Dilemmas: Stop wobbling, Mary, it's your decision

Just how much say should a man have if a woman he has sex with becomes pregnant? Indeed, if he has split up with the mother, is it any of his business at all - until, and if, the child is born?

The dilemma facing Mary was whether to tell her former boyfriend that she was pregnant and planned to have an abortion. The matter was complicated by the fact that it was she who had ended their relationship because he had become stiflingly affectionate. He was now going out with someone else.

On the surface, it all seemed rather noble. Mary appeared to be asking whether it was her moral duty to tell the father what was going on. Nevertheless her motives in posing the dilemma should be questioned. After all, it wasn't difficult to guess what the boyfriend's reactions might be. He could get very hot under the collar and put pressure on her to have the baby, which, if she was determined to have the abortion, would get no one anywhere. Or he could say: 'Fine, go ahead', which might make her feel lonely and depressed.

Or, as J Sanders, of Hampstead, wrote: 'If I were the man in Mary's situation, her telling me would only make me unhappy and angry. If she wanted to involve me in the decision, that would be quite another matter. If she didn't tell me, then, of course, ignorance is bliss. But if she told me afterwards I would be hurt and furious. But what is Mary really after, I wonder? Revenge? For what? A power-trip? Wanting to get me back?'

Speculation about her motives ranged wide. Might telling him be a way of hinting that she wanted a financial contribution, suggested an anonymous reader from Basingstoke. Or does she want emotional assistance - in which case she would be much better off asking a close friend or relative to help her through a difficult time. This reader wrote from bitter experience.

'I got pregnant after ending an unsuccessful relationship. I made the mistake of telling the would-be father, who pestered me endlessly to have the child, via telephone calls and letters. And when I was four-and-a-half months pregnant he walked out on me, leaving it too late for an abortion. I love my son, but my advice to Mary is to leave well alone.'

Many men run a mile when, as a relationship comes to an end, they find their partner is pregnant, or race to the bank to raise an overdraft to ensure the abortion is paid for. A few, however, find their emotions taking a different turn. Macho hormones can sometimes play havoc with their reasoning. When you don't have to bring a baby up yourself, it is easy to adopt an anti-abortion stance. And if the 'selfish gene' theory is correct, there is a part of some men that feels their sexual role is simply to impregnate as many women as possible. These are the ones who, having done their biological job, do not like seeing it undone.

Recently the press picked up on the story of the student in Italy who wrote to the Pope for help, describing how he was trying to prevent his girlfriend having an abortion. 'I am going through the most dramatic period of my life,' he wrote.

'No one has thought about my psychological well-being. I am suffering psychological damage. What about me? Don't I count for anything?'

Sue Stothard, who counsels young pregnant women and their partners through the Book Advisory Centre, says: 'Although it is uncommon, I've had situations where I've had a very unhappy and angry young man feeling no control over whether the partner continues with the pregnancy. But most men seem to feel it is up to the woman to decide.'

This is something that Mary seems unable to do for herself. Despite her politically correct motive in considering letting the father in on the facts, I think she is an angry and uncertain young woman. Perhaps, as D J Lafferty, of Horsham, pointed out, 'she is secretly jealous of him being with another partner'. Or put out that he has found another woman so quickly; she may feel that it makes meaningless all the attention he paid her.

Does she long for more begging phone calls and expressions of love? She may have felt that her boyfriend's attentions were unrealistic, but perhaps she found them flattering all the same, and misses them now.

At some level, does she secretly want to be talked out of her decision? I think not. Most likely she wants the abortion badly but feels guilty about it. By telling her poor former partner that she is planning to go ahead, come what may, she is manipulatively looking for a kind of endorsement of her decision so that she can tell herself the abortion wasn't her decision alone; if the unborn baby's father had really wanted to stop it, he could have found a way. However, the fact that he couldn't is neither here nor there.

So my advice to Mary is to uncover her 'hidden agenda', to use the counselling term. She kicked her boyfriend out and, by deciding to have an abortion, is exercising her right to choose. If she feels 'wobbly' about her decision, she should ask for support from her own family or friends, not dump her anxieties on a man whom she has made anxious and sad enough already.

Dear Virginia,

I work from home, and recently bought a personal computer which I work on all day. After a hard day's slaving over the machine I'm happy to leave it alone and relax with my partner over supper and a bit of TV. But the moment I'm off it in the evenings, he goes into my office and starts fiddling with it. He plays games on it, tinkers around with all kinds of programs, sometimes staying up till the early hours. I have told him it upsets me, but he says I'm stupid, he's not turning into a computer nerd, and if I'm not using it, why shouldn't he? We risk really falling out over what is becoming an obsession. He has even threatened to buy another one if I won't let him use mine. How should I handle this?

Yours sincerely, Gillian