Common Sense

Roe is predicated upon the right of a pregnant woman to "privacy" in determining the outcome of her pregnancy but not her right to extend the boundaries of "privacy" to include the forced economic and legal sanctions of her dissenting husband or partner should she decide to carry the pregnancy to term. Roe states that in the absence of universal agreement by theologians, philosophers, physicians, and legal experts regarding the issue of when or whether the life present in the womb is entitled to protection it is impermissible for one religious-philosophical-medical-legal viewpoint to trump any other during the first two trimesters. Therefore, the Court reasoned, the best way to deal with the controversy is to leave the decision regarding the outcome of the pregnancy in the hands of the mother in the first and second trimesters.

The Court also declares that in the third trimester a state’s "legitimate interest" in the life of the fetus may permit it to restrict abortion. The rationale behind the third trimester qualification rests upon the Court’s determination that viable human life --- capable of meaningful existence outside the womb --- may be cause for legislation that severely restricts a woman’s right to choose abortion in cases where no serious danger to the life or health of the mother exists. Prior to the third trimester the fetus possesses no constitutional rights and only in the third trimester does it (in theory) lay claim to any.

How then can a woman or the state force an unwilling father to assume the unwanted responsibility for a (future) child he does not wish to accept when the highest court in the land has determined that the existence of a non-viable fetus carries no similar responsibility for the one party vested with the sole ability to determine the outcome of the pregnancy? A pregnant woman can decide to have an abortion for any reason, including her "mental health"; yet no one has stepped forward to answer the question of why an individual medical decision covered by Roe would necessarily exclude men from determining that their "mental health" might lead some fathers to forego accepting the unwanted responsibility for a (future) child.

A father’s exercise of his right to privacy in this realm, based upon his mental health well-being, would not preclude the mother from exercising her unrestricted right to determine the outcome of the pregnancy. But in countless debates one encounters reproductive hegemonists who incoherently posit that "for any reason" means that one sex may enjoy a privilege far exceeding medical decisions to include the forced economic and mental health sanctions on the other sex.

Reproductive hegemonists, incredible as it may seem, declare that to restrict or abolish abortion on demand "for any reason" would amount to a return to reproductive slavery for women yet strive to find endless excuses for declaring that reproductive slavery is a moral and legal requirement for men. Those reproductive hegemonists who would deny all men the right to independently determine their own reproductive destinies invariably resort to pro-life arguments in order to justify their egregious legal and moral double-standard!

That men-only reproductive slavery is currently a legal requirement is indisputable; fair-minded people of all persuasions recognize that men who avoid unwanted parental requirements prior to viability are no more reprehensible morally than are women who exercise the same choice by every means allowed them. That men are legally entitled to equal protection in the matter of reproductive rights is also indisputable.