Up front allow me to say that I am a clear supporter of abortion rights under any and all circumstances. I was raised in a strongly feminist household and support equal rights for women and do not believe they have been achieved yet.

And yet I was deeply troubled by the language Linda used in this article in its absolutism about it being only the women's choice. I understand that it is the woman's body and mind that deals with the physical and emotional effects of carrying a child to term, however as I a potential father I haev the feeling that I too should be able to be included in the decision making process.

I see no clear solution to this, I would never force a woman to have an abortion, or to carry a baby to term for that matter, but the fact is that a woman deciding to have my child or not has far reaching implications for my life, financially, emotionally and familially. Under those circumstances doesn't it seem like I (the father) should be involved.

I understand that every time I sleep with a woman I am taking that risk and yes I am responsible for my actions, however why does the women get the ONLY say-so in this extremely delicate and important decision in both of our lives?

On the XX Factor blog they have been having a conversation over the last week about father's rights to children in a divorce, and then in this article there is no mention of a father's rights for better or worse in cases of abortion. Its hypocritical.

Again I have no clear-cut or even vague solution to offer for this problem, however I think we should admit that there are problems with oversimplifying the question as "a woman's right to choose" and take a real and nuanced look at this difficult and emotionally-charged matter.

~Andrew

Are you saying that, because I supplied the sperm, I can compel you (if a woman) to carry a pregnancy to term?

Philadelphia Steve:

Are you saying that, because I supplied the sperm, I can compel you (if a woman) to carry a pregnancy to term?

Generally, "father's rights" come up in two cases:

1. The duty of the woman to include the man in the decision-making. That is, she can't just go off and have an abortion on her own without informing the man and allowing what might be termed a 'counter-offer'.

2. The limitation of the woman's ability to decide the man's financial future. Women have an 'out' (actually, more than one) if they choose to not take financial responsibility. But men have no such out - there's no way for a man to say "if you want to have the child, you're on your own".

Philadelphia Steve, if you had actually read what I had written you would not have asked that question.

I specifically said, "I would never force a woman to have an abortion, or to carry a baby to term for that matter"

~Andrew

This is nonsense.

Before he unzips his pants, every man should have enough sense to consider the following:

"If I do this chick, and she turns up pregnant, what then?"

• if she decides to carry it, I could be on the hook financially. Am I interested in this?
• if she decides to abort it, I can try to talk her out of it. if we take a vote and it is a one-to-one tie, who gets the tie-breaker, me or her?

This is the nature of the deal. So get over it. If you don't want to be financially responsible, bag that bad boy. If you want to raise a baby with her, ask her to marry you. But don't boink and then whine about the result.

What you're talking about here is interpersonal ethics, and from that standpoint you are perfectly correct. A potential father should, ideally, be consulted about the decision to abort and be allowed to share their input.

The territory that this discussion should not enter is legal requirement. If a husband is legally required to sign off on his wife's pending abortion, then that creates a situation in which a husband can indeed legally force his wife to carry a child to term. It seems we agree that this would be a clear violation of the woman's rights.

So why can't democrats include some shout-out to the ethical needs of husbands? Because everything that a political party says and does is (and should be, for clarity's sake) undertaken with the effect of creating legislation and government policy - law. In the language of washington, a politician who starts talking about the moral and ethical rights of husbands, however correct that may be in and of themselves, is inevetably pursuing a legal platform to allow husbands to have greater legal control over their wive's pregnancies.

Thats how politics works - you have a legal goal and you shrould it in the moral talk that best supports that goal. In the case of the democrats, the legal goal is to keep a woman's choice to make her own decisions about her pregnancy inviolable. Thus, the language reflects that.

Ethical, non-legal concerns about a husband's input are perfectly valid and worth standing up for, but unless you want to pass some kind of law, they have no place in politics.

Oooh. This gets in that morally gray area. Should a man be allowed to force a woman to carry a child to term? Well, what's her reasoning for an abortion. If she's trying to protect her health, of course not. If she just doesn't want to support the child, but the man does.... I dunno. I'm not saying one way or the other. I'm just saying that I don't know. It is his child after all. For all this talk about it being just a clump of cells, it frankly is not just a clump of cells. Nor is it a human being.

Yes, a man realizes every time he unzips his pants that he might have to support a child. Is it wrong to say that every time a woman drops her panties she might have to carry a child? Is that fair or equal? Can it be fair or equal? Life isn't.

I'm with the first poster. I dunno how to do it, but the father should get some kind of legal say.

And if the father has "some kind of legal say", what exactly does that mean? That he can compel her to abort or carry to term against her will? There is unfortunately no compromise between the two options.

That's a nice summation. I had to read the Supreme Court decision on whether it was constitutional to require spousal notification and consent for an abortion. One of the justices had a nice discussion about this very issue, the gist of which was: *of course* a husband and wife should discuss this issue, and in a healthy relationship, they will. But the issue is whether the law should *mandate* such discussion, and whether it should give a man the right to prevent a woman from getting an abortion. For example, the justice was concerned about women who might fear telling their husband about their pregnancy or planned abortion because he is abusive and either the pregnancy itself or the abortion might cause him to assault her.

The question of fathers' rights in the context of abortions more broadly is similar. I completely agree, all else being equal, that a woman ought to discuss her pregnancy with the man who impregnated her, and both parties should be involved in the decision whether or not the pregnancy will be carried to term. But if he wants her to get an abortion and she doesn't want one, should he be legally permitted to abandon financial responsibility for the child once born? Or, if she wants an abortion but he does not want her to have one, should he be legally permitted to prevent her from having one and thus able to force her to carry the child to term?

"Some kind of Say" ?!

Argh. This is how conservatives win arguments through evasiveness. Sure, it sounds good. But as others here have pointed out, what this ultimately will mean is a law on the books. And there is only one kind of "say" that a person can have regarding an abortion: yes\no.

If you give the husband a legal "say" as well as the wife, then by the dictates of logic you give the husband the power to legally force his wife to give birth and not have the abortion.

If you aren't explicitly endorsing that outcome, then you can under no circumstances endorse some kind of vague "legal say" for a husband in this case.

I agree with you jwschmidt that this is not a conversation for politics, nor should it be a matter of law.

I'm talking about the framing of the question of the father's rights to abortion on a liberal e-zine women's blog which has been openly discussing father's rights in other ways over the past week or so.

Or really having the conversation at all. I've never heard a pundit, political or otherwise discuss this topic. In fact its rarely ever brought up in polite company, simply because of the extremity of emotions the subjects of abortion, women's rights, and sex bring up.

You see this even in two of the posters to my above comments, who clearly never took the time to read what I actually wrote and just immediately formed an opinion and decided I was wrong, even though I addressed and validated the points they brought up.

I'm not making a judgemnt or trying to decide right from wrong. I'm asking we have the conversation. Civilly and openly.

~Andrew

"should he be legally permitted to abandon financial responsibility for the child once born? Or, if she wants an abortion but he does not want her to have one, should he be legally permitted to prevent her from having one and thus able to force her to carry the child to term?"

The first question has nothing to do with pregnancy, but rather, fatherhood after a child has been born. The second question has everything to do with pregnancy, and for that reason, these two questions are very very different.

I think that legal financial responsibility can certainly be up for debate, but that has zilch to do with a woman's right to choose when she gives birth.

As an aside:

What about if the mother or father wants to put the child up for adoption but the other does not?

Is the parent who wants no parts of raising the child still legally responsible for the financial, emotional, well being of said child?

If both agreed to adoption neither would be, but if one chooses against adoption are both are responsible?

If this is so, once the child is born both parents have unilateral decision making powers, but before that only the mother?

Just some food for thought in this discussion, I am honestly not fully aware of how the law handles these types of adoption cases and I could be off base here, it was something one of my collegues asked me about.

~Andrew

AJ, the adoption quandary you bring up is actually quite a head-scratcher for me. It certainly bears thinking about.

Just to clarify my point vis-a-vis yours, I agree that fathers rights should be discussed more openly. And I agree that the thinkers, writers, and speakers of today should address that issue. I just don't want to hear politicians talking about it, for the reasons I mentioned.

There are some issues that are simply too delicate\complicated and\or dependent on the individual circumstances of each case to try and legislate for a country of 250 million, even though it is something that should be on the mind of everyone.

Excellent Point! Thank you for pointing that out, I should have been more clear about it myself in my first post. I want the topic given real time and thought, not the loused-up, sound bite consideration a political process would give it.

~AJ