There is no such thing as a man having “some” say over whether a woman gets an abortion. He either gets no say or all the say. If you want to give a man to the ability to force a woman to have a baby against her will, then you’re giving him all the say, not “some” say, and really, what kind of sick fuck would really WANT to do that to a woman he allegedly cares about. What a heartwarming story for the child as well.
No, of course the man doesn’t deserve to be able to force the woman to carry a pregnancy against her will (and that’s what you’re calling for, not “having some say.” Call it what it is).
I deeply want to be able to shit a Corvette out of my ass, but through a problem of biology, I can’t. Therefore somebody else should be forced to give me a Corvette.
Where did you ever get the bizarre idea that wanting something entitles you to force someone else to give it to you.
No she doesn’t. If she has your child, she can’t deny you visitation. And you can’t lose a “future child.” If she terminates the pregnancy, then there never was a child, period. You’ve been deprived of nothing.
As to the alleged “double standard,” as has already been said, the biology isn’t fair.
By the way, this proposed “right” (which is really an attempt to impinge on some else’s rights in an incredibly invasive and personal way) would be impossible to enforce from a practical standpoint. All the woman has to do is deny you’re the father. How are you going to prove otherwise?
This isn’t obvious. In the most extreme cases, the biological father wouldn’t have any more actual responsibility in the birth than you and me. Besides, if the biological father has an obligation to care for the baby regardless of the circumstances, shouldn’t the mother have to care for it also regardless of the circumstances? For instance, shouldn’t she have to pay child support even if she put it up for adoption?
IOW, since the mother is allowed to carry a pregnancy to term and then can be not held to any obligation wrt the child, shouldn’t it be true for the father too, at least in cases when it has been shown that this pregnancy was a ploy pulled out by the mother?
I’m going to be coldhearted here. While I understand that a man can grieve for an aborted/miscarried child, I would suggest that he GET OVER IT after a while. There are many, many, MANY women who would love to find a guy and have babies with him. He should find a woman who wants to be his partner and have his child(ren). In most cases, they’ll be able to have kids together.
Or he can find a woman who already has kids, and be a dad that way. Or become a Big Brother. Or adopt a child. Single guys can do that now, right?
He has no right to insist that any woman carry a child to term. He has options, lots of options, if he wants kids. He just doesn’t have the option of having THAT particular baby.
Getting a woman pregnant does not give you an “opportunity” that can be “stripped” from you. Her terminating the pregnancy takes nothing away from you. Wanting something that’s in her body does not give you property rights over it.
The bottom line is that if you really are ‘pro choice’ then the question was already answered before it was asked. The entire premise of a pro choice philosophy is that a woman, and only a woman, has the right to decide if she will carry her pregnancy to term, not a church, not a government, and not even her partner. And that until the time of sentience (which can probably never be pinpointed exactly but is considered by many who know more than me about fetal development to be somewhere around 25 weeks) it is not ‘aborting a child’ it is ‘aborting a potential child’. Losing that potential , I grant you, is possibly a profound loss if your wish was to have one. I am not downplaying your feelings, but I think you should keep that in perspective and not feel like you would be losing a child who already exists. At earlier stages the fetus has the same rights as a tumor growing in the mothers body and you have the same rights to tell her she needs to keep the tumor. e.g. you don’t have any right to do so. That said, most reasonable women would take the fathers wishes very seriously when faced with this dilemma. I am sorry for the situation. I do not agree that you should have the right to prevent her from following her wish to terminate the pregnancy if that is what she decides. You certainly do have the right to make your strong feelings known to her, look for a way to offer her a plan that you believe you both could make things work, and failing all of that you always have the right to find another woman who wants to have children. Look at it from the inverse perspective: do you think you or anyone else should ever have the right to force a woman to have an abortion if her wish is to carry the pregnancy to term?
How do you show that the pregnancy was a ploy pulled out by the mother?
I feel a little sensitive about this because I am the mother accused of pulling out a ploy. My pregnancy was unintended by both of us. We were not a forever prospect and both knew it; there was no break-up because there was no real emotional involvement. We’d fallen out of contact for a month before I discovered I was pregnant. We had both taken precautions against it happening - his precaution broke, and I unintentionally took the wrong dose of mine. He asked me to terminate but I felt unable to deal with the emotional consequences of an abortion and believed that having the child would be the option I felt most able to live with. I also felt that I could be a good parent and offer a good life to a child even though the circumstances weren’t ideal, and I was prepared to take responsibility, work hard, and make sure the child always came first. Had I thought I wasn’t up to the job I’d have terminated rather than have a child who I couldn’t care for properly, but “less than ideal” doesn’t equal “better off not existing” to me.
I felt horribly conflicted and guilty that I wasn’t able to take his opinion or desires into account but there was no way to compromise… there’s simply no middle ground between “aborting this fetus is the only option I can consider because I have never wanted to be a father and cannot abide the thought of having a biological child, even if I am never involved in it’s life” and “I cannot comprehend aborting this fetus without being emotionally affected by it, and I feel it would torment me the rest of my life; though I am pro-choice, abortion is not the choice that I feel I can live with here and now”. I put myself first, and struggled with that for a long time. I’ve made my peace with it now - who was he to me, that I should owe him more than I owed myself? (does that sentence make sense?).
Anyway, he now accuses me of getting pregnant deliberately and believes that I did not take the precautions at all. His proof is her existence - if I took the morning after pill then how did I get pregnant? if I didn’t want a baby then why didn’t I abort it? I did get pregnant and I did not abort it, therefore I wanted the child all along and tricked him to get it.
How can I counter that? I didn’t have the foresight to make sure I had witnesses present when I took my pill that day. No matter what I say he goes believing that he was duped. Not only does this make him the victim and me the villan but it also his abandonment of his child less reprehensible in his own mind and absolves him of taking any responsibility for the role he played in her creation.
Each time this topic comes up someone will mention a woman who tricked a man into impregnating her and now the poor guy’s facing 18 years of child support payments. While those women certainly do exist (hell, possibly even in large numbers… I’ve certainly met enough women with a casual attitude towards who fathers their children and how those children will be supported), there are also some of us who didn’t want to be pregnant but it happened anyway and we can never, ever do anything to prove that we didn’t plan for this to happen.
With rights come responsibility. Woman’s rights, woman’s responsibility. Don’t want to get knocked up? Don’t.
I don’t get this “the guy should have used a condom.” Nope. Woman’s body, woman’s rights, woman’s responsibility.
Men should have the right whether they want to be parents, too. They should get at least one trimester to decide, after they’ve been informed they could be a parent, to say yes or no. At least.
Women get the entire pregnancy plus post-birth adoption time and last chance drop-off time to decide. Men should get that.
Society wants to make the decision to leave it up to women but make a man pay. That’s wrong. If society wants to say women have the rights and the choice, then society needs to buck up and pay, not individual men. Is that a welfare state? I suppose, but it’s what society is buying into.
Otherwise, society has to make the really un-PC choice of telling women they aren’t going to be supported. We’re not going to do that, so society needs to pay up. Tax raise. But hey, we can pay big business two trillion, so I’m sure we can afford baby makers.
As has been already pointed out upthread (but apparently not carefully read), a mother cannot legally put her baby up for adoption if the father doesn’t want her to.
If a woman has a baby and decides she doesn’t want to keep it, the father is entitled to claim custody. And yes, in such a case the woman will be legally on the hook for child support for the next 18 years, as is fair.
The only right that a woman has that a man does not when it comes to reproduction is the right to choose an abortion, for any reason, in the early stages of pregnancy. After that, her access to abortion is limited by legal restrictions. And after the baby is born, her legal rights and obligations are exactly the same as the father’s.
Since the OP is posting from Canada, it’s worth pointing out that this issue has already arisen in Canada and been rejected by the Supreme Court, in Tremblay v. Daigle (1989). The lower courts had granted the man an injunction, prohibiting the woman from having an abortion. The SCC set it aside, ruling that the man did not have the right to veto the woman’s decision to have an abortion.
This is also the case under Canadian law. In fact, based on some experience in this area, I would say that Canadian law is even more protective of the father’s rights with respect to adoption than is the case in the United States.
Canadian law on this point is different than American law. There are no legal restrictions on a women’s right to seek an abortion, at any time in her pregnancy.
There has yet to be a case where a woman was allowed to carry frozen embryos against her husband’s/sperm donor’s wishes. Davis v. Davis decided the divorced wife could have “custody” of the embryos, but was overturned on appeal. The court decided the man shouldn’t be “forced” into fatherhood, and that his ex-wife should find another way to have a family if she so choosed.
Dan: Well, I want another baby. Shouldn’t I have a say in having another baby?
Roseanne: You got a uterus?
OK, I’m jumping in here late, but, through Safe Haven legislation, a mother can abandon a child at a specified location without regards to the biological father, on a no-questions-asked basis.
It has often been stated in threads of this nature that a child has a right to support from it’s biological father, but, as illustrated above, it is only recognized as a right when the mother wants financial assistance from the biological father.
To further illustrate the point, unmarried mothers are not required to name the biological father at the time of birth. If the mother wishes, she can choose to raise the child herself. The state is not concerned if the child is raised fatherless, nor is there any concern for the misnamed “right” to support.
Only when an unmarried mother requests so, does the state step in and enforce the so-called “right”.
That’s life, it’s not your body. The only right regarding abortion I think a man should be able to have is to sever his legal obligation if the woman chooses to keep the child. Otherwise your biology is subordinate to this process, deal with it.
If I were the joke american indian, my 3 kids would be named Ortho-Novum didnt work, Ortho novum didnt work, rubber broke, and my tubal ligation WHAT?!:eek:.
Short of ripping out the womb, any form of birth control can fail even when used properly.
And that was 3 times in 35 years of sexual activity.
Forget years ago – didn’t this very same topic come up a few months ago in GD? Not that any great strides were made, IIRC.
There will always be a way to abort. There always has been (though often at great risk to the mother’s life), whether it’s an old fashioned punch in the stomach, a secret tea recommended by your aunt, or taking everything in the medicine cabinet that says ‘Not for expectant mothers.’ Add to that the fact that an estimated 30+ percent of all pregnancies end in (uninduced) miscarriage, and you’ll not only be barring your ex from having a legal abortion, you’ll likely be monitoring her every move (e.g. Would you let her get drunk? Smoke? Go skydiving?), whatever she puts in her mouth and the contents of her toilet.