Juno misrepresents the reality of abortion in America, and of abortion clinics in particular. While there is much about Juno as a witty and promising young person to admire; there is much about Juno as a film to resent and regret.

Three challenges are at the heart of the men and abortion matter. First, what does it mean to be a man? Second, what does it mean to be a sexually active man? And third, what does it mean to accompany your sex partner or any female who asks to an abortion clinic?

Art Shostak, Ph.D., is a Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Drexel University.

Over 600,000 males annually find themselves in the waiting rooms of the nation's nearly 400 abortion clinics (about half of all abortion-seeking women are generally accompanied by a man, as the regulations require assistance on leaving after the procedure). I have been there, first in the late 1970s as a perspiring young single man accompanying my nervous lover, and ever since as an applied sociologist drawn to find out more about the guys I sat among for three hours (and thereby, more about myself).

After my own abortion involvement, I helped create the first-ever national survey of males in abortion clinic waiting rooms (an exploratory, rather than a random and scientific study) and co-authored the still only academic book on the subject - Men and Abortion: Lessons, Losses, and Love (1984). In the 22 years since its publication - thanks to indispensable help from Claire Keyes, director of the Allegheny Reproductive Health Clinic in Pittsburgh, and an outstanding friend of waiting room men - I have conducted three more survey waves and I now have answers and longitudinal data from over 3,000 males in scores of clinics coast-to-coast.