An odd yet true tale. Whose rights should triumph?
Whether he’s violated her rights or not, I think we can all agree that he’s what the courts tend to refer to as a “First-Class Dick”.
Also - you had sex resulting in pregnancy outside of marriage, but abortion upsets you? Some moral consistency would be nice.
One’s right to privacy does not extend to preventing others from telling people things you’d rather not be revealed. You have no particular right to force anyone to keep a secret. The fact that he made a point of telling a lot of people (via billboard) doesn’t really change anything.
I’m a little less clear on “harassment” but my understanding is that you are guilty of harassment only if you are directly harassing the person. If he was doing things like calling her repeatedly on the phone, mailing her letters, etc. that would constitute harassment. The billboard might constitute harassment if it can be shown that the billboard was directed at her personally (rather than an expression of outrage to the general public), and was deliberately placed where she would have to see it every day, etc. Even then it’s a stretch IMO.
My opinion is that morally the guy is way wrong, but legally he ought to be in the clear. If, however, the woman never even had an abortion, that would constitute libel. But as she didn’t sue for libel, I assume she did, in fact, have an abortion.
Hmmm. I’m tempted to nominate him for a special Darwin Award. I’d argue that he’s effectively removed himself from the gene pool, because no woman is ever going to fuck him again.
This guy is such a **** that he should just fuck himself and have inbred children after nine months of constipation.
I’m not sure why this would be morally inconsistent. Being all for hot sex outside of marriage, in theory at least, doesn’t preclude being opposed to abortions. Hey! I’ve never been married, and I wouldn’t like it if a temporary partner wanted to abort a fetus I’d have accidentally fathered.
And even though the wide majority of opponents to abortion would be believers and think that sex outside of marriage is wrong too, abortion would still be for them a worst sin/crime than adultery.
Not even close IMO. Free speech trumps just about all.
I don’t know. An abortion is still a perfectly legal, if controversial surgical procedure. The courts might view it as Person A publishing that Person B had breast augmentation. Whether factual or not, the courts might not view it as deliberate defamation of character.
As for the ex-boyfriend, I have absolutely no sympathy for him. Men do have a window of time where they have power over whether an abortion will ever be a possibility. They can wear a condom, get a vasectomy, or not have sex.
Yah, that’s nothing like the morality involved in killing his unborn child. What a bastard for wanting to be a father to him or her. Had it been the other way there would have been a trial.
Aside from that, marriage is a social construct and has nothing to do with morality for those who do not believe in deities. The billboard was a temporary reminder of what I suspect is a deed she will carry to her grave.
Nah. He will be a father-hero to anti-abortion women for standing up for “his child”. And plenty of such women will want children and be entirely happy with the idea that if they get pregnant to him, he won’t want to abort.
He’s not going to get casual sex too easily, but I’d say he is well in the running to have plenty of children.
Considering that he’s a jerk, it was inside her body and isn’t a “child” at that point, not much of a moral dilemma.
Say what? If anything it has more moral importance for unbelievers, since they’ll be basing their behavior on actual morality, real actions, and actual consequences instead of the empty, baseless dictates of some imaginary sky-thug.
Probably with a sigh of “thank goodness I didn’t end up carrying that bastard’s brat to term.”
I agree with this. This is a textbook example of a “dick move,” but legally I don’t think he did anything wrong. Especially since the girlfriend’s name is no where on the actual billboard:
I was going to ask if he put her name or any identifying details about her on the billboard (apart from his own information).
If he put his own name, image and details on there, but didn’t specifically name her or put her picture on there, as distasteful as I find the whole thing I can’t say her specific right to privacy has been breached.
Had he put an image or any further identifying information about her on the board, I’d be more inclined to support an order forcing it to be taken down.
That billboard is something else
It’s an an interesting legal question – if I’m reading this right, he does not explicitly claim she had an abortion. The explicit claim is “She killed our baby”.
I can’t help but think that is actionable as defamation. I don’t know how clear the law has been about distinguishing between fetuses and babies, and whether a suit is successful might end up resting on this.
Now, having seen the billboard, I don’t think the woman has any real case. Neither she or he are identified by name. Presumably the only way she knows it’s him is by recognizing his picture.
Guy’s an asshole, but based on the information i’ve seen, he shouldn’t be prevented from being an asshole on a 40-foot billboard.
So only people who know that he was sleeping with her will be able to identify her. If they were publically in a relationship, that probably means pretty much everyone in her personal, and quite possibly in her public, life.
Not necessarily. They may not know whether he was involved in any other relationships besides her. Also, I know a lot of women through work, and though I know they have husbands or boyfriends, I wouldn’t recognize them by sight. I hear stories about them, but I rarely meet them.
Big things affect people in big ways. It’s hard to reconcile. He violated her privacy, true. She did something he considers awful and irredeemable and so must go tell it on the mountain. It’s much the same as a woman telling of being belittled horribly day in and day during a relationship by some guy she’s no longer seeing in a very public way, like say a book. My option would be to let dirty laundry stay in the closet, or at least take steps to make things more anonymous when possible. But that’s not the world we live in. Good or bad, right or wrong. Everything comes out sooner or later.