Meet the Man Mobilizing Other Men to Join Fight for Abortion Rights in Florida

After hearing stories from his grandmother about her struggles studying and working in the male-dominated biology and ecology field, Aaron Bos-Lun wanted to ensure women's rights were only expanded in the future.

It was during his sophomore year in high school, watching then-president George W. Bush's stance against gay marriage, that Bos-Lun was propelled into political activism.

"Baked into my fundamental sense of how to do activism and politics was the idea that government should not be using power to put people down," he tells New Times.

Fast forward to 2019, when Bos-Lun received an email about the expansion of Men4Choice, a group founded by political organizers Oren Jacobson and Ben Head that helps activate, educate, and mobilize men as partners and allies to advocate for abortion rights.

"At that point, I worked in progressive politics. I'd been a public school teacher. I'd been involved in LGBTQ rights, racial justice, public education, and unions, " Bos-Lun says. "Realizing that I advocated for a lot of causes, it kind of struck me that as much as I felt like I was doing a pretty good job advocating for a broader vision of a better society, I couldn't remember the last time I'd said a word about this."

Bos-Lun quickly realized that if he was not speaking out in support of abortion access, then it was likely many men weren't doing so either. He says he immediately applied to join Men4Choice, as it was in line with the progressive values his grandma taught him all those years ago, as well as his experience as a gay man fighting for LGBTQ freedom.

Now, nearly five years later, as deputy executive director, Bos-Lun is helping to educate and mobilize male allies in South Florida ahead of the upcoming November general election when voters will have the opportunity to cement abortion rights in the Florida Constitution and invalidate the current six-week abortion ban.

"Men need to see examples of other men who are speaking out on this," he says. "You need to have guys when they're in the locker rooms, when they're at the bar, when they're at work, feel comfortable setting a different example among their peers and ultimately changing the tides, where the idea is unacceptable a generation or two from now that anyone would even try to control anybody's body through legislation."

Getting Men Off the Sidelines

For years, the abortion rights debate has been portrayed as having pro-choice women on one side with anti-abortion men and women on the other. Videos and photos of rallies often capture women speaking up in favor of abortion rights and men leading the way for those trying to crack down on abortion access.

But, according to Bos-Lun, there is a massive group of untapped supporters for the pro-choice coalition who are ready to engage but may believe it is not their fight: more than 60 million men across this country. 

A new Gallup poll revealed a record share of voters is pro-choice — 32 percent of voters say they would only vote for candidates who share their views on abortion. Polling has shown that Americans have ramped up their support for abortion rights since the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022.

"Time and time again, people are so mystified at the fact that places like Kansas or Ohio pass these referenda and everyone's like, 'How can that happen? It's such a closely divided issue.' It really isn't. If you look at just the pro-choice women against the anti-choice men and women, it is a 50-50 issue, but there's a whole other half to our coalition."

Men4Choice, which launched in Illinois in 2015, works to mobilize pro-choice men to support the long-time leaders of the movement — organizations like Planned Parenthood and elected officials — through education, communications, and electoral campaigns.

"We're not the leaders of the movement, but we become leaders among our peers to get them off the sidelines and into the fight," Bos-Lun tells New Times. "Typically, guys think, Well, this isn't my issue. This is a woman's issue. It's not right for me to speak about, which is the right instinct, except that leads you to be totally disengaged."

At the core of the organization's model is its youth fellowship, which is a ten-week program for 18 to 28-year-old men who spend half of the ten weeks learning about the issue, community organizing, and how to resonate with other men. During the other half, they run three educational programs to meet with their peers and talk about the current state of the abortion issue.

"For most guys, that hour spent together for most of them is an hour more than they've spent their entire lives thinking about the issue," Bos-Lun explains. "For all of them, it's the only time they've been in a group of guys talking about the issue, which is important because guys need to have that initial space to admit they haven't really done anything on this issue."
Through these peer-to-peer discussions, the organization seeks to build a network and a base of men to help support their pro-choice partners.

Bos-Lun, 35, reiterates that it is not about training a generation of men "to think it is their duty to go to the women's march and grab the megaphone."

"It's about showing up in the ways that you can be there as a support. You're there as an ally," Bos-Lun tells New Times. "I can't think of any other issue where half of the people who hold that position don't show up to things, don't donate, don't speak out."

Building Momentum

With the future of abortion rights in question across the country, Men4Choice has been expanding its presence in states like Florida and Georgia, where strict anti-abortion laws are in place, as well as North Carolina, where lawmakers in 2023 reduced the state's cutoff time for abortions from 20 weeks to 12 weeks gestation.

In Florida, Men4Choice worked to get Amendment 4 (the measure to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution) on the general election ballot. Last fall, Men4Choice collected more than 1,000 petitions in support of the initiative at the final University of Miami home football game.

"We had 45 guys show who collected petitions just by going up to people and saying, 'Do you realize what the government is doing? You need to sign this if you believe this is wrong,'" Bos-Lun says.

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The organization has also hosted a series of events with Vice President Kamala Harris' husband, Doug Emhoff, to get more men involved in advocating for abortion access. He told NBC News that men need to understand that abortion access is a family issue not only affecting women.

How do you get men to participate in a contentious debate that is widely framed as a women's issue?

According to Bos-Lun, it's critical to emphasize that the fight centers on freedom and how the dominoes might fall if the government has the ability to control people's most intimate decisions about their bodies. "What comes next?" he asks. "Is it contraception? Is it LGBTQ freedom?"

Bos-Lun insists the push to curtail abortion access "isn't about life."

"If it were about life, then people who are so opposed to abortion would be extremely concerned with prenatal health and the high rates of maternal mortality, especially for Black women, the conditions of public schools, and universal pre-kindergarten. They are concerned about none of these things," he adds. "It's not about life. It's about freedom, power, and control."

Meanwhile, a recent Fox News poll of more than 1,075 Florida voters found 69 percent would vote in favor of Amendment 4 (abortion rights).