Art Shostak, Ph.D., is a Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Drexel University.

Over 600,000 males annually find themselves in the waiting rooms of the nation's nearly 400 abortion clinics (about half of all abortion-seeking women are generally accompanied by a man, as the regulations require assistance on leaving after the procedure). I have been there, first in the late 1970s as a perspiring young single man accompanying my nervous lover, and ever since as an applied sociologist drawn to find out more about the guys I sat among for three hours (and thereby, more about myself).

After my own abortion involvement, I helped create the first-ever national survey of males in abortion clinic waiting rooms (an exploratory, rather than a random and scientific study) and co-authored the still only academic book on the subject – Men and Abortion: Lessons, Losses, and Love (1984). In the 22 years since its publication – thanks to indispensable help from Claire Keyes, director of the Allegheny Reproductive Health Clinic in Pittsburgh, and an outstanding friend of waiting room men – I have conducted three more survey waves and I now have answers and longitudinal data from over 3,000 males in scores of clinics coast-to-coast.

What I have found is a long-standing pattern of neglect: For example, some 65% of the guys in 2004 (69% in 1983; 73% in 1999/2000) wanted to have accompany their partner throughout the abortion – provided she first agreed, this a major reason many of the guys were there in the first place (a pledge often sought by the female). But only 23% of the clinics in 1999/2000 made this possible, and there is no reason to believe the figure in 2004 (or now!) was any higher.

In 1984 interviews, 59% said they had not discussed the abortion with anyone. While 39% expressed an interest in securing counseling and 55% would have liked a private meeting along with their partner and a counselor, only 40% of the clinics offered this – and only if staffers could squeeze it in to very tight schedules. Although the guys cool their heels for over an hour and could learn much of value during that time, none were told anything to help them prepare for the emotional roller coaster many women experience immediately after the procedure, a time when searing questions and bruising doubts may surface.

Guys expressed anxiety ("Will she be okay?"), puzzlement ("How did we ever get into this mess?") and resolve ("I never want to be here again, never!"). But while in 1983 68% of the clinics had a male-oriented pamphlet rack that might have helped some avoid being repeaters, by 1999/2000 the figure had fallen to 21%. No clinic in our 2004 sample regularly offered a family planning discussion or the like. This, despite the fact that 38% expressly wanted take-away information about birth control to ponder and share. Not surprisingly, in 2004 one in five of the waiting room guys was a repeater.

Thanks now to indispensable support from Clinic Director Claire Keys, we have launched the first-ever web site for males seeking a pro-choice discussion of men and abortion. It explains what an abortion entails, offers answers to FAQs, provide links to pro-male clinics, highlights ideas from advocacy groups (NAF, NARAL, etc.), shares articles Claire or I have written over the years, offers space for (moderated) views from site visitors, and endlessly tries to improve its value to waiting room males and related others.

We want the site to help encourage guys to seek counseling immediately on learning of their part in co-creating a pregnancy. They need an opportunity to explore what might be hard for them. To get over a loss of control. To discuss religious and spiritual thoughts. To deal with a feeling of helplessness and to define a role that helps normalize the experience.

We hope our web site will soon persuade the owners of abortion clinics (most of them men) to voluntarily offer many male-aiding services. Our case is strengthened by the fact that 51% of waiting-room males in 1999/2000 indicated the couple's choice of a provider would have been influenced by the availability of male-aiding services. Some 62% in 2004 (up from 50% in 1999/2000) signaled their willingness to help pay for male-aiding options. And these indications of support might be greater if a clinic explained its legitimate need for such financial aid.

Should clinics continue to under-serve waiting room males it might become necessary to seek state-wide laws requiring on-request educational and counseling services, as well as the option to accompany the female through the procedure and during her stay in the recovery room (only, of course, with her prior accord). The required services might include hiring at least one male counselor, providing free pamphlets, showing a DVD about the procedure on a monitor in the waiting room, offering contraceptive education, etc. Costs could be scaled to income, though possibly made less generous if the male is an abortion repeater. As well, new state laws could require insurance companies to offer females coverage that would help their male partners pay for male-aiding clinic services.

In sum, I think we should reframe the entire abortion paradigm, and recognize that two people, rather than only the female, deserve help. For if women are to live alongside the high quality of men they dream about, and if men are to measure up to their own highest ideals, reforms must be achieved in out-of-sight venues like abortion clinics. As conception is not the product of masturbation, it is not "her" abortion, it is their abortion. Abortion providers should help both parties at equal-care sites. Males should leave abortion clinic waiting rooms wiser and more adult than ever. Having learned more than before about contraception, child spacing, and abortion psychological impacts (even including regrets and mourning rituals), males should have reduced odds of ever returning to the waiting room. The sooner we help males come in from the cold of a mute and lesson-less clinic waiting room, the closer we will come to a world of ever-rarer abortions.

A much longer version of this article will appear in Men and Masculinities, sometime in 2007.