Consequences Of Abortion

Men Should Be Allowed to Veto Abortions

The abortion debate has left one issue largely off the table: The proper rights of men to prevent the abortion of their children. 

I believe that in those cases in which a man can make a credible claim that he is the father of a developing child in utero , in which he could be a proper custodian of that child, and in which he is willing to take full custody of that child upon its delivery, that the pregnant woman involved should not have the option to abort and should be civilly liable, and possibly criminally liable, for psychological suffering and wrongful death should she proceed to do so.

I have limited the scope of my argument intentionally, in order to focus on what I consider to be a question that puts fairness front and center: If a man has participated in creating a new life and is fully willing to parent his child (independently, if necessary), why should he not have any control over whether that life is ended?

We are ignoring the quiet message that current abortion policy conveys to every American male: You have no voice in, and, therefore, no responsibility for, the pregnancies which you help to create. Your descendants are disposable, at the whim of the women you choose to be intimate with.

Giving would-be fathers a lack of veto power over abortions is connected psychologically to the epidemic of absentee fathers in this country. We can’t, on the one hand, be credible in bemoaning the number of single mothers raising their children, while, on the other hand, giving men the clear message that bringing new lives to the planet is the exclusive domain, and under the exclusive control, of women. 

Whether stated or not, the underlying message of withholding from men their proper rights to father the children they create is that they are not proper custodians, nor properly responsible, for their children.

The notion that there is no emotional injury done men by depriving them of decision-making power as to whether the children they father are aborted is naïve. 

Just in my own practice of psychiatry, I have listened to dozens of men express lingering, sometimes intense, pain over abortions that proceeded either without their consent, or without them having spoken up about their desires to bring their children to term and parent them. 

Should we really continue to give men the clear message that that they should deny, and that we have no regard for, their feelings about the unrealized lives of their potential sons and daughters?

New book details consequences of sex-selection abortion

In her recently released book, Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men, reporter Mara Hvistendahl delves into the subject of sex-selection abortion, its causes and possible consequences of a world which is missing more than 160 million girls and women (which roughly equals the entire female population of America). Hvistendahl details how pro-abortion groups who were obsessed with population control like International Planned Parenthood and Population Council used grants from the Ford Foundation and the United Nations Population Fund to export abortion to Asia. While many Asian countries have histories of preferring boys over girls, they weren’t able to seek out and abort baby girls until ultrasound technology allowed them to see inside the womb. Ultrasounds, a preference for boys, population control pressures (like China’s one-child policy) and massive amounts of funding from Western pro-choice groups combined to make something which was once unthinkable into a common occurrence. If abortion advocates believe abortion is a “reproductive right” which women should be allowed to freely exercise then on what principled basis can they then claim women shouldn’t be allowed to have abortions based on the sex of their child? As columnist Mark Steyn writes, “a ‘woman's right to choose’ is the right to choose not to have any women.” Hvistendahl can point to the possible consequences of having imbalanced sex ratios such as rises in crime, sex-trafficking, bride-buying, etc. when millions of Asian men are unable to find spouses. However, she can’t express why it would be morally wrong for women to choose to kill their daughters in-utero. Those in favor of legal abortion base their position on the idea that a woman’s choice exceeds any moral standing the unborn child has. If that’s the case, it makes no sense to claim some of those choices are wrong. Unlike abortion advocates, prolifers can clearly articulate why they are opposed to killing female unborn children: Killing innocent unborn human beings because they aren’t the sex you desire is wrong in the same way that killing newborns who aren’t they sex you want is wrong. The born and the unborn are both valuable human beings who deserve protection.

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