Americans believe that they are entitled to certain freedoms. Among these are freedom of speech, religion, the press and, more recently, freedom of choice. The 1973 decision Roe v. Wade specifically legalized the right to choose to have an abortion. Although this case empowered women with freedom of choice, it simultaneously limited men's.
Presently men have no legal rights in abortion decisions. Even a married man cannot force his spouse to either abort or keep a fetus. For biological reasons, reserving the ultimate abortion choice to the woman is the most just thing to do, and thus a necessary legal statute. However, men deserve some auxiliary rights in this situation and, informally, women should strive to consider the rights of a father in this decision.
In 1976, the decision for the plaintiff in Planned Parenthood v. Danforth overturned a Missouri statute requiring the husband's consent before a woman could undergo an abortion. Still, just this summer, a Pennsylvania man initiated a court case which would have prevented his ex-girlfriend from aborting their baby. The judge ruled to allow the woman to have the abortion, but the resulting court battle had both pro-choice and fathers' rights activists up in arms about the current state of abortion laws.
Freedom of choice is only a conditional liberty. We retain it unless it impedes on another's freedom of choice. Such is the case with abortion rights. Ideally, men should have the right to decide the fate of a fetus, the existence of which is half due to them. But, unfortunately, men's and women's claims on choice in this case are sometimes mutually exclusive. And in the event of conflict, with little room for a compromised decision, there are compelling reasons why the tie must go to the woman.
The capacity for pregnancy is an inherent inequality between men and women. We can level the political, economic and social playing fields, but this biological imbalance simply isn't going away anytime soon. Women bear both the pain and the pleasure of pregnancy. Forcing a woman to undergo either pregnancy or an abortion is a veritable violation of the sixth amendment. The cliche "It's my body, it's my business" remains valid. In cases where the state does not have the right to determine whether or not a woman should have an abortion, then her partner should not either.
A man can never choose to be a father if the woman wishes to abort a pregnancy. However, if a woman can choose to undergo an abortion against a man's wishes, a man should be able to choose not to be a legal father. As the law stands, not only does a man have no say in the decision to abort a pregnancy, he also is faced with legal repercussions regardless of whether he wants the child or not. This contradiction crosses the line on the woman's abortion prerogative. If a man positively decides early into a pregnancy that he wants the child to be aborted, and a woman chooses to keep the child, then the man should have the option of legally detaching himself from said child. That is, after the child's birth, he should not be obligated to pay child support for a baby he did not want.The woman still has all the power to decide to keep the child, but it will also be a decision for single parenthood.
Yes, the man did help conceive the child.But this 50 percent contribution carries no weight when the woman decides to have an abortion. As soon as a man's part in conception garners him no decision-making power, it should also absolve him of responsibility. After making only half the contribution to conception, a woman gets the first decision alone as to whether she will be a parent. In comparison to this, it is a small concession to allow men the same choice.
Plainly, this idea would not work unconditionally. A case-by-case examination would be necessary to prevent men from abusing it. It should not absolve men from the consequences of their actions, but offer them some rights in determining their own future. Stigma in the case of unwanted pregnancy tends to direct the fault immediately at the sperm, not the egg. Currently, if a woman falsely relates to her partner that she is practicing birth control and then becomes pregnant, she faces no repercussions. Just as failure to disclose a sexually transmitted disease is unlawful, a woman's intentional misleading of a man on the subject of birth control should be illegal.
Allowing men to not be legal fathers is not the recommended recourse, as a two-parent household and income is the ideal situation for raising a child. But giving the woman complete agency in decisions that will affect both parties' future is unfair. Men have reasons equally valid to women's for not wanting a child, ones that only begin with financial constraints. Women may not want to have an abortion, but at least an option exists for them. Forcing a man into fatherhood is neither morally nor socially just.
Men have been taught for generations that there are consequences for accidentally impregnating a woman.Now, they need to understand the latest danger of pregnancy: their lack of power in abortion decisions. Sex education needs to go beyond medical risks to legal ones. Men's improved awareness of the dangers of unwanted pregnancy hopefully will result in increased contraceptive use. But beyond these preventive efforts, in the event of an unexpected pregnancy men need relief from the legal repercussions just as in 1973 women gained an outlet from the biological ones. And on this issue, that's as close to equality as we're going to get.
(Kimberly Liu's column appears Mondays in The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at kliu@cavalierdaily.com.)
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