With so many women’s lives in danger, men remain the largest group of passive supporters of reproductive rights in the country. We very well may hold the key that opens the front door to the White House.
It’s no secret that men, especially young men, are poised to play an outsized role in the election. Inexplicably, many are attracted to Donald Trump’s venomous and disgraceful presentation of manhood. The Republican convention’s theme song, “It’s a Man’s World,” made clear what Trump’s scheme was: promote 1950s manhood to attract white male voters. But there are other men who may upend this strategy, who recognize the threats women are facing, including pro-reproductive rights men and white dudes.
The days of men describing abortion and reproductive rights as a “woman’s issue” are over. Today, many men are comfortable talking about abortion as health care, including the nation’s second gentlemen, Doug Emhoff.
Since there’s so little time before the most consequential election of our lifetime, it’s imperative to remind men that this is our issue, too. It’s too volatile a moment to remain on the sidelines. It’s on us to organize ourselves and to speak out.
One organization, Men4Choice, is doing just that and it’s having an enormous impact activating, educating, and mobilizing young male allies in the fight for reproductive justice. It’s laser-focused on convincing men that advocating for abortion rights and bodily autonomy is essential for everyone.
Founded a decade ago to change laws in Illinois, it transformed itself into a powerful national organization to focus on changing the culture, too. The Men4Choice vision “is not just about abortion,” executive director Oren Jacobson says. “It’s about freedom, it’s about power, it’s about control” and it “impacts all of us—our families, our loved ones.”
When more men feel in their hearts the emergency women feel in their whole bodies, our consciousness will expand, too, and more men will join women on the front lines of the fight. With the election around the corner, Men4Choice is not the only one fired up. Men must vote, we must canvass, we must to talk to guy friends, show up. Now.
Men4Choice organizing director, Dewayne Martin, speaking to The Guardian, said men “have to become foot soldiers” in the movement. To locate recruits, they focus on Millennial and Gen Z men, reaching them before their political identities are baked in. Their secret sauce? A rigorous, 10-week hands-on training they run every few months.
More younger men are acutely aware of the issues surrounding abortion rights and identify significantly more as pro-choice than many may think. It’s a trend that’s been accelerating since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, as pollster and abortion strategist Tresa Undem has noted. “Dobbs lit a fire among some men of reproductive age,” Undem said. They “now look similar to older women on some views related to abortion.”
For Jacobson, the stakes are high: “There is no way to win this fight if we leave half the people who are with us on the sidelines.”
Although Trump-Vance allies recently debuted a $20 million campaign to register and motivate young voters in battleground states, a Young Men Research Initiative poll this summer found that while Vice President Harris is trailing Trump with young men who had not registered to vote, it was up 17 points among those who had. And a recent Pew poll found that young male voters 18-29 supported Harris over Trump, 55 to 31 percent. Yes, an encouraging snapshot, but not a time to be complacent.
It’s imperative that men of all ages understand what women are up against. Since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, 21 states have either enacted outright abortion bans or severely restrict the procedure earlier in a pregnancy than the benchmark set by Roe.
Abolishing Roe was just the extreme right’s opening volley in its plan to ban and criminalize abortion nationwide. Not convinced? Just read the chilling Handmaid’s Tale-like restrictions outlined in Project 2025.
The clock is ticking. “Do something!” Michelle Obama exhorted us. Talk to the men and young men in your life. Encourage them to speak out—and to vote. The lives of their daughters, partners, wives, aunts and sisters, depend on it.
Rob Okun, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is editor emeritus of Voice Male magazine, chronicling the antisexist men’s movement for more than 30 years and is editor of the anthology, Voice Male: The Untold Story of the Profeminist Men’s Movement.
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