercive control to influence women’s reproductive decisions, including pressuring and often forcing a woman to have sex, not using a condom himself, and, if a pregnancy occurs, forcing the woman to remain pregnant or intimidating her into terminating the pregnancy. Criminalizing or banning abortion is another iteration of this type of coercion, another expression of men controlling women’s bodies and lives.
As infuriating as it must be for women to hear — the truth is that I needed a conversation with a man to become earnestly engaged in reproductive justice. Dick wasn’t saying anything that thousands of women across Georgia weren’t already saying emphatically, but I needed our conversation to realize that my inaction was, considering what’s at stake, unacceptable to me.
Listening to Women
After that conversation, I began making conscious choices to put myself in positions where I could listen directly to women and female identified leaders.
I went to Feminist Women’s Health Center training where I learned about the insulting and medically inaccurate steps a woman must go through before she can have an abortion.
I attended the screening of Melissa Alexander’s “Confessional” at the “If I Told You…” gallery and heard a testimony from a woman who was raped and had an abortion. While she struggled with her decision, the woman described how her rapist — a man in her community — was happy when he found out she was pregnant. Her agency and will were as insignificant then as they were when he raped her.
At a SisterSong training I was stunned by the clarity of their definition of reproductive justice as “the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities.”
I sometimes felt uneasy going into these spaces. But I had to confront the truth: staying in my comfort zone meant remaining willfully inactive around a human rights issue that I had an obligation to address.
As I learned more, I began making donations to organizations fighting for reproductive justice; I’ve joined other men at rallies; and I am part of a slowly emerging men’s coalition for abortion access. These are small contributions compared to the women who fight for reproductive justice every day with their autonomy and bodies in jeopardy, and I am humbled by the way those women have welcomed the contributions I have made.
Coming Full Circle
Recently I had dinner with my college rugby coach Jaamy in Atlanta. When I told him that I was writing an essay that included him, he seemed unperturbed. But when I told him that the topic was abortion, I saw his face cloud and he looked down at his plate.
I recounted that afternoon on the pitch: my callous “joke,” the laughter, and Jaamy’s swift condemnation.
Jaamy shared that, shortly before my “joke,” he had taken a friend to get an abortion after the man who had gotten her pregnant refused to help. Jaamy described the experience as hell for her. It was by accompanying his friend and listening to women that he’d arrived at his own position: women deserve the right to make their own choices about reproduction. Full stop.
This was the first deeply honest conversation I had with Jaamy, and I felt closer to him than ever. I also felt a touch of regret. I might have been able to learn from Jaamy years ago about listening to women, but there wasn’t space for us to talk.
Having finally had that conversation, I felt an immense sense of relief. I was off the sidelines. I emailed this essay to three of my college teammates, along with a note: Let’s connect.
Photo Credit: Photo at top by Olga Guryanova on Unsplash
