“Reimagining Reproduction: What Would Happen If Women Controlled the Future of Abortion?”
As a male seahorse, I deserve to be seen as more than just a curly-tailed egg receptacle.
If females experienced gestation, the musculoskeletal contractions during birth alone would be celebrated as feats of nautical strength. Forcing a female seahorse to go through with labor against her will would be punished to the fullest extent of maritime law. But when we do it, it is simply our intrinsic duty as male Syngnathus hippocampi living under an oppressive oceanographic system.
I already know what the critics will say: “If males don’t want to get pregnant, then they shouldn’t engage in the courtship rituals of their species during breeding season.” Well, I have a hard time believing that if female seahorses got pregnant, they’d be told the same. Even without a mate around, females can’t seem to go more than a few hours without rapidly ejecting gametes from their ovipositor into the water column. In fact, no one blinks an eye when they flaunt their sexuality in public waters! Talk about a double standard.
Typically, I try not to acknowledge watery arguments from the puritanical sponges that preach asexual reproduction. It’s frankly no one’s business who I let into my seagrass bed. But if females needed them, seahorse contraceptives would be easy to procure.
On the contrary, I don’t know a single male seahorse who hasn’t spent several excruciating minutes worrying that he was pregnant.
Don’t get me wrong—bringing new oceanic life into the world is a uniquely profound and rewarding experience that I might like to try some day. I’m only 4 months old, and who knows where I will be in another several weeks when I’m sexually mature? What I resent is that the same pressure to breed is not put on females, who merely get to deposit their eggs and swim away unaffected.
