Half of all women who visit abortion clinics in this country are accompanied by their male partners. That amounts to somewhere between 600,000 and 750,000 men each year cooling their heels in the waiting rooms.

	The home page of www.menandabortion.com. Click photo for larger image.

Clinic staff could be reaching out to these men in ways that help them deal with their own feelings, and also assist them in helping their female partners with related emotional and physical issues.

Yet clinics nationwide don't necessarily take advantage of that opportunity. Nor do they necessarily do much to educate men on contraception, to help them become full partners in avoiding unplanned pregnancies in the future.

A new Web site, www.menandabortion.com, hopes to change that by posting a range of abortion-related information for men, and by prodding clinics to involve the male partners of their patients in a more active way.

The site, which went online earlier this month, was created by Claire Keyes, director of Allegheny Reproductive Health Center in East Liberty, and Dr. Arthur Shostak, professor emeritus of sociology at Drexel University in Philadelphia.

He has been arguing that abortion is also a man's issue since 1984, when Praeger published his book "Men and Abortion: Lessons, Losses, and Love," based on the experiences of 1,000 men in the waiting rooms of 32 clinics in 18 states. Ms. Keyes has long advocated that abortion providers include men in their counseling, and has done so at Allegheny Reproductive Health Center.

The Internet has lots of postings about men and abortion, although many come from an anti-abortion point of view. Priests for Life, for example, argues that men are too involved in abortion already, pressuring their girlfriends to end their pregnancies so they can keep having sex without the burden of a child that results. And the conservative Christian group Focus on the Family profiles several men who, it says, are "scarred for life" by regret over their partner's abortion.

Ms. Keyes and Dr. Shostak wouldn't disagree that men are sometimes the forgotten mourners in abortion. That realization, and their belief that men have a key role to play in preventing future unwanted pregnancies, lead them to team up for several joint presentations for the two abortion professional associations -- the National Abortion Federation and the National Coalition of Abortion Providers -- showing clinics how they can provide more support to men.

The Web site, they say, lets them take their advocacy to the next level. Ms. Keyes said the site had 700 visitors in its first two weeks.

"Men have been ignored in this process for too long," said Ms. Keyes. "They didn't know what was happening to their partner, how to help her, what to expect. They were not being talked to their feelings, about birth control, or even about how the abortion was going to be done."

According to Dr. Shostak, men need to be more involved in abortion for two essential reasons.

"One, women deserve it," he said. "They're the ones who have to face the challenge of deciding on an abortion, having the abortion, living after an abortion. They deserve men who are more knowledgeable, who have more emotional integrity and are more reliable."

The other reason, he said: "Men need to understand that manhood includes confrontation with one's own challenged emotions.

"Abortion for a man ought not to be a pass," he said. "It should be a thorough involvement. That way, men will begin to take more responsibility for contraception. Guys will drift into a relationship silently assuming that the woman is the only one who runs the risk of pregnancy so she must be taking care of it. That's just grievously unfair."

In a 2004 article in Psychology Today, Michael Y. Simon, a California-based psychotherapist who counsels men after abortion, says that men who deny their feelings about the experience can wind up troubled, but most don't seek help.

"Men get the message that the best thing they can do in the situation is to withdraw," Simon said in the article, "forcing deeper or more traumatic feelings to be kept unconscious."

The new Web site addresses some of men's emotional concerns: I feel guilty. Will we break up? What if she blames me? I wanted this baby, and so forth. There's also a page for men to share their stories, but because the site is so new it only contains three entries so far. All are from men who wrote their comments in a journal in the waiting room of Allegheny Reproductive.

In addition, the site offers answers to frequently asked questions: How do I find a quality provider? What kind of abortion can my partner choose? Can I be present during the procedure? Will she have any pain? How will I know if she's OK? How can I help her afterward?

"Clinics could be helping 600,000 men a year gain new knowledge, and also offer them the chance to share their feelings," Dr. Shostak said. "We're trying to move that along with the Web site. By highlighting the minority of progressive clinics that face this issue, we're trying to put pressure on the majority to catch up and get on the bandwagon."

The site highlights "approved" independent clinics that involve men as an active part of the abortion process. Seven are listed so far -- two in Pennsylvania, four in Texas and one in Baltimore -- and all have identified themselves as involving men. Ms. Keyes expects to add more names as word of the site gets out. She said that no nationwide providers such as Planned Parenthood have asked to be included yet.