Hi, Tom--

No matter what, married or single, partnered or deserted, whose opposite number is an involved parent or a couch potato with a paycheck, women incur the health risks of pregnancy and childbirth all by themselves. Period. Men can stand by and wring their hands.

Married women abort too. Their reasons can be either medical or economic. The "free will" argument as pertains to sexual activity is somewhat muted in these cases, because of the peculiar nature of the marriage contract. (Until very recently, marital rape was considered an oxymoron.) Failed birth control contributes to this situation. I maintain that the $15-$30/month birth control pill can be onerous to people already strapped for cash, especially when you factor in the visits to the gynecologist (which many medical plans consider "specialists" and also refuse to pay for) necessary to ensure the continued good health of a person taking a long-term medication for a chronic condition, i.e., fertility. Insurance will pay for sterilization, though. :s

Anyway, it's his kid too. There's a lot more than nine months gestation invested in a child. I've always believed abortion, adoption, or just keeping the kid should be a team decision, but I suppose that's just me.

and

The fact that almost all cultures throughout the world have had rules, rituals and mores expressing exactly this outlook for tens of thousands of years is totally ignored.

These rules and rituals have included the right of a man to beat up his wife and take concubines or mistresses, to kill his wife if he catches her with another man, and the divestment of any property owned by an adult woman the instant she says "I do". Men have also traditionally been able to pick up and leave their families, with varying degrees of cultural approval. Women's ability to do the same is proportional to their ability to participate in government and the economy. Anna Karenina and The Scarlet Letter are only two of the great works that use this social reality to comment on the greater issues of class structure, justice and hypocrisy.

In modern times, we see the quaint notion that women who stay at home and raise their children don't work and are therefore not entitled to retirement benefits except through their husbands. No administration, Democratic or Republican, has addressed this problem. Democrats want to subsidize child care, when it would make more sense to give the money directly to the mothers, single or married, and recognize the dignity of the work in the traditional way of our capitali$t $ociety. Republicans mouth platitudes about the sanctity of motherhood, but are unwilling to admit the real commercial and social value of "women's work". Apparently we are all too holy to need affirmation or independence. Like teaching and nursing, childrearing is an essential service that our society is used to getting "for free". Like the "free" birth control pills you mention, it's not really. Somebody pays somewhere, in hidden costs, like property tax in apartment rents. Child care is paid for in years of women's lives. That women will do that, I reiterate, speaks volumes for women. Men, on the whole, will not.

After the children are grown, men have been prone to divorce or just leave their middle-aged wives for hundreds of years prior to the advent of radical feminism, which left these women with no business skills, no resources, and no support. Divorce laws still vary widely. The assumption that property is split 50/50 is wrong.

These various incarnations of women's problems are where radical feminism gets the steam that runs its engine. Women got the idea that it was better to plan to live without a man in the family because they saw the results of failing to plan for it.

Some of us are still optimists.

Some of us are married to men who help. The fact that men may have noticed that women can get along without them (even though with difficulty) and they may have to cook and clean for themselves seems to have helped.

Yet, I still know women who are married to "good men" that live in fear of what comes next. There's the one whose husband spends the mortgage money on his motorcycles and so she has to keep money hidden from him as she kept cookies hidden from the children. There's the one who, when he gets upset at work, comes home and yells and throws things; last time, it was the microwave. There's the one whose husband has never once met one of their children's teachers because that's "her job"; he doesn't do children, he just makes 'em and gives her the money.

Not everyone is like you, Tom. Not all of women's problems happen because they're single. Some of them come from being married.

Regards--
Mary Anne