To comprehend the scale of this betrayal, note that the abortion lobby has spent the past 40 years marketing abortion as the indispensable cornerstone of women’s equality.

They have done this despite the fact that, with almost no exceptions, the pioneers of the American women’s-rights movement were outspoken opponents of legalizing abortion.

Moreover, this opposition was only partially based on the contention that abortion takes a human life. People like Susan B. Anthony, Mattie Brinkerhoff, Sarah Norton, Emma Goldman, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and numerous others routinely and strongly argued that legalizing abortion is also profoundly harmful to women. Just one example of this was Alice Paul – the author of the original Equal Rights Amendment – who referred to abortion as the ultimate exploitation of women. Even suffragist newspapers like Woodhull’s and Claflin’s Weekly had editorial policies that openly attacked both abortion and those who performed them.

What these early feminist leaders understood is that legalized abortion does not advance the cause of womens’ equality but is, instead, a safety net for sexually predatory and sexually irresponsible males. They were warning that, in practice, legalized abortion would become a mechanism for these kinds of men to avoid any commitments to the women whose bodies they use or any responsibility for the children they father.

Regrettably, that is what we see being played out in front of us today.

American society has now devolved to the point where a male’s responsibility for an unplanned pregnancy he helped to create is often defined as a willingness to pay for half the abortion and provide transportation to the clinic.

This phenomenon may be best evidenced in a way that is probably unknown to most people. Across the country, there are a significant number of anti-abortion activists who stand in front of abortion clinics and try to dissuade women from going inside. These people are called “sidewalk counselors” and most of them are female. In fact, in many locations, they are exclusively female. Generally, they provide abortion-seeking women with information about fetal development, the risks and alternatives to abortion and whatever support services may be available to them if they choose not to have abortions.

Perhaps the most revealing thing about this process is how often women who come to abortion clinics are willing to stop and talk to the sidewalk counselors, but are prevented from doing so by the males who brought them there. In many cases, these men are belligerent and it is not uncommon for them to become verbally or physically abusive toward either these women, the sidewalk counselors or both.

These incidences occur because the men involved understand whose interests are actually being served by these abortions. In effect, they are perfect illustrations of what the Susan B. Anthonys and Elizabeth Cady Stantons of the world predicted decades ago.

But the legalization of abortion also introduced another question into the mix that even they may not have anticipated. The question is: How would the kind of men who rely on abortion as a safety net react when the women they impregnate are unwilling to jump into it?

The answer to that question is found in the following case studies.