When Dereks girlfriend Brynn got pregnant in 2005, they were both still college students.

They had been in a relationship for two years and were living together near their school in Ohio. They were starting to ask themselves whether marriage and children would be in their futures, and if so, would that future be together. They were just starting to develop into the adults we would become, as Derek put it.

And then Brynn got pregnant.

They had always been careful to use condoms during sex, but Derek who, like all people mentioned in this piece, has had his name changed to protect his privacy believes one must have broken. Brynn decided to have an abortion, despite knowing she wanted a family one day. She wasnt sure how Derek would react, so she got an abortion without talking to him about it.

She told him six months later.

Derek said that even after all these years, he still feels ashamed that Brynn didnt consider him a safe and accessible enough partner when she made her decision. He also knows how lucky they were to have lived in a state and in a year where Brynn could access abortion at all.

Derek is certain that forced parenthood would have been a disaster for them, both individually and as a couple. He said he would have needed to drop out of school and work multiple jobs just to make ends meet. Derek said Brynns decision to seek an abortion allowed both of them to create the lives they were meant to lead. (They are no longer together, but the abortion had nothing to do with their breakup.)

I fully believe that the events we endured together provided us with the learning to grow into stronger, more capable adults, Derek said. We were afforded the opportunity to pursue our own happier, productive livelihoods.

Derek and Brynn dont live in Ohio anymore, but he has spent a lot of time thinking about what it would have been like for Brynn to seek abortion care if they had been in college in 2019 instead of 2005.

In April, Ohio became one of several states to pass increasingly restrictive anti-abortion legislation. Its law, which has not yet gone into effect, bans the procedure starting at about five or six weeks, when the first activity within the fetal pole becomes detectable. (The fetal pole is also referred to as the fetal heartbeat, although technically the heart hasnt been developed yet.) The law doesnt include exceptions for rape or incest, and most women dont even realize they are pregnant until after that six-week mark. Georgia, Kentucky, Missouri, Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama have all passed similar bans in the last five months. Alabamas legislation is the most extreme and bans the procedure outright in the vast majority of cases. (The American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood have filed a lawsuit on behalf of Alabama abortion providers.)

Theres a voice that gnaws in the back of my head that says these bills feel intended to trap less fortunate people and force them into lifelong subjugation where they have no mobility in life, Derek said. They certainly are not pro-life, no matter how hard they are marketed as such.

The majority of legislators authoring and voting for these restrictive anti-abortion laws are cisgender white men , with a strong assist from cisgender white women . (We see you, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R) .) These men tend to frame their support for anti-abortion legislation as benevolent concern for life.

[The bill] is very simple but also very powerful: a declaration that all life has value, that all life matters, and that all life is worthy of protection, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) said last month when he signed a bill into that would ban abortions as early as six weeks into a pregnancy.

These are the cisgender men who get the most media attention, but there is also another group of cis men worth talking about: those who have experienced abortion care by way of their partners. As journalist and author Liz Plank put it in a now-viral tweet : Behind millions of successful men is an abortion they dont regret getting with their partner.

In the last few weeks, calls have increased for cis men to speak out about abortion in solidarity with women and people of other gender identities who can get pregnant. Some prominent men, including Refinery29 CEO Philippe von Borries, began sharing their stories on social media, and the hashtag #MenForChoice trended nationally last week.