Should the father of the baby/clumps of cells in question have any say in abortions? Because when the baby is born and the parents split up, the court definitely feels the father has a say when it comes time to pay that child support.
I’m pretty sure the concensus will be:
Man wants child to be born, woman doesn’t - child aborted.
Man doesn’t want child to be born, woman does - child born, man pays support.
I’ll check back later to see how close I am.
Generally, the father should be informed about the pregnancy, and the reasons should be examined before getting an abortion.
Practically, it’s quite easy for a woman or girl to not tell the father she’s pregnant in the first place - if she delivers the baby and gives it up to adoption, the father doesn’t get any say, either. Not fair, I know. But then, neither is it fair to the many mothers who are left with a baby after the father walks out in the first year (or 3 months before delivery) because he doesn’t want to accept responsibility.
As for the special case of abortion: An abortion shouldn’t be decided lightly, but for serious reasons. Other alternatives like adoption should be considered. But when all is said and done, I still support the right of the mother to make the decision alone. It’s her body. If the Church or her own parents or whoever else has no right to make the decision for her, why should the father get a special veto option?
It may not be always fair, but in the majority of cases, I think that the prospective fathers wouldn’t really want to take the child and care for it completly on their own for the next 18 years. And that leaves out the cases where the mother’s health is threatened by the pregnancy.
Under ideal circumstances, the mother and father should sit down and discuss the issue and come to a consensus. So, yes, the father should be involved in the decision, which would ultimately be the mother’s.
But, I’m not naive enough to think that this ideal happens very often.
I hear this argument frequently in abortion threads. While it sounds good on the surface, the numbers seem to indicate that it’s not a practical solution. There are millions of abortions per year, but the number of people seeking to adopt has remained stable:
There are already hundreds of thousands of children waiting to be adopted. A child’s odds of being adopted go down as they age and people who adopt tend to want a healthy white baby. (Children of color are disporportionately represented in the system.)
If we conceed that abortion should be legal/moral acceptable… Then if we are to allow abortions for a woman, then the man should have some degree of say in it. Sure, its not the man’s body, but if he is aware of the pregnancy, he (generally) has a non-insignificant amount of emotional, financial, and other such investments that deserver consideration. If both agree on whether or not she should have the child, then there’s no issue. However, if they disagree, there should be an equitable way of dealing with the issue. If the woman wants the child, and he doesn’t, he should be able to have the “father’s abortion” and sign away both his responsibilities (child support, etc.) and his privileges (any visitation, or other such legal rights). Similarly, I’d suppose a “mother’s abortion” in which she has the child, but similarly signs away her responsibilities and rights. Of course, that doesn’t resolve the part about her having to carry the child to full term to “abort” it, as that doesn’t make the mother’s version equitable to the father’s version…
Either way, I find it difficult to grasp the concept that a couple would copulate, and yet one wouldn’t have the respect for the other to take his/her opinion/feelings/desires into account on a matter as serious as abortion.
Really? I think it happens all the time.
Ultimately, the decision whether or not to carry to term *must * be the woman’s. But for the record, I believe that whether or not to carry to term and whether or not to (and how to) raise a child are separate decisions. If I have the right to opt out of motherhood, men should have the right to opt out of fatherhood.
This used to be my position*, but I’ve now come to believe that the father should have an “opt-out” period during the early months of pregnancy - say, until the fourth month. If he decides well before viability that he is not willing to be a father, he should go to court with the mother and get some sort of documented proof that he’s irrevocably giving up his paternal rights and responsibilities. This gives the mother time to decide whether to bear the child and keep it, being solely responsible, seek adoption or abortion. If he doesn’t do so, he’s on the hook just as much as she is. On preview, I also agree with **Blaster Master **that a “mother’s abortion” where she could agree to bear the child, but have no further financial or parental responsibility for it, could be a good idea. Again, it would have to be done within a specific time frame that allows the other person to make his or her decision with the full knowledge that he or she will be a partnerless parent.
I think, perversely, this could *increase *child support payment and active fathers. If a man knows very clearly that he had an out and didn’t take it, then he’s agreed to be a parent of his own free will. People tend to do things they’ve chosen to do better than those things they feel have been thrust upon them unwillingly.
Until such time as this sort of thing happens, however, I do have to agree that it’s still the mother’s ultimate decision.
*…and I’ve argued it pretty vehemently on the Dope. So chalk me up as one of those who can answer in the affirmative to “Do people ever actually change their minds because of an argument on a message board?”
How are we to determine whether a man who claims to be the father is really the father? What if a woman denies that the guy is the father? Should any guy be able to stop any abortion just by claiming he’s the father? Any suggestion that a guy should be able to make reproductive decisions for other people is nuts to begin with, when the criteria for that kind of intereference is predicated on nothing more than an unproveable assertion, it borders on depraved. The answer to the OP is, no, of course not, it’s ludicrous to suggest that man should be given any ownership or authority over a woman’s body just because he claims to have had sex with her.
As to whether we should legalize the abndonment of children by their fathers, the man makes his decision when he puts his sperm in another person’s body. Once the woman is pregnant, it’s her body and that’s the end of it. If it doesn’t seem equitable, that’s just a function of biology. A man is responsible for his own sperm. He knows from the get-go that pregnancy is a possible result of sex, that any decision about whether to carry or terminate that pregnancy will not belong to him, and that he will ultimately be responsible for any offspring which are produced by said pregnancy. A man does not have a right to procreate without responsibility, nor does he have a right to control another person’s body.
How is this different from claiming that a woman should be denied an abortion because she knew that pregnancy is a risk of sexual intercourse?
“You play you pay” has to apply to everyone, or no one.
That sounds like a good solution to me. Of course there would have to be provisions for men who aren’t told that they got a woman pregnant before that 4 month time.
Good grief, it’s stuff like this that makes me so glad I’m gay. I hate to think how many kids I could possibly have by now…::shudder::
The response is that there are no grounds on which to deny a woman abortion since there is no person. If you admit that the possible father has some authority over the procedure, then you admit to the personhood of the fetus, which introduces legitimate grounds to oppose its abortion.
Then, to extend DianaG’s position, the father should be able to file his intention to not care for the child.
That’s simply not true. Autonomy over my own person is the grounds on which I will not be denied an abortion.
And I don’t believe that anyone here (so far) has asserted that a man should be able to prevent a woman from aborting, so please attempt to stick to the subject at hand instead of turning this into yet another tiresome “is a fetus a person” debate.
I’m just pointing out that **Dio ** is making an argument for parenthood being an assumed responsibility of intercourse on the **male’s ** part, but not on the woman’s. That’s inconsistent and frankly, sexist.
Prenatal paternity testing is possible and very reliable. If the man doubts, he should pay for a test. A woman, in turn, should be compelled to submit to such a test.
I agree with DianaG’s response to the rest of your argument. Furthermore, I think there is clear medical data which has shown that sex is useful for physical, mental and immunogical health. Since there are other benefits, and since we now have the technology to completely separate procreation from sex, I think we should do so unless a couple makes an active decision to do otherwise - to intentionally conceive a child through sexual intercourse. (Or, of course, to keep a “surprise” baby if that’s what they wish.)
I don’t agree. There is no person, so an abortion is allowable. That doesn’t mean that there won’t be a person in a few months. I can allow for a man (or woman) to preclude themselves the responsibility of caring for the person that will be without attributing personhood to the nonsentient, unfeeling clump of cells it is now. Why is that inconsistent? Someday, it will be possible to clone you from your fingernail. Does that mean your fingernail is a person now? Of course not.
The man’s authority ends where the woman’s body begins. The woman’s authority extends into pregnancy because (it seems this can’t be stated often enough) IT’S HER BODY. The points of no return, the times at which final decisions must be made, come at different times for men and women because that’s the way the biology works.
Baloney. Parenthood is an assumed responsibility for the woman is she chooses to keep the pregnancy. There’s nothing sexist about it unless you think that the biolgy itself is sexist. Trying to impose an artificial “equality” on a bilogical process which has none is just inane, pinheaded, PC nonsense.
How so?
Here we agree. Rereading the OP, I see I didn’t limit myself to answering the question, I took it a step further. Rather than simply answering “Abortions: should the father have a say in it?” (My answer: “no”), I took it to “How should we deal with the biological inequity presented in determining parental responsibility?”, as did most of the other posters. I apologize for jumping the gun.
Prenatal DNA testing cannot be done until the second trimester, so no, this is not a solution. Also it would be an invasion of the woman’s privacy (you can’t compel a person to submit to a DNA test against their will) so this solution fails on two counts.