‘Guys go where their buddies are’: the young men recruiting each other to fight for abortion rights

"Oh, no, no, I think you're trying to get in contact with my wife."

That's what a man in Florida recently told an activist who knocked on his door to talk about abortion rights. But the man was wrong. The activist, who represented a group called Men4Choice, was there to talk to him, because the group is dedicated to getting more men who support abortion rights involved in the fight for them.

"They have to get off the sidelines," said Dewayne Martin, the youth organizing director for Men4Choice, who relayed the activist's account to the Guardian. "They have to become the foot soldiers of this movement."

Two years after the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade and allowed more than a dozen states to ban almost all abortions, most men in the United States support abortion rights. Within months of the decision, 65% of men between the ages of 18 and 29 said they supported abortion being legal in all or most cases. But Men4Choice calls these young men "passively pro-choice".

Young women still support abortion rights at higher rates than their male peers - and young men are just not as motivated to take a public stand on the issue. Just 43% of gen Z men say that abortion rights are a "critical issue", compared with 68% of gen Z women, the political scientist Melissa Deckman found in her forthcoming book The Politics of Gen Z. This indifference has consequences: compared with women, men between the ages of 18 and 44 are less likely to say that abortion is motivating them to vote in the 2024 elections, according to polling from the firm PerryUndem. They are also less likely to say that the state of abortion rights will affect whom they vote for.

Men4Choice's goal is to get these young men to vote, canvass and otherwise act on their beliefs - instead of leaving the work to women.

"When we think about our organizing strategy, it's: help men see the harm," said Oren Jacobson, a Men4Choice co-founder. "Help men understand how this issue is not just a woman's issue. It's not just about abortion. It's about freedom, it's about power, it's about control. It is an issue that impacts all of us, our families, our loved ones."

It affects young men's futures, too. Compared with young men whose partners got pregnant and gave birth, young men whose partners had abortions are almost four times more likely to graduate college. Young men who have been involved in an abortion are also more likely to make more money than those whose partners gave birth. Overall, an estimated one in five men has impregnated somebody who has had an abortion.

Democrats have made abortion rights one of their central issues in the 2024 elections, while Republicans - wary of how outrage over Roe's downfall probably lost them a much heralded "red wave" in the 2022 midterms - have tried to downplay the issue and their own role in overturning Roe. However, as they've backed away, rightwing commentators and politicians have become far more adept at discussing masculinity than their leftwing counterparts, experts have told the Guardian. These rightwing public figures are not only willing to acknowledge that young men are struggling - with getting into college, with their finances, with their mental health - but also to portray these struggles as the result of women's growing social and political power.

This kind of talk - which is so popular it has essentially spawned a cottage industry - is believed to be a major reason why, despite their past support for liberal causes, so many young men are now pivoting towards conservatism (and potentially towards supporting Donald Trump).

"It feels good. It's telling men: 'You're the priority. You're the superior being,'" said Davan'te Jennings, a Men4Choice fellow who lives in Georgia. "'You act like this, this is when you get all the cars, the women, the mansion. Grind 24/7. Don't think about mental health. Depression isn't real.'"

In Jennings' view, such "toxic masculinity" is part of the reason why young men don't feel like they can be openly passionate about abortion rights. He hears references to it all the time: when Jennings talks to men through Men4Choice, the men often use phrases like "to be a man" and "the manly thing to do". Expressing emotions - including caring about abortion rights - doesn't fit into that mold of masculinity.

Men4Choice, then, aims to reframe how abortion fits into antiquated and restrictive notions of masculinity. "Masculinity is taking action," Martin said. "Masculinity is caring for the people that you love. Masculinity is ensuring that you are building a pathway towards freedom for you and your people, and realizing that those two things are not separate."

Christian Shephard, a 26-year-old Men4Choice fellow who serves as an organizer for the group in central Florida, tries to open up conversations about abortion rights with men by discussing how some men treat women, including how they may objectify or sexualize women.

"It may sound like that has nothing to do with reproductive justice, but it certainly does," Shephard said. "There is a clear connection between how people talk about women and how these [anti-abortion] laws are being created to deprive them of fundamental rights."

In a recent Men4Choice "community conversation" - virtual and in-person discussions where fellows are expected to bring male friends - one man claimed he didn't have to take any responsibility for abortion because "women should keep their legs closed", Jennings recalled.

"That was literally the words he used," Jennings said. "Most of us who are pro-choice on the call are like: 'Now we see why it's important to dismantle that way of thinking.'"

Jacobson launched Men4Choice in 2015, but the group has exploded in the years since Roe's demise. The Men4Choice fellowship program, which runs three times a year and is training 70 men between the ages of 18 and 28 this summer, has almost tripled in size since the summer of 2022. Many Men4Choice fellows are based in Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina - all states with abortion bans.

Though he was raised in a Democratic area of Miami, Martin, 22, said he hadn't acted on his support for abortion rights until 2020. He was a high school senior working on organizing around school boards when a friend told him about Men4Choice.

"It was in that moment that I realized, despite my being raised by a community of women who have served as my village and have made my life possible in several ways, I've never taken a direct action to support them on this issue," recalled Martin, who became a Men4Choice fellow that year.

In the months before Kamala Harris became the Democratic nominee for president, Men4Choice partnered with Doug Emhoff, Harris's husband and the second gentleman of the United States, to host events centered on energizing men to fight for abortion rights. ("This is an issue of fairness to women. Women are dying," Emhoff told NBC in May. "It's affecting men's ability to plan their lives.") Now, the group is trying to mobilize male volunteers and funnel them towards partner organizations working on the ground.

"Guys go where their buddies are," Jacobson said. "You have to create an ecosystem of men to get them to show up."

Men4Choice is also heavily focusing on Florida, which has banned abortion past six weeks of pregnancy - before many people even know they're pregnant - and where voters will decide in November whether to amend the state constitution to protect abortion rights.

Abortion-rights ballot measures previously have succeeded in Republican strongholds, such as Ohio and Kentucky. Exit polls found that 73% of male voters between the ages of 18 and 29 voted in favor of the Ohio measure - a significant share of voters, but still less than the 81% of young female voters who supported it.

The Florida amendment must garner 60% of the vote to pass. This fall, Men4Choice wants to reach 400,000 voters through phone and text banking, according to Martin. The group also wants to hold 100 community conversations with men.

There is, however, a limit to the organization's activism. Men4Choice focuses on men who already support abortion rights or are at least open to having a discussion about it - not men who are adamantly opposed to the procedure. "If there's not an understanding or a clear line of wanting to understand," Jennings said, "and we're just going to sit here and get into a debate - it's pointless."