Thomas Wheatley

Opinion contributor

Almost every day, I help facilitate the termination of anywhere between two and five marriages. As an attorney who practices family law, ending marriages makes up the bulk of my work.

The other part of my job mostly concerns matters stemming from failed, failing and sometimes entirely nonexistent marriages. Separation agreements; child custody disputes; child support enforcement; restraining orders; parental rights termination; visitation schedule modification — each the latest turn in an often long and painful story, and each requiring my guidance.

There’s no judgment on my part. Not only is there no time for making judgments, doing so would be unprofessional and could compromise my ability to be an effective legal counselor. Moreover, my clients know their lives far better than I do, and although it’s likely some who come through my door are in marriages not yet doomed to failure, many others are stuck in matrimonial torment, well beyond the point of reconciliation. Some are even in life-threatening situations.

Read more commentary:

Three men charged mass shooters, saving lives. We need more of that masculine courage.

Roe v. Wade gave women a right to choose abortion. But doctors like me have a choice, too.

I was 12 years old and pregnant. Alabama's abortion ban bill would punish girls like me.

Still, the more cases I take on, the more I notice patterns emerging. Chief among these, many of the people I assist are mothers trying to fix the damage wrought by an absent, neglectful or abusive man. In each case, my job requires me to ask about the father’s role — or more often, whether he has one at all.

Abolishing abortion, restoring fatherhood

Eventually, the answers start to run together. Sure, he pays his support, but his children never see him. Or he’s an addict. Or he’s in jail. Or he’s with his new girlfriend. Or maybe they don’t know where he is.

When viewed against this backdrop, it is little wonder some people use words like “trapped” and “forced” to describe the consequences of banning abortion. Taken alone, laws like Georgia’s and Alabama’s, for example, put women in the precarious position of bringing a child into the world without any reliable support system.

To be clear, as a person who is strongly pro-life, I welcome nearly all efforts to overturn Roe v. Wade and eradicate abortion from our country. These legislative initiatives are long overdue, and I remain confident that abortion, much like slavery, will one day be regarded as a terrible blight on our nation’s character.

Yet a comprehensive life-affirming culture demands more than simply abolishing abortion. We must also restore the original support system that made it safe for women to choose life in the first place. In this respect, I’m greatly disappointed by the pro-life movement’s languid approach to emphasizing the other, equally crucial part of the pro-life equation: fatherhood.

The arguments against banning abortion often reflect fear, frustration and desperation — not support for abortion as a positive good. Most notably, pro-choice advocates lament the lack of support for expectant mothers. They deride the absence of free health care, free child care and compulsory paid maternal leave. They even go so far as to call pro-life advocates hypocrites, saying that if people like myself really cared about sparing the unborn, we’d make it our priority to support women making the journey to motherhood alone.

Their argument is fundamentally correct (although their solutions are gravely harmful). Unwanted pregnancy is not a disease, nor is it remedied by the moral hazard wrought by additional government assistance programs. Restoring fatherhood — nature’s built-in complement to motherhood — is what is needed. And it starts by expecting more, legally and socially, from our men.

Men must face consequences, too

At the outset, we should recognize that it takes two to create life and that both parents share in the responsibility to provide for their children. We often hear, for example, of schemes to make abortion a crime for which the mother or doctor should be punished. But when was the last time someone proposed the same for men who father unplanned children?

When was the last time an absent father faced consequences — be it in the form of physical scarring, loss of career advancement or loss of social status — that matched those of a single mother? When was the last time an absent father had to endure the humiliating and disapproving stares of random passersby, or the hurtful comments of someone who has no idea how hard it is for one person to do a two-person job?

Much of this is because many people have diminished fatherhood (indeed, manhood generally) into a near farcical idea. Our television sitcom dads — from Peter Griffin in "Family Guy" to Doug Heffernan in "The King of Queens" — are fat, bumbling idiots. Our Father’s Day cards are rife with lazy, dumb dad jokes. Our movies depict consequence-free sexual largesse as a rite of passage for young men.

When young men are incessantly told that the pinnacle of manhood is eating, sleeping and ejaculating, is it really so surprising when they shy away from defined gender roles of a higher calling?

We must demand more. Changing social norms is a start.

“It would be great if society could rally around the six or seven key bridges on the path to fatherhood,” wrote David Brooks. “For example, find someone you love before you have intercourse. Or, make sure you want to spend years with this partner before you get off the pill. Or, create a couple’s budget to make sure you can afford this.” (We could even mark the occasion by wearing little gold rings, making public vows and having a big, formal party. Just a thought.)

Yet perhaps a change in the law is also warranted — one which strongly deters men from irresponsible sex. Criminalizing adultery is a good place to start, as is punishing men who shirk their fatherly duties.

Popular parenting blogger Gabrielle Blair had some interesting ideas in a Twitter thread that went viral, including castrating men who cause unwanted pregnancies. “For those of you who consider abortion to be murder,” she tweeted, “wouldn’t you be on board with having a handful of men castrated, if it prevented 500,000 murders each year?”

She meant it as hyperbole (I think), but her point is well-taken. If we are indeed facing a crisis of mass murder in our country, isn’t it about time we ensured everyone is pulling their weight to stop it? If we ban abortion under penalty of law and expect women to embrace the extraordinary responsibilities of pregnancy and motherhood, can we not demand the same of our men?

Thomas Wheatley is an attorney and writer in Kansas. He was a 2016 Publius Fellow at the Claremont Institute. Follow him on Twitter @TNWheatley. The views expressed here are his own.