Posted on 01/26/2003 12:16:03 PM PST by LonePalm
Justified Right - The Conservative Alternative to triCity
Roe v Wade and the rights of the Father
I propose a "Father's Abortion." Let a Father petition the Court to terminate his own parental rights to his child after the child's birth.
The emphasis must not be on the right to abortion but on the right to privacy and reproductive control. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (speaking of a woman's right).
This January 22 marks the 30th anniversary of Roe v Wade, the Supreme Court decision which overturned all State laws that would stop a woman from having an abortion in the first trimester. While the topic I have chosen here, Roe v Wade and the Rights of the Father may sound interesting, actually there is nothing to write about. There are no such rights. A Father can't stop an abortion if he wants his child, nor can he insist upon an abortion if he doesn't want his child. This situation should trouble everyone, not from a religious point of view, but rather from an Equal Rights point of view.
Equal Rights for all people is difficult for any nation to achieve peaceably, because it requires the group in greater power to yield to the group of lesser power. This is usually accomplished only through war. Our own Civil War is a perfect example of equality being created by force, instead of reason and fairness, as it should have been.
This week as I watched and read opinions about Roe v Wade, I could find nothing, not a word among millions that addressed a Father's relationship to his unborn child.
Two weeks ago I tried an experiment in anticipation of writing this column. I put in a column about gun control that I thought only men should vote on the issue of guns. The logic (rather illogic) used by me was that men buy guns the most, men are called upon to use them the most (when a burglar enters our home), and we get shot the most. Why shouldn't men have the only voice on the issue? I wanted to gauge people's reactions to the thought that in America we would ever give more weight to one person's view than another's because that person can show the issue affects him more.
As I walked about the City (Asbury Park, NJ) these two weeks, I was accosted by people who wanted to take me to task for suggesting that women lose their right to vote on an issue just because the may be affected less by it than men. Some pointed out, quite rightly, that even if there was an issue that didn't affect women at all, as equal members of society, they should still have a voice in all decisions America makes. Quite right indeed. So today I pose the question - Where are all these well-reasoned arguements when it comes to a Father and his unborn child? Why do people who have Equal Protection arguments at the ready on other issues suddenly suffer constitutional amnesia when abortion is mentioned?
During every abortion a Father's child dies, so Fathers are affected. There is much written about the post-abortion depression of women. Nothing is mentioned about the Father. After birth a good Father knows his role is protector of his child. His depression must be crippling when the law allows him no chance to save his child from death by an abortion.
The Supreme Court in Roe v Wade found a privacy right in the 14th Amendment, which doesn't have the word privacy in it. Then they found that the privacy right had a "penumbra" containing other rights (penumbra meand a shadowy area at the edge of a shadow). In that shadow they found the abortion right. That bit on mental gymnastics aside, it wasn't the most terrible part of the decision. This was:
The Court said that a woman may not be mentally ready to handle a child at this stage in her life, or the child might interfere with her career path, and that is so important to her that the State has no right to make a law against it.
So I ask today: Might a Father find himself mentally not ready for a child? Might a Father find a child inconvenient to his career path? If these are rights women get to protect by choosing abortion, why not allow Fathers "the right to choose" also? I propose a "Father's Abortion." Let a Father petition the Court to terminate his own parental rights to his child after the chlid's birth. He would be rid of his obligations to that child in favor of his mental health and finances, the same as a woman does when she aborts.
I propose this not because it would be in any way good. I propose it because constitutional Equal Protection demands it, and to show the danger created when judges destroy democracy by making up laws that don't exist. "Father's Abortion." It's high time for a test case.
Tommy DeSeno is a lawyer in downtown Asbury Park.
In page after page, chapter after chapter, Farrell reveals mind-boggling facts that show that, contrary to the claims of the 'victim-feminists', women get preferential treatment in many areas of society, and that, as the title of the book indicates, men's power is a myth. Example: statistically, men make up far larger numbers of prison inmates. Is this because men are innately more criminal? Or is it because (1) women are considered less as suspects in crimes? or (2) women suspects do not usually receive the same degree of interrogation as male suspects? or (3) courts are far less likely to convict a defendant found guilty if that person's gender is female? or (4) a woman's prison sentence is likely to be significantly shorter than a male's for a comparable crime? or (5) when women have a male 'partner in crime', the male invariably takes the rap?
If men are the powerful sex, why do they make up 6 out of 7 suicides? Why do we accept that men, and men only, being sent in vast numbers to die in war? Why are 9 in 10 workplace deaths males? Why does breast cancer research receive over six times the funding that prostate cancer research does? Why do women live longer?
A masculinist bump for fathers rights.
1. To carry the baby full-term, and the father will be liable for support, or
2. The mother has her choice of what to do, but if she chooses to have the baby, the father will not be liable for support.
Of course, they have to read and sign this before alcohol and/or passion clouds their judgment.
ROFL...Instant shortage of Notaries Public...
Why should the father have to appeal to a court? The aborting woman doesn't; at most, she has to accept a pamphlet and promise to read it. Make paternal abortions safe, legal, "rare," and accessible, just like maternal abortions.
Tell that to the gangbangers, serial killers, mass murderers, and war criminals who sit in prison because of laws against murder. Tell that to their would-be victims, whose lives were saved by the laws against murder.
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
Tanks for da' post & da' ping. The author presents an excellent case, and hopefully it can help create problems for the industry of death. I would like to add a quote that, for me, rightly puts this article & thread in the proper context. (NOTE: I moved the last sentence first)
"The right to life does not depend, and must not be declared to be contingent, on the pleasure of anyone else, not even a parent or a sovereign. America needs no words from me to see how your decision in Roe v. Wade has deformed a great nation. The so-called right to abortion has pitted mothers against their children and women against men. It has sown violence and discord at the heart of the most intimate human relationships. It has aggravated the derogation of the father's role in an increasingly fatherless society. It has portrayed the greatest of gifts -- a child -- as a competitor, an intrusion, and an inconvenience. It has nominally accorded mothers unfettered dominion over the independent lives of their physically dependent sons and daughters. And, in granting this unconscionable power, it has exposed many women to unjust and selfish demands from their husbands or other sexual partners. Human rights are not a privilege conferred by government. They are every human being's entitlement by virtue of his humanity. "
Mother Teresa (Wall Street Journal, 2/25/94)
"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.
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