Most people feel their gender gets the short end of the stick when it comes to parental rights, but the reality is that they both have inequitable burdens to carry.Wrong Speak Publishing is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
I've thought a lot about these issues--consent to parenthood, abortion, father vs. mother standing in the law, women's bodily autonomy vs. potential rights of a fetus, etc. Puzzling through these issues is an occupational hazard of being an attorney I guess.
Here's a huge question that I never see addressed: Is a woman entitled to a medical procedure that takes the embryo/fetus out of her body, or is she entitled to a dead baby in addition?
There's an excellent argument, based on our current societal understandings and legal frameworks, that every person is entitled to exercise control over their own body. Let's take that as a given for the sake of this discussion. Therefore, a woman may have the right to become "unpregnant" at any point in her pregnancy. But why, oh why, is there an assumption that 1) she is therefore entitled to have the fetus killed, and 2) at no point in the process does the father have any say-so or rights, as long as the woman has invoked the magic words "I want an abortion."
If you dive deeply enough into the facts you will learn that elective abortions of healthy fetuses in later stages of pregnancy are NOT all that rare. Is it a small percentage? Sure. If it's murder, though, is it somehow not murder just because there are only X-amount of them in the US? There are thousands of these abortions every year by the way---oddly, that fact isn't widely acknowledged and the stats are hard to come by.
Once a pregnancy is advanced to a certain level, after the first trimester, the fetus must, medically, be delivered in some way. The cervix must be gradually dilated and the fetus removed. Typically, you kill the fetus first by a lethal injection before delivery, but you don't have to. It sometimes happens that the fetus spontaneously delivers alive while the woman is undergoing this process. There you have it, a fetus struggling for breath on the table. If this delivery happened as a result of premature labor in a "wanted" baby, the fetus would either be given compassionate care and held until natural death occurred, or if medical care could save the baby, treatment would immediately begin.
Tell me why a woman has a right to look at a baby who is no longer inside her body and say, I want it dead, because I came here for an abortion and so I'm entitled to a dead baby. She has zero right to say that as far as I can tell. Very importantly, once the baby is delivered, the father has equal rights to dictate what happens to his child. Let's say that he was present during the procedure. Mom wanted an abortion but once the child was delivered alive, she changed her mind and wanted the child given medical treatment. If she would have been entitled to direct that they deny medical treatment, then so is the father and he should be able to say, nope, we came here for an abortion and I'm gonna have to insist that you leave the baby to die. And, visa-versa---she wants the baby to be left to die but he steps up and says that he wants the child to be saved.
When I see abortion debated/discussed, I'd really like to have clear answers to this direct question: Is a woman entitled to have a fetus removed from her body, or is she entitled to a dead fetus? Because you can deliver a later term fetus in an abortion without killing it first by injection.
Excellent insights, Sheryl. A true conundrum which I hadn't considered, and there are likely countless more still. It's true that legal definitions generally must be fine tuned into minutia to avoid manipulation, but abortion laws tend to be satisfied with wide brush strokes (likely so people can work around them). I've discussed some of those wide brush strokes here:
I don't claim to have all the answers. And you have enlightened me regarding late term abortions, which I understood to be fairly rare based on what information I have been able to find. Though in my view, rarity is not an adequate defense for something which should be unacceptable for any number over zero. One is too many.
Though this particular article wasn't really about abortion rights as much as their effects on parents and, subsequently, their children, it does raise questions about how we as a society can establish criteria for living together when we can't all agree on anything. For many subjects, compromises can be reached, but for some subjects (like this one) compromise is anathema. We'll probably always be fighting this battle.
Thank you for your thoughtful reply! I remember reading your linked article it when it first came out. Yes, there's a real lack of ability to have a discussion around abortion due to reflexive emotive and dogmatic reactions. For context, I'm pro-choice within reason, just as you are, and believe that better birth control and as few abortions as possible is a good practical and moral goal to be achieved by changing people's hearts instead of outlawing first-trimester abortions. I'm also the mother of two grown kids---having them changed everything in my life in the most profound ways possible, including any thoughts that a ten-week embryo is just a blob of cells.
Re: numbers of later-term babies: You will hear that elective late-term abortions are extremely rare, which is true depending on what one envisions when using the word "rare." Many times this will be expressed as "only a tiny percentage." Given that the Guttmacher Institute estimates (again, careful stats are not kept by all states and all entities) that there were almost a million abortions in the US in 2020, a tiny percentage is still more than a handful.
As a personal anecdote: Last year, a friend of ours in California called and mentioned that she had just accompanied a relative of hers to get an abortion. The mother was in her 24th week of pregnancy with a baby boy. She earns a good living as a professional, has a young daughter, a very supportive and well-off family, and is in the process of divorcing her husband. The baby had to go because it was a boy and the mother knew that her husband would make her life extremely difficult in terms of custody etc. if he had a son. If she had been even further along in her pregnancy, there are many states where she could still have obtained an abortion at any stage merely by asserting that she was in great mental distress over the idea of bearing this child, living, into this world. What a horrible situation all around, but it raises the ethical, moral, and legal questions that a frank and full discussion of abortion should encompass. The emotional aspect, though, is inescapable. I cried when I heard about this baby whose mother decided that he had to die because he is a boy and because his father is a nasty jerk.
I agree with you - we need to change people's hearts. But I think to do this we also need to change their minds - more specifically, how they think and if they think. They need to think, period.
Your paragraph on the number of late-term abortions makes it clear that many people do not think. They take what they are told as gospel, and don't delve any deeper. It doesn't occur to them that even a "tiny percentage," say, 1% of one million is still 10,000 - a large number. And people in their pro-abortion echo chamber have probably never even heard that there were approximately a million abortions in 2020. It seems to me that they would rather not know this.
I have noticed that those favoring late-term abortion use personal anecdotes all the time. Pulling at a person's heart strings is a very effective way to get them to align with a certain belief. Your personal anecdote from the other perspective certainly pulled at mine. (Not that I needed convincing.) As much as I dislike using people's emotions this way, I'd be in favor of increasing the odds that anecdotes of this kind make it to the ears of those favoring late-term abortion. It would certainly give them something to think about.
The question becomes this - how do we reach them? It is such a polarizing issue today. Even a hint that the person they are speaking to may have an opinion differing from theirs causes their hand to go up in a "Stop!" gesture. They want to hear no more.
Yes--that "Stop!" gesture!! I never encountered that, to the best of my recollection, until the last twenty or so years. Basically, since 9-11 now that I think about it. That's when society and power-structures such as I thought they were began to spin off into Crazy Town. That was the beginning of the trend where friends and acquaintances became dogmatic and adamantly opposed to discussion and debate, no matter how respectful and reasonable I tried to be.
I noticed that behavior around the same time frame - post 9/11. It actually surprised me that instead of bringing us closer together, the exact opposite occurred.
Sometimes when I get the "Stop" gesture I'll ask why the person feels the way they do, but I ask for specifics. Sometimes it starts a real conversation, but other times it just makes them more defensive because they don't have a real reason - other than the media they watch told them to feel as they do. That same media also made them believe that anyone who disagreed with them was an enemy, even sub-human. That's where things get scary. When certain groups of people are dehumanized, history tells us that serious trouble is not far behind.
But another way to get a conversation going in the right direction is to start talking about what it is you have in common. There are certain basic things that almost everyone agrees on. This helps them see you as another human being - not just "the enemy." They usually relax once they see you are actually on the same page about many issues. You can see a softening - their face and body become more relaxed, and they are more receptive to having a conversation. It's a small thing, but it is a first step.
Glad that you have had some success in trying to reach out in non-confrontational ways. I have tried that too with no success (insert sad face). It seems that you and I are on the same page in so many ways, I could have written your reply word for word. Yes, people get an almost panicked look and freeze defensively. Somehow the media has walled them off such that they are in another dimension where they just can’t “hear” you as soon as you say the tiniest tiniest thing that sounds different from what the media and everyone else they know have been saying. The defensive reaction is so strong that I have realized that people are perceiving mere disagreement as a mortal, existential threat. They would have to break themselves apart and reconstruct their entire worldview and that’s terrifying. What I don’t understand is WHY/HOW it has happened that virtually everyone ( even those who are supposed to be liberal, curious, and open minded) got to the place where their entire sense of self is tied to a rigid set of beliefs that can’t be discussed at all.
I mean, it’s baffling. As a counter-example, one could have a respectful conversation with the most fervent dogmatic “conservative “ religious judgmental believer who isn’t going to ever agree that there’s no God or that abortion is okay--but they will probably TALK to you about it, try to explain what they believe and why. They don’t put their hands up in that Stop! gesture the moment that you say that you are an atheist.
Like you, I am seriously concerned about the “othering” that has pervaded our entire national discourse, especially all mainstream media and of course politically ( mostly from the Left/Democrats). First, everything that was to the Right started to be labeled “far Right.” Then far Right is always “extremist.” Then being an extremist is taken for granted as being the worst thing you can be. And the only extremists are on the Right. Finally, the line dividing good and normal and respectable beliefs keeps moving leftward. What was acceptable five minutes ago is now fascist and those who still hold those opinions don’t really deserve a place in our society.
Then another major initiative in this psy-ops campaign has emerged in the last few years, “white supremacists.” They are everywhere, they are the major domestic terror threat we face, and all conservatives are implicated. I try not to be terrified over this but it’s difficult when our President stands outside of Independence Hall in MY city and rails against the extreme danger to “our democracy “ of people like me--you know, the ones who support the Constitution.
Well I could go on but this is already pretty long so I will stop there. Just trying my hardest to make sense of this new world.
As a woman I can certainly appreciate how females were treated in the past. But I must say - that is history. It has no bearing on the current issue because two wrongs never make anything right. Punishing men for the past now only hurts the child in the present.
The problem of fathers running away to avoid their financial obligations - that is mostly history as well. Many states now have reciprocity agreements in place for garnishing wages for child support, and the Federal government will garnish tax refunds for outstanding support.
But all of these financial protections for women and children doesn't address the issue of having a father actively and voluntarily involved in the child's life.
Because the woman carries the child, she is currently responsible for deciding the future of both the father and the child. Somehow, this doesn't seem fair. The time for "my body, my choice" was back before the moment of conception.
Some women make poor choices- sleeping with men they don't actually want to partner with or failing to use contraceptives (or ensuring their partner does) when they don't desire children. Some women make evil choices - they knowingly get pregnant in exchange for 18 years of child-support payments.
Men can (usually) protect themselves from the later by using contraceptives themselves - regardless of what the woman says. But many men find it difficult to believe their sex partner would lie to them about 'being protected.' Men could certainly use an education in this area. I have personally known men in failing marriages who were entrapped by their wife secretly discontinuing her method of birth control to deliberately get pregnant against the couple's mutual agreement not to have children.
But what of men who conceive a child with a woman who wants an abortion? It must be gut-wrenching to know that your child will be killed and there's nothing you can do to stop it.
I think we need to educate men on the necessity of using male birth control to secure their own destiny and give men more of a say in the area of abortion. This could go a long way in preventing unwanted children and in securing a brighter future for those children who are desired. And if women aren't in complete control of the abortion decision, we'd see far fewer women having unprotected sex.
Obviously, there are no easy solutions to these dilemmas, but I feel it's important to start somewhere. Fathers need more rights to balance this equation. I don't have the answers, but now would be a good time to begin a sincere discussion of these issues with the goal of making some changes.
Thanks so much for your well thought out response. You've outlined many of the reasons why fairness flies in the face of the extreme, one dimensional thinking which has permeated our political landscape. I often write about the need for balance and compromise regarding most subjects, because what works for some most definitely doesn't work for others.
I don't have all the answers either. Rather than teaching ideological conformity, our education system needs to focus more on basic knowledge so that developing minds can form their own opinions organically, based upon their responses to environmental stimuli instead of indoctrination. They will observe that our issues are not one size fits all, and hopefully learn some balance.
I've thought a lot about these issues--consent to parenthood, abortion, father vs. mother standing in the law, women's bodily autonomy vs. potential rights of a fetus, etc. Puzzling through these issues is an occupational hazard of being an attorney I guess.
Here's a huge question that I never see addressed: Is a woman entitled to a medical procedure that takes the embryo/fetus out of her body, or is she entitled to a dead baby in addition?
There's an excellent argument, based on our current societal understandings and legal frameworks, that every person is entitled to exercise control over their own body. Let's take that as a given for the sake of this discussion. Therefore, a woman may have the right to become "unpregnant" at any point in her pregnancy. But why, oh why, is there an assumption that 1) she is therefore entitled to have the fetus killed, and 2) at no point in the process does the father have any say-so or rights, as long as the woman has invoked the magic words "I want an abortion."
If you dive deeply enough into the facts you will learn that elective abortions of healthy fetuses in later stages of pregnancy are NOT all that rare. Is it a small percentage? Sure. If it's murder, though, is it somehow not murder just because there are only X-amount of them in the US? There are thousands of these abortions every year by the way---oddly, that fact isn't widely acknowledged and the stats are hard to come by.
Once a pregnancy is advanced to a certain level, after the first trimester, the fetus must, medically, be delivered in some way. The cervix must be gradually dilated and the fetus removed. Typically, you kill the fetus first by a lethal injection before delivery, but you don't have to. It sometimes happens that the fetus spontaneously delivers alive while the woman is undergoing this process. There you have it, a fetus struggling for breath on the table. If this delivery happened as a result of premature labor in a "wanted" baby, the fetus would either be given compassionate care and held until natural death occurred, or if medical care could save the baby, treatment would immediately begin.
Tell me why a woman has a right to look at a baby who is no longer inside her body and say, I want it dead, because I came here for an abortion and so I'm entitled to a dead baby. She has zero right to say that as far as I can tell. Very importantly, once the baby is delivered, the father has equal rights to dictate what happens to his child. Let's say that he was present during the procedure. Mom wanted an abortion but once the child was delivered alive, she changed her mind and wanted the child given medical treatment. If she would have been entitled to direct that they deny medical treatment, then so is the father and he should be able to say, nope, we came here for an abortion and I'm gonna have to insist that you leave the baby to die. And, visa-versa---she wants the baby to be left to die but he steps up and says that he wants the child to be saved.
When I see abortion debated/discussed, I'd really like to have clear answers to this direct question: Is a woman entitled to have a fetus removed from her body, or is she entitled to a dead fetus? Because you can deliver a later term fetus in an abortion without killing it first by injection.
Excellent insights, Sheryl. A true conundrum which I hadn't considered, and there are likely countless more still. It's true that legal definitions generally must be fine tuned into minutia to avoid manipulation, but abortion laws tend to be satisfied with wide brush strokes (likely so people can work around them). I've discussed some of those wide brush strokes here:
https://www.wrongspeakpublishing.com/p/ending-emotional-responses-to-abortion?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
I don't claim to have all the answers. And you have enlightened me regarding late term abortions, which I understood to be fairly rare based on what information I have been able to find. Though in my view, rarity is not an adequate defense for something which should be unacceptable for any number over zero. One is too many.
Though this particular article wasn't really about abortion rights as much as their effects on parents and, subsequently, their children, it does raise questions about how we as a society can establish criteria for living together when we can't all agree on anything. For many subjects, compromises can be reached, but for some subjects (like this one) compromise is anathema. We'll probably always be fighting this battle.
Really appreciate your input. ZL
Thank you for your thoughtful reply! I remember reading your linked article it when it first came out. Yes, there's a real lack of ability to have a discussion around abortion due to reflexive emotive and dogmatic reactions. For context, I'm pro-choice within reason, just as you are, and believe that better birth control and as few abortions as possible is a good practical and moral goal to be achieved by changing people's hearts instead of outlawing first-trimester abortions. I'm also the mother of two grown kids---having them changed everything in my life in the most profound ways possible, including any thoughts that a ten-week embryo is just a blob of cells.
Re: numbers of later-term babies: You will hear that elective late-term abortions are extremely rare, which is true depending on what one envisions when using the word "rare." Many times this will be expressed as "only a tiny percentage." Given that the Guttmacher Institute estimates (again, careful stats are not kept by all states and all entities) that there were almost a million abortions in the US in 2020, a tiny percentage is still more than a handful.
As a personal anecdote: Last year, a friend of ours in California called and mentioned that she had just accompanied a relative of hers to get an abortion. The mother was in her 24th week of pregnancy with a baby boy. She earns a good living as a professional, has a young daughter, a very supportive and well-off family, and is in the process of divorcing her husband. The baby had to go because it was a boy and the mother knew that her husband would make her life extremely difficult in terms of custody etc. if he had a son. If she had been even further along in her pregnancy, there are many states where she could still have obtained an abortion at any stage merely by asserting that she was in great mental distress over the idea of bearing this child, living, into this world. What a horrible situation all around, but it raises the ethical, moral, and legal questions that a frank and full discussion of abortion should encompass. The emotional aspect, though, is inescapable. I cried when I heard about this baby whose mother decided that he had to die because he is a boy and because his father is a nasty jerk.
I agree with you - we need to change people's hearts. But I think to do this we also need to change their minds - more specifically, how they think and if they think. They need to think, period.
Your paragraph on the number of late-term abortions makes it clear that many people do not think. They take what they are told as gospel, and don't delve any deeper. It doesn't occur to them that even a "tiny percentage," say, 1% of one million is still 10,000 - a large number. And people in their pro-abortion echo chamber have probably never even heard that there were approximately a million abortions in 2020. It seems to me that they would rather not know this.
I have noticed that those favoring late-term abortion use personal anecdotes all the time. Pulling at a person's heart strings is a very effective way to get them to align with a certain belief. Your personal anecdote from the other perspective certainly pulled at mine. (Not that I needed convincing.) As much as I dislike using people's emotions this way, I'd be in favor of increasing the odds that anecdotes of this kind make it to the ears of those favoring late-term abortion. It would certainly give them something to think about.
The question becomes this - how do we reach them? It is such a polarizing issue today. Even a hint that the person they are speaking to may have an opinion differing from theirs causes their hand to go up in a "Stop!" gesture. They want to hear no more.
Yes--that "Stop!" gesture!! I never encountered that, to the best of my recollection, until the last twenty or so years. Basically, since 9-11 now that I think about it. That's when society and power-structures such as I thought they were began to spin off into Crazy Town. That was the beginning of the trend where friends and acquaintances became dogmatic and adamantly opposed to discussion and debate, no matter how respectful and reasonable I tried to be.
I noticed that behavior around the same time frame - post 9/11. It actually surprised me that instead of bringing us closer together, the exact opposite occurred.
Sometimes when I get the "Stop" gesture I'll ask why the person feels the way they do, but I ask for specifics. Sometimes it starts a real conversation, but other times it just makes them more defensive because they don't have a real reason - other than the media they watch told them to feel as they do. That same media also made them believe that anyone who disagreed with them was an enemy, even sub-human. That's where things get scary. When certain groups of people are dehumanized, history tells us that serious trouble is not far behind.
But another way to get a conversation going in the right direction is to start talking about what it is you have in common. There are certain basic things that almost everyone agrees on. This helps them see you as another human being - not just "the enemy." They usually relax once they see you are actually on the same page about many issues. You can see a softening - their face and body become more relaxed, and they are more receptive to having a conversation. It's a small thing, but it is a first step.
Glad that you have had some success in trying to reach out in non-confrontational ways. I have tried that too with no success (insert sad face). It seems that you and I are on the same page in so many ways, I could have written your reply word for word. Yes, people get an almost panicked look and freeze defensively. Somehow the media has walled them off such that they are in another dimension where they just can’t “hear” you as soon as you say the tiniest tiniest thing that sounds different from what the media and everyone else they know have been saying. The defensive reaction is so strong that I have realized that people are perceiving mere disagreement as a mortal, existential threat. They would have to break themselves apart and reconstruct their entire worldview and that’s terrifying. What I don’t understand is WHY/HOW it has happened that virtually everyone ( even those who are supposed to be liberal, curious, and open minded) got to the place where their entire sense of self is tied to a rigid set of beliefs that can’t be discussed at all.
I mean, it’s baffling. As a counter-example, one could have a respectful conversation with the most fervent dogmatic “conservative “ religious judgmental believer who isn’t going to ever agree that there’s no God or that abortion is okay--but they will probably TALK to you about it, try to explain what they believe and why. They don’t put their hands up in that Stop! gesture the moment that you say that you are an atheist.
Like you, I am seriously concerned about the “othering” that has pervaded our entire national discourse, especially all mainstream media and of course politically ( mostly from the Left/Democrats). First, everything that was to the Right started to be labeled “far Right.” Then far Right is always “extremist.” Then being an extremist is taken for granted as being the worst thing you can be. And the only extremists are on the Right. Finally, the line dividing good and normal and respectable beliefs keeps moving leftward. What was acceptable five minutes ago is now fascist and those who still hold those opinions don’t really deserve a place in our society.
Then another major initiative in this psy-ops campaign has emerged in the last few years, “white supremacists.” They are everywhere, they are the major domestic terror threat we face, and all conservatives are implicated. I try not to be terrified over this but it’s difficult when our President stands outside of Independence Hall in MY city and rails against the extreme danger to “our democracy “ of people like me--you know, the ones who support the Constitution.
Well I could go on but this is already pretty long so I will stop there. Just trying my hardest to make sense of this new world.
As a woman I can certainly appreciate how females were treated in the past. But I must say - that is history. It has no bearing on the current issue because two wrongs never make anything right. Punishing men for the past now only hurts the child in the present.
The problem of fathers running away to avoid their financial obligations - that is mostly history as well. Many states now have reciprocity agreements in place for garnishing wages for child support, and the Federal government will garnish tax refunds for outstanding support.
But all of these financial protections for women and children doesn't address the issue of having a father actively and voluntarily involved in the child's life.
Because the woman carries the child, she is currently responsible for deciding the future of both the father and the child. Somehow, this doesn't seem fair. The time for "my body, my choice" was back before the moment of conception.
Some women make poor choices- sleeping with men they don't actually want to partner with or failing to use contraceptives (or ensuring their partner does) when they don't desire children. Some women make evil choices - they knowingly get pregnant in exchange for 18 years of child-support payments.
Men can (usually) protect themselves from the later by using contraceptives themselves - regardless of what the woman says. But many men find it difficult to believe their sex partner would lie to them about 'being protected.' Men could certainly use an education in this area. I have personally known men in failing marriages who were entrapped by their wife secretly discontinuing her method of birth control to deliberately get pregnant against the couple's mutual agreement not to have children.
But what of men who conceive a child with a woman who wants an abortion? It must be gut-wrenching to know that your child will be killed and there's nothing you can do to stop it.
I think we need to educate men on the necessity of using male birth control to secure their own destiny and give men more of a say in the area of abortion. This could go a long way in preventing unwanted children and in securing a brighter future for those children who are desired. And if women aren't in complete control of the abortion decision, we'd see far fewer women having unprotected sex.
Obviously, there are no easy solutions to these dilemmas, but I feel it's important to start somewhere. Fathers need more rights to balance this equation. I don't have the answers, but now would be a good time to begin a sincere discussion of these issues with the goal of making some changes.
Thanks so much for your well thought out response. You've outlined many of the reasons why fairness flies in the face of the extreme, one dimensional thinking which has permeated our political landscape. I often write about the need for balance and compromise regarding most subjects, because what works for some most definitely doesn't work for others.
I don't have all the answers either. Rather than teaching ideological conformity, our education system needs to focus more on basic knowledge so that developing minds can form their own opinions organically, based upon their responses to environmental stimuli instead of indoctrination. They will observe that our issues are not one size fits all, and hopefully learn some balance.
Appreciate your input Eva. ZL