Posted on 08/04/2007 1:14:36 PM PDT by wagglebee
Led by Republican Rep. John Adams, several state legislators have introduced the bill that they say isn't intended to just make a point or be controversial.
"This is important because there are always two parents and fathers should have a say in the birth or the destruction of that child," Adams told the Record-Courier newspaper. "In most cases, when a child is born the father has financial responsibility for that child, so he should have a say."
Under the measure, women would not be able to have an abortion without written consent from the father.
In a case where the paternity of the baby is not established, the woman seeking the abortion would have to provide a list of potential fathers and the abortion practitioner would be required to do a paternity test and obtain permission from the father for the abortion.
Anyone who has or does an abortion without the father's consent or anyone wrongfully giving permission for an abortion would be guilty of a first degree misdemeanor.
Denise Mackura, the head of Ohio Right to Life, told the newspaper the bill is a good idea because it highlights how fathers are left out of the abortion process.
"I'm really pleased that this has been proposed for one reason -- it draws attention to the fact that many men are concerned and care for their unborn children," she said.
"You have no idea how many men call telling me about their girlfriends who plan to abort, asking what they can do to help her. They do want to help and they should have a voice," she added.
However, the paternal rights bill would likely hit a constitutional roadblock if it became law.
The Supreme Court ruled in the Danforth case that spousal consent statutes are unconstitutional if the statutes allow the husband to unilaterally prohibit the abortion in the first trimester.
A subsequent case, Coe v. Gerstein, saw the high court extend that decision to a spousal consent law regardless of the stage of the woman's pregnancy.
Then, in the Supreme Court's 1992 Casey decision, a spousal notification provision, requiring a married woman to tell her husband she intends to have an abortion (but not needing his consent), did not survive the "undue burden" test, and it was struck down as being unconstitutional.
Mackura told the newspaper that she acknowledged the constitutional concerns but called the bill a "step in the right direction."
"Currently, even in a marriage situation, a man has no right to even be informed of an abortion. But if a woman doesn't have an abortion, men sure have a lot of responsibility then. It's really not fair," she concluded.
Abortion advocates confirmed they would strongly oppose the bill and NARAL Pro-choice Ohio executive director Kellie Copeland told the newspaper it was "extreme" and motivated by election loses.
Related web sites:
Ohio Right to Life - http://www.ohiolife.org
Ohio Legislature - http://www.legislature.state.oh.us
What does seem equitable is that he gets an opt-out right to choose on child support.
What happens here if the woman is pregnant by rape? The proposed law doesn’t address it. Nor do I see how the sponsors plan to get around the Casey decision.
Mrs VS
Careful, some of the more militant anti-male feminists might have another idea of how the father could be included in said process.
Sure there is. It was written into the "pneumbra eminating from the bill of rights" by the U.S. Supreme Court itself.
This is the strongest type of constitutional clause, the kind written by the judiciary to supports a massive moral atrocity...that now must be defended lest we as a society become inclined to admit the depth of this barbaric moral failure.
Logic and objectivity ought never, and as long as Democratic legislatures draw breath, must never be allowed either in public discourse or in the Supreme Court. Thus it is the duty of the tolerant liberal to loudly and hatefully condemn such as "hate" speech.
But liberals are not the psychotic ones...oh no...its those of us who think the constitution enumerates a right of the people to keep and bear arms--we are the crazy ones.
Good point, at least under the priori that abortions be considered legally acceptable in the first place.
Yeah there is! It's in-between the right to sodomy & the right to healthcare. (I have a new, digital state-of-the-art Constitution that automatically updates after every ruling)
I can’t see this as having overwhelming support from men. The leading cause of death among preganant women is murder by husband or boyfriend. I’ve known exactly one man, a Roman Catholic, who was upset his former girlfriend had an abortion and didn’t tell him at the time she was pregnent. But since he, at work, would openly refer to her as his ball and chain, one could suppose she hadn’t much expectation of a joyful acceptance of fatherhood.
Needs work
I haven't seen caring men, when I am praying in front of PP. I see them do the 'drop and run'...they hand them the cash to pay for killing the baby, and drop them at the door. More considerate ones walk in with them, and THEN run. They never stay, IF they come along at all. I have seen more men pressuring women to abort. I guess I am in the wrong place.... I would love to see there be a way to hold the men accountable. The post-abortive women who go to counseling for the most part were in relationships where they were left or pressured to kill the baby. How often do the counselors really hear about a supportive, caring man? I am not being cynical or sarcastic...I truly would like to know. I see the opposite of what this woman claims.
The other thing that comes into play...it will make a good issue to bring up, but will it be good stewardship of time and money if it is going to be unconstitutional?! Just a thought, not a criticism.
EEE, can I get one of those? Where did you get it? order me one?
Nonsense. That is just more feminist BS. Like the one they put out about more women experiencing domestic violence on Super Ball Sunday. Not true. Or the one that says 1 in 4 women will be raped in their lifetime. Not true. Or the one that said every 6 minutes a woman is raped. Or the long standing lie that women's income decreases 73% after divorce while men's increase by 25%. (How that can be true when women primarily receive child support and alimony FROM men just shows what a big lie it is.) And so on.
“Reproductive Rights” is one of those public issues where the inequality between the sexes is rarely discussed.
Reproductive rights does not exist as a legal concept for men, and men are regularly told that they have responsibilities and not rights. A man has no “reproductive rights” that a woman is bound to respect, whether in nor out of marriage, to keep the baby or not. The only right that men have is to keep their pants zipped up, as the course of their lives and their hope for posterity is entirely dependent on the woman’s “choice”.
I remember hearing a feminazi screeching about how vital “reproductive rights “ were for all human beings, insofar as their ability to determine the course of their lives is concerned. It got me to wondering how it is that no comparable “reproductive right” exists for men other than the right to keep your trousers zipped up. A man’s income can involuntarily be confiscated to care for children that he does not want, affecting the course of his life. Under the law, he is utterly responsible to support any children with his DNA, and often even for those without it. In many states, women are allowed to ABANDON newborn children that they do not want at hospitals or firehouses, no questions asked. Men don’t even have any “reproductive rights” in marriage, because his wife retains her “reproductive rights” if she “chooses” to exercise them.
I don’t think either sex should have these “reproductive rights”, and should deal with the concequences of a pregnancy, wanted or not. But if as the feminazi says, these rights are vital to human beings, than I wish to suggest the following remedies. An unmarried man, upon being promptly notified of an unwanted pregnacy by his mate, should have the option of a paternal veto (abortion) absolving him of financial and legal responsibility for the child. A married man who discovers that his wife has had an abortion against his wishes should recieve presumptive grounds for a divorce or annullment of the marriage, with the same holding true for one who concieves against his wishes.
Than again maybe the feminazi thinks that men shouldn’t qualify for “reproductive rights” since she probably thinks men aren’t human anyway.
My point is that men have no “reproductive right” that is INDEPENDENT of a woman’s choice, wheras women have options that can be and are exercised independently of a man’s wishes. Note that this feminine reproductive veto extends to nullification of the man’s wishes whether the man wants the child or not, whether in or out of marriage. While I am acutely aware that this is in large part due to the uniqueness of the reproductive process, this nevertheless leaves the man without any independent ability to influence the woman legally.
I am not even necessarily saying that this is a bad thing, but I do find it curious that we often behave as though the only party affected by the birth of a child is the woman, and to prevent a negative influence on the course of her life we must preserve her right to kill her unborn child. If unmarried, she can “choose” to keep the child and can enlist the support of the state to forcibly take money from the sperm donor against his will. And if he wants the child, then he must yield to her choice to abort.
The common response to the man is that you should have been more careful in your choice of partner, or you should have kept your trousers zipped up. Legally he is told that he has no option other than the one that the woman “chooses” to give him.
Again, I think that BOTH parties should allow a normal pregnancy to take it’s course, and come to a mutually agreed upon resolution. But if we insist upon a regime where a “reproductive right” is allowed for only half of the human race, than I think that men should have some LEGAL option to influence the woman’s “choice” in either direction, rather than act as though this isn’t a significant life altering event for them as well. The one option that I would absolutely forbid, of course is a forced abortion. Consider paternal veto for unmarried men or presumptive divorce grounds for a married man whose wife “chooses” against his wishes.
Having said all this, I do think it unlikely to happen. Men are legally held to the strictest of standard of responsibility where conception is concerned.
Here is another great example of the down the rabbit hole insanity that abortion “law” is. A few years ago in Chicago, a married manager of a fast food resturant was charged with the murder of his girlfriend and her unborn child. It seems that he knocked her up, and she came to extort him for hush money, part of which was to go for an abortion. He killed her because he didn’t want to pay the dough for it.
While the murder charges for the girlfriend are easy to understand, I was struck as to how there was almost no discussion of the fact that he got charged for achieving precisely the same objective for the child that the “mother” was seeking and that she would have been entirely free of legal consequence for by having the deed performed by a medical hitman.
Aside from the grave moral implications, abortion law is also the greatest insult to logic and linear reasoning that was ever perpetrated by man or Supreme Court justice!!!
“A man’s income can involuntarily be confiscated to care for children that he does not want, affecting the course of his life.”
“The common response to the man is that you should have been more careful in your choice of partner, or you should have kept your trousers zipped up. Legally he is told that he has no option other than the one that the woman “chooses” to give him.”
That is the thing, two wrongs don’t make a right to me. I don’t believe in abortion and think it isn’t a choice, it is a murder. So, IMO the woman and man do have a choice to not have kids and that starts with one easy thing, don’t have sex with someone you don’t want to have kids with.
Giving a man a choice to not pay child support on a child he had with some one night stand is making another wrong. I cannot agree that just because a woman gets to choose a man should be allowed to choose. I think this is not a conservative principle. I think the best way to handle it is to keep fighting abortion head on and try to get it overturned federally and let the states decide if they want abortion in their state or not.
The object is to formulate Policy and law that is MOST LIKELY to make the best out of a bad situation. I think that the best objective would be away from subsidizing single motherhood and toward heterosexual 2 parent adoption. Yes it is infinintely better than the evil that is abortion. Remember, what has significantly changed in the reproductive relationship between men and women is the behavior of WOMEN due to radical feminism and the sexual revolution. Men have basically remained the indiscriminate pigs that nature inclines them to be, absent the moderating forces of civillization and traditional feminine rectitude that largely prompted the development of it by chanelling the creative energy and power of men in ways that convince women to share gene pools with them. I think most would agree that most women have been evolutionarily programmed to be more sexually reticent and discriminating due to the disproportionate burdens that reproduction incurs upon them. Societal mechanisms (which also served to moderate the rampant sexual tendencies of men that remain essentially unchanged) that acknowledged this reality have been distorted by Roe, and the cultural Marxism of the counter cultural revolution of the ‘60s that are now nearly mainstream. (This is no accident. Read about the influence of the cultural Marxists Erich Fromm and Herbert Marcuse) This suit has the possibility of restoring some of that balance by reviving the civillizing sexual moderation of women. Lest you think me sexist, I have simply been able to cast off the veil of obsfucation cast over my vision by political correctness.
As every basic economic theory has shown, when you subsidize a thing you get more of it. The various levels of government have been subsidizing single motherhood for four decades now with a commensurate rise in the rate of bastard children with no fathers in their lives. Public policy should be toward encouraging adoption for such children rather than all of the aid programs and forced child support payments for single women that have helped to accelerate the trend.
The problem is that PC, radical feminism, the sexual revolution, the welfare state, moral relativism, and mindless multiculturalism has weakened the strictures against illegitimacy that used to keep far more young women from this sort of thing than happens now. the stigma WAS far worse and fair or not, it served it’s purposes well. When I was growing up, if a young woman got pregnant she frequently went down south to have the child where it would be placed for adoption or raised by relatives. Today the girls in my neighborhood have baby showers, and think that nothing that is significantly wrong with that, as it is now the norm. It wasn’t in 1965.
As for men not being called for it, in this state all the woman has do do if she is getting public aid is to make an allegation and the guy has to show up for the DNA test or recieve a default judgement of child support that is irrevocable. Remember, he is held LEGALLY to the strictest standard of accountability. The fact that people are able to evade the legal consequences is no reflection on the severity of the law that holds him accountable. He does not have the wide range of LEGAL options that women do.
NOT feminist BS! It’s a direct quote from a judge and two district attorneys who were on Fox News just last month.
I agree with you completely about abortion. Any RESPONSIBLE woman realizes that sexual intercourse is baby-making and not just fun! They are the ones who walk away from sexual propositions. But here is the irony: most women truly want to be married, and loved, and have children. The majority are not feminazies. And how do you really know that she tried to extort the man who would murder her; was that his defense?
A prosecution witness (a friend) confirmed that the victim told her this prior to the murder as the prosecution was seeking to establish motive.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.