Abortion Polls

The Pro-Life Infonet Weekly ^ | December 13, 2001 | Father Frank Pavone

[Dr. Good Will Hunting]

What I'd like to see is V4F (veto for fathers) posited against C4M (choice for men). Both expose the incongruity of responsibilities without rights for fathers. While I am 100% in favor of V4F, I support getting the C4M argument out there, to expose this incongruity.

I'm in favor of a post-Roe Human Life Amendment. En route to that, there will need to be incremental measures put into place by law. A ban on partial-birth abortion, parental consent for minors, defunding Planned Parenthood, keeping the proposed "clinics" out of public schools...and V4F.

V4F is, in tandem with science and sympathy in favor of the prenatal baby. V4F offers a visible protagonist (the father), who is closely connected to the situation at hand.

It obliterates the "every child a wanted child" argument. Under V4F, every child is wanted, and supported, by the father.

It blows the myth of abortion being a "woman's issue". So long as pro-lifers are silent on V4F, abortion will be considered by the public-at-large a "woman's issue". As such, on some level, people will say, "Well, so long as abortions aren't forced..."

Many, many women subscribe to the NIMBY principle, saying that they would not personally have an abortion, but wouldn't stop others...V4F exposes the gyncentricity of this position.

I would pose to pro-lifers the following: the pro-life movement has failed in the courts and legislatures for 30 years. They have failed to endorse or even acknowledge the V4F position for 30 years. Society has paid the price for this twinned set of failures, and they are twinned. Abortion will never end, and a Human Life Amendment will never come about, until V4F is endorsed by the pro-life movement. It takes two to make a baby, but so long as pro-lifers are silent about one of those two, the father, it will appear that only one person was involved in conception, and that therefor the product of conception is the province of one person only. Keeping fathers/V4F out of the picture undermines the personhood of the prenatal baby for these reasons. It is not baby's rights vs. father's rights. It is that after 30 years of colossal failure by the pro-life movement's no-father approach, the baby's personhood needs to be endorsed by a visible, immediately involved protagonist: the father.

Pro-lifers refuse to engage this issue. All manner of red herrings are thrown out: well, the father was probably some irresponsible jerk, or somehow V4F would lead to C4M (when actually they are opposites), etc. etc.

Pro-lifers refuse to wake-up and endorse this issue.

And this is why we fail.