A Woman Shouldn’t Be Able to Have an Abortion Without the Father’s Approval

It's the right thing to do

Texas has a controversial new law designed to stop abortions that has for the moment, survived scrutiny from the Supreme Court, although over the long run, it seems likely the law will be struck down. If you are hoping to see Roe v. Wade overturned, a Mississippi case banning abortions after 15 weeks that the SCOTUS will probably review in 2022 seems like a better bet. We still don’t know what the court will do when it matters but given that Roe. v. Wade is a constitutional abomination that never should have been the law in the first place, we should cross our fingers and hope the SCOTUS fixes that mistake.

While at this early juncture, we can’t be sure whether the Supreme Court will put an end to Roe v. Wade or not, there is a policy those of us who are pro-life should be pursuing in the interim. That is not allowing an abortion unless both the woman AND the man responsible for the pregnancy sign off on it. If both parents don’t sign off, then abortion shouldn’t be allowed. From there, the specifics could certainly vary from state to state. For example, if the father wanted the child and the mother didn’t, it could be that the state would require him to be willing to take sole custody of his kid. It also seems likely that in cases of rape and incest, the father wouldn’t get a say. In addition, with modern technology, we are capable of doing a paternity test on a child in the womb, so the mom couldn’t just try to pass off some guy she met at the club as “daddy.” There’s a possibility the court would strike this type of policy down based on the precedent set in Casey v. Planned Parenthood, but that’s far from certain these days. On the contrary, there’s a good case to be made that a law like this would be constitutional and with a 6-3 originalist edge on the Supreme Court, it would seem to have a decent shot at passing constitutional muster. That’s why it’s good news that this kind of policy is already being seriously discussed in states like Tennessee, even if it has yet to pass.

There would be a number of benefits to this policy. To begin with, it’s the right thing to do. There are no women having “virgin births” in 2021. There is always a man involved and it would be morally wrong for his child to be killed without his consent. How does a decent human being look a man in the eye and say that he shouldn’t be allowed a say in whether his own child lives or dies? Sure, the pro-abortion lobby tosses out that “it’s a woman’s body and no one else should have a say” propaganda, but everyone, including them, knows they’re peddling a lie. After all, don’t those same people properly say, “It takes two” if someone criticizes a woman for getting pregnant? Don’t they, quite correctly, demand that a man be forced to pay child support? The reality is there are THREE people involved in every abortion. The mother carrying the baby, the father who impregnated her, and the child. It would be nice if the child got a vote on whether he was going to be torn to pieces and dumped in the garbage. In fact, you could probably make a better logical case for having a conservator looking after a baby’s interests in the womb than you could for having one manage the career of Britney Spears, but let’s take it a step at a time.

Now realistically, we don’t know exactly how this policy would play out in the real world. Would we constantly have dads vetoing abortions? Would it happen in only a small percentage of cases? It’s hard to say for sure, but whatever the case may be, a father has a responsibility to protect his children that he shouldn’t simply pass off to the woman he got pregnant. No man should be able to just say, “Well, it was her decision.” If you want to have your own child put down, then you should have to sign on the dotted line and take responsibility for your part in it. That’s also “the right thing to do.”

Getting beyond that, whether you are pro-life or you just want abortion to be “safe, legal, and rare,” this should be a policy you support. Bringing a second person into the process who had to sign off on aborting a child would lead to fewer abortions almost by default. It would slow the process down. It would require more paperwork. It would require more difficult conversations between the father and mother. That would be bad news for organizations like Planned Parenthood that see dead babies as nothing more than a cash cow, but it would be good news for anyone who genuinely wants to see fewer abortions.

As an extra added bonus, it’s even possible that it would lead to less promiscuity and more marriage in our society. It’s one thing to have a one-night stand with a guy you meet on Tinder today and it would be another if you knew that if he got you pregnant, there was a possibility you MIGHT actually have to have the baby, no matter what anyone said beforehand. You know those stories would pop up in the media. Tommy and Jessica met on a dating website, and both agreed they’d abort the baby if Jessica got pregnant. Then, Jessica did get pregnant, but Tommy had an attack of conscience. Cut to Jessica with a big belly and a sad face in an article quoting a half dozen angry feminists about how awful it is for a man to have a say in what happens to his own child.

Ultimately, even if SCOTUS strikes down Roe v. Wade one day, it’s just going to mean that the abortion issue will be kicked back to the states. In other words, abortion mills in states like New York, California, and Oregon will still be slaughtering children for fun and profit on a regular basis. Can pro-lifers convince them that what they’re doing is monstrous? Maybe, although it took a Civil War to put an end to a lesser evil like slavery, so it’s hard to be hopeful about our prospects of talking liberal states out of abortion in the foreseeable future. However, if Red States across the nation moved to establish the rights of fathers when it came to abortion, that smaller change could have a much better chance of spreading to liberal states in time than getting rid of abortion altogether. That could mean that the lives of a lot of children could ultimately be saved. So, if we want to do what we can to save children’s lives, other than trying to get the SCOTUS to overturn Roe v. Wade, this could be one of our best options.  

---