A highly renowned and controversial American comedian, Dave Chappelle, once said, in his comedy special called Sticks & Stones: ‘and ladies, if you decide to have the baby, a man shouldn’t pay. That’s fair. If you decide to kill this mother—er, I can at least abandon them. It’s my money, my choice!’ A lot of men like repeating these words when they justify abandoning their children. This is wrong on many levels, and as amajita, we should desist from holding such views. They are cruel, especially to innocent children.

Between men and women, it is the latter that are taking measures to prevent unwanted pregnancies more than the former. Women are on different types of birth control methods, and men aren’t on any. If they are, they fail dismally to stay consistent in one of the far easiest and convenient methods of them all, which is wearing a condom. Many studies have shown that men don’t want to wear condoms. Men say having sex wearing a condom isn’t just as pleasurable as having sex without wearing one. And one study by University of Southampton found out that ‘men are willing to have condomless sex with attractive women.’

I am a young man myself. I have hung around men who are older than me, some not quite that old. I have heard them talk about stealthing, which is an act of removing a condom during sex when the woman is not looking – which is also a sexual offence, by the way – and have a laugh about it like it was nothing.

Women, on the other hand, they orally take pills; inject themselves, and insert IUDs to prevent unwanted pregnancies. And even though all of these methods have been proven over and over again that they have mild and dire side effects, they still take them. So, judging for yourself, as umjita, you can see that we don’t do anything to prevent unwanted pregnancies, unlike women. We are reckless. We just talk nje that we don’t want kids and end it there. We never take any actions to show it.

All of these precautions listed above are not always 100% efficient. Women do get pregnant regardless. Now this is a case of whether a man should have a say in the women they are seeing getting an abortion or not. I personally don’t think so because I know men don’t know what’s best for women. They think they do, but they don’t. I don’t have to bring studies and stats to prove it to you, but you have probably heard women around you tell stories of how men they were seeing turned against them as soon the child was born, that they had no choice but to raise them alone. I believe when a woman tells you as her partner that she is pregnant, your response as umjita should be that you will support her in whatever decision she ends up taking.

Here is just one of many reasons why a woman might decide to have an abortion, even when you are against it. In a landmark study, as reported by Forbes, fake job applications were sent out by researchers, and it was found that ‘the applications that didn’t reference children were twice as likely to get called in for an interview.’ Other studies found that the employers know that the high position will mean putting in more hours, and this can result in mothers being away from their children, so they tend to be more hesitant about promoting them.

And again, here is a reason why a woman might not have an abortion, even though you want her to. Women who have abortions still face a lot of stigma from the society all over. This year alone, I have witnessed more than four cases of young women on Facebook who were fighting, and they all used the history of abortions against each other just to spite and to humiliate. It has also been proven that abortion is just as invasive as any medical procedure to have, especially when they are quite far along.

From above, you can see that women have it hard when they prevent unwanted pregnancies, when they have children, and even when they decide to have abortions. Where are we as amajita in all of this equation? Nowhere.

So, what is our excuse for abandoning our kids because not being ready won’t just cut it anymore? If we cared about women’s rights and human’s rights, we wouldn’t abandon our kids because we simply don’t have any reason to. Imagine you as a first-born, struggling, while your father is with his family out there because he wasn’t ready for you at that time. Even when he might be now, his wife and other children might not welcome you. Now you are just an outcast, treated like you’re undeserving of love. It is inhumane, it is cruel, and it breeds hatred in innocent children.

Let’s use condoms, and let’s learn how to use them properly. Let’s also get a vasectomy – it is more efficient in pregnancy prevention than using condoms, plus it can even get reversed in the later stages. That’s what we do when we are not ready and don’t want to have kids – we act! We do not compare abandonment with abortion because that one is just not it.