October 26, 2009
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Can a Man Be Pro-Choice?
A man has been arrested on “suspicion of murder for the death of an unborn child believed to be his.”
The woman had “suspicious circumstances of a miscarriage.” Here is the link: Link
Finally, we have an option for men to end an unwanted pregnancy. After all, it is his sperm.
I am sure whatever happened to the woman was no more damaging that a typical abortion.
As long as the woman is not injured, do you support a man’s right to choose?
Comments (95)
No.
Can a man be pro-choice? Yes. Should he have a say in whether a particular woman gets an abortion or not? No.
I think it should be something they both choose together maybe?
I think abortion should be a woman’s choice, it’s her body.
If the guy didn’t take the initiative to wear a condom, why should he be allowed to go against the woman’s wishes on how she’d like to deal with the baby.
Not in this manner. But my biggest complaint with this is legal:
If they are calling it murder, that evidences that the state considers the unborn child a “person.” I would like to know the age of the foetus. And what state this was.
It is solely a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy. As a pro-choice man, I realize that pro-choice is the only reasonable position for a man to take, as it is not his body. Should he have a say? Perhaps, but ultimately the choice is that of the person carrying the baby.
I think if the man doesn’t want the baby and the women does he shouldn’t have to pay child support.
I wonder if anyone else even read what you wrote?
no never hum thiss is awful.
Huh. He should’ve just used a trojan.
I don’t think that was his ultimate decision, though. He’s not a sea horse.
@breaking_expectations -
I don’t believe we were told if he used protection or if the woman was on birth control.
You know they aren’t 100% right?
Yes. I am Pro-Choice.
This man was not just pro-choice though, he is *accused* of taking matters into his own hands. This will be an interesting case to follow.
@breaking_expectations - so why isn’t it equally the womens fault for not taking birth controll? if the man doens’t want the baby and a women does I don’t think he should have to pay child support either. If the women gets to murder a mans baby without his permission then why should he pay child support if he doesn’t want the baby.
It wasn’t his body, so it wasn’t his choice. If he forcibly aborted the fetus without the consent of his wife, then that is assault.
A man can choose to wear a condom.
Of course. Why wouldn’t I?
if by pro-choice you mean that he believes in a woman‘s right to choose whether or not to abort her unborn child.
doesn’t mean that he gets any say in what happens to the fetus.
augh, so technical.
I guess he CAN be pro-choice, but should he have a say and decide whether the baby is aborted? Hell no.
I’m against abortion, anyway, so…
he shouldn’t be charged for murder, though. that’s kind of ridiculous.
Well, no. As in, I’m pro-life, so it seems appalling to me either way.
Incidentally, the massively emotive terms ‘pro-life’ and ‘pro-choice’ really bug me. Why can’t we have pro- and anti- abortion?
what do you mean “a man’s right to choose?” once his seed is in the woman, the only option he should be allowed to choose is the TALK with her later. he should have NO final decision over her. i think i am not understanding this post. i read the story and here is what i get:
she: OMG, i’m pregnant!
he: OMG! have an abortion!
she: NO!!!!
he: *delivers a swift punch to her stomach….*
@RaVnR - I’ve wondered that on more than one occasion myself.
@mathematicalbagpiper - I agree with this.
The article doesn’t say whether the woman was cooperating with this or not. Yes, a man can be pro-choice, but since THEY are not the ones who would be going through a pregnancy OR carrying the guilt and judgment of having an abortion, the choice is HERS, not his.
@jupiter312 - apparently here it is murder.
Wow, are you just trying to piss roughly half the population off? Pro-choice or pro-life no man has the right to force a woman to do ANYTHING with her body she doesn’t want to do.
Yah, a man does have the right to be pro-choice.
He can choose to keep his pants on. Or keep his pants off.
He can choose to wear a condom. Or not to.
@RaVnR - I think it depends on how far along the fetus is. Since this one was so close to the end of the first trimester, I’d consider it a life.
As someone above mentioned, if he didn’t want the baby, he should’ve taken precautions by wearing a condom or abstaining.
However, it does bother me when a woman terminates a pregnancy and the father has no choice in the matter. Sure, I understand that it’s her body and her choice and all that – I get it. But what if the father wants to keep the baby and raise it? He doesn’t get a say.
Yes, yes he can.
Yes, men can be pro choice. Does he have the right to tell the woman what to do with her body? No.
a man can be pro-choice, but I don’t think he has the right to make that decision to abort on his own – without consent of the mother and/or a doctor.
just like I don’t think a woman should be allowed to abort without consent from the father (if he cares enough to be present.)
its murky water that I hope I’ll never have to deal with.
On a related note: http://charity333.xanga.com/
There is a very poignant story told by a young man who discovered the hard way that a man has no say in the matter of abortion.
The argument so often put forward, that it is a woman’s choice because it is her body, always causes me to wonder: what about the baby’s body? Were I to take a DNA sample from any part of the mother’s body, and then a DNA sample from the baby, the two would not be identical. While the body undergoing pregnancy is quite obviously under the jurisdiction of the woman/mother, the body carried within her is a different issue entirely. Does not the baby’s body belong to the baby and, being that the baby cannot yet speak for or defend his or herself, is it not the responsibility for others to speak up for them? What about the baby’s rights?
To address Dan’s question directly, I do not support a man’s right to choose, because I believe that abortion is wrong. However, I am in support of men having at least some say in the matter. Also, the question is posed firstly with “As long as the woman was not injured…” I must say that of the women I have spoken to or met personally who have undergone an abortion, I have yet to encounter one who was not deeply wounded by the experience, even decades after the fact. Women are hurt, perhaps not always physically, by abortion. But even beyond this, what about the harm done to the baby? Injury is one thing; death is something else entirely. We have to remember that with abortion, a living human being dies. We have to remember that two living people enter a clinic, and only one walks out.
So I agree with the man’s arrest on the charge of murder.
I think this sort of highlights how abortion is almost always wrong.
Is it the woman’s body? Yes. Was it her choice to have sex/use protection/etc.? Yes.
None of these should effect the child. I’m not trying to generalize women who get abortions, but I know many do because they are not prepared for a child. And I just don’t see how that is the kid’s fault.
The article tells very little information about this case, hardly any more than what you have already told us.
So, to answer your question, “As long as the woman was not injured, do you support a man’s right to choose?”
I do think he has the right to choose whether he wants a kid or not, but it is not his choice whether his wife/girlfriend has an abortion. If his wife or girlfriend wants to keep the kid, that’s her decision.
(i’m pro-choice)
@Ancient_Scribe - I completely agree with you.:)
You sure get a lot of use out of that photo. How many posts has it been in now?
@Ancient_Scribe - are you a vegetarian?
@emberfly_layouts - Not at all, but thank you for asking!
@Ancient_Scribe - So it’s okay to slaughter millions of helpless pigs, chickens, turkeys, cows, etc. every day, but it’s not okay to kill a small growth in a woman’s body?
On a mostly unrelated note, and just to stir up shit, I think there is a major double standard about men and condoms.
Somehow it is believed that men are hornier than women, yet that it should be his responsibility to use a condom. Hint: it takes at least 2 people to have sex!!
I own condoms. I hate using them. I am on the pill, but nothing is 100% effective. Every single time my boyfriend and I have sex, we are both very very aware of that. Recently I was on antibiotics, and we used a condom one time out of 8 that we had sex during that week. 3 other times he pulled out, and the other half of the time we just had sex like normal. Antibiotics may reduce effectiveness of oral birth control.
That said, when I woke up this morning wondering if I’d get my period (p.s. I did!) I knew that it was my decision, at least as much as his, to do something as dumb as only use a condom 1 in 8 times. I knew that whatever happened and whatever decision had to be made, it would be a mutual decision but ultimately my responsibility at least as much as his.
If you are going to have sex, no matter what your gender, you need to accept responsibility for what goes on. Before during and after.
@ItsWhatEyeKnow - Agreed.
He doesn’t deserve to destroy it without her consent. It’s her body, that’s a lot more important than sperm. I do, however, think the woman should talk to the man and consider his feelings. But it all boils down to her choice.
Absolutely not. The man has the choice to contribute sperm, and after that it’s completely up to the disgression of the woman. Men have control over their bodies, as women have control over their bodies.
This is an interesting question because judging from the first page, people are saying that a man should wear a condom if he doesn’t want a kid. Condoms can fail – they aren’t foolproof.
That being said, the man has no obligation to a baby, even if it is biologically his. A man who isn’t married to the woman he has impregnated doesn’t have to stick around… actually, even if they are married, the man can always divorce his wife. Technically, his choice to leave the mother with the child is a choice to not have a child. The child may share his DNA, but there is no way the mother could FORCE the man to stay and be a father. The pregnancy itself has no physiological effect on the dad, and that’s why it is the mother’s choice to have an abortion.
I’m neither endorsing a pro-life or pro-choice stance – that’s just the way I see it.
@raspberryjade -
Hi, my name is Julia and I had an abortion. I am emotional scar/damage free.
Now you know one.
@snowboardnmom - they may have control over their own bodies, but do they have control over the baby’s life?
@RaVnR - It is a conundrum: Women are allowed to abort their babies, but if a fetus dies do to violence it is treated like a human life was lost. I think it should make abortion proponents think twice about their position of this subject.
If she wanted the baby and he didn’t,all he had to do was sign away his parental rights.
@emberfly_layouts - There is a vast, vast difference between a chicken, a pig, or any livestock raised for human consumption, and a human being. Were animals of equal worth to human beings, then there would be nothing wrong with slavery, murder, cannibalism, etc. Also, that “growth” in a woman’s body is more than a “growth;” it is the beginning of a human life. You, me and everyone commenting here on Xanga at one point was what you refer to as a mere growth (whereas an entire third of my generation never even saw Xanga), as though it were a mole or a cancer to be cut out and disposed of. If it is merely “a growth,” then humankind truly is a disease and we are worth far less than any animal. Happily, this is not the case.
Legally, the fetus can be aborted by the mother because the fetus is in her body. The “right to privacy” would not apply to the man because his body is not involved.
Mind you, I said “legally”. This has nothing to do with my personal opinions.
The point is that it’s a womans body. Not that it’s her cells.
Men dont have a right to womens bodies.
However, I support being able to sign away your rights if you didnt want to have the child.
A man can be pro-choice meaning he supports a woman’s right to have an abortion. However, it’s wrong to force someone to have an abortion/not have an abortion no matter what the circumstances.
@the_evil_tamica - You’re wrong. A man does have an obligation to a child he fathers but doesn’t want, in the form of child support. 18 years’ worth of partially-docked pay… nice.
@JabezPrayer2009 - You’re either being erroneous or incomplete or both. Not all states treat foetuses this way, and not at all stages of pregnancy either. Usually it is only after the point at which an abortion in that state would be legal. At least in that sense they’re mostly consistent. Please elaborate what the heck you mean?
@RaVnR - Whoops, forgot about that. Yeah, discount what I said.
here’s another question: if woman can be pro-choice (that is, it’s there body and they can do what they want with it) should suicide be illegal?
@ItsWhatEyeKnow - Agreed.
Dan, the wording of your question was terrible in the title. Why would it matter if a man has an opinion…God forbid.
I have a strong belief that if a woman wants to get an abortion, she should discuss it with the man that impregnated her. In the instance of rape or if the man is not in the woman’s life any more, then she can make the decision herself.
However, to answer your question, a man can be pro-choice. Since the child is half his DNA, he has just as much a right as the woman to choose to abort it or not.
NO WAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i would rather shoot myself in the foot then let a man “who knocked me up” take the right to kill an unborn child that sick!
Of course he does. He has the fists, he should use that if she doesn’t have enough money for an abortion, or get a clothing hanger.
I’M JOKING!
If the woman isn’t sure if she could keep it, the man has a right in the decision-making. After all, he helped make the…thing..
Why the hell is it considered “murder”? That’s like..calling an omelete a “genocide”. Wtf?
@velvetrevolverchick87 - Thank you! Someone with brains. You took the words right before I properly formed them in my mind!
- Kunoichi
The article doesn’t state what happened but I get the sense that in this case the man did something violent to the woman to induce the miscarriage, such as shoving her down the stairs or something. Although I agree with you I don’t know if that is such a great jumping off point for this question. Even from a pro-life perspective, I think the man – despite having some rights and say – still has a secondary say, the primaries being affected are the mother and child. Not being the one to actually carry the life, I consider a man to always be secondary in these questions, IMO, unless he is himself the unborn child. A woman has no right to murder her unborn child unless her life is in grave danger, and frankly, a man has even less so.
they say condoms are effective…90% of the time? that still leaves that 10%….
yeah but not if he’s violating someone else’s body…
@breaking_expectations - abortion is not about a woman’s body. it is about the baby in her body.
@supsoo - I honestly believe that up until a certain point, the “baby” is just cells.
@saintvi - And a woman can choose to take birth control or abstain.
Its foolish to think that just because a person is in another persons body they have no rights.
Its not just her body.
Its not just her baby.
@KrazeeKunoichi009 -
No calling an omelet genocide would imply that a chicken is worth as much as a human.
So unless you eat people too, its not the same.
He should have a choice if he is to be held responsible for it. What I mean is, if the chick wants the baby and keeps it against his will, then all the responsibility should be on her and she shouldn’t be feeling sorry for herself and guilt-tripping him etc etc. I mean, what if it was the other way around somehow. Some dude was an idiot and didn’t take his birth control correctly and he got knocked up and was like, well, i want the baby and you were like, well, i’m not ready for one. Would you want to be basically FORCED to have a kid against your will because of your bf being irresponsible? How is that fair? I mean I can see how it would be difficult if you accidently got knocked up and he didn’t want it and wanted you to abort it but that was against your values and you just couldn’t bring yourself to do it. I wouldn’t blame him for leaving the girl either. IDK basically stupid people just shouldn’t have sex.
No
Men ought to be involved in decisions regarding the continuation or termination of pregnancy but ultimately, no he should not have the say
I think that the man in the situation should most definitely have a choice in the matter if he so desires. When it boils right down to it, the woman is the one who has to go through the emotional and physical aspects of pregnancy (and possibly the emotional and physical aspects of abortion) and I believe it should be her final choice, but if the man is significantly involved, he should definitely have his opinion be heard.
@AllthePerfect_Words - I dunno man, I like chickens more than people..LOL
@KrazeeKunoichi009 - LMAO!
@KrazeeKunoichi009 - Much better raising a chicken then a rotten snot nose little booger. At least then we could chop em up and eat em!
@ChevalierSeingal@datingish - Yeah, you do that to some teenager and they call you a “murderer”.
PSSHHT.
LOL
@KrazeeKunoichi009 - Haha! That’s almost as silly as the theory of humans having a soul that goes to heaven or hell when they die but animals don’t. lol
baseball bat and a ski mask
@ChevalierSeingal@datingish - Yeah, seriously, wtf? Unless all animals go to purgatory?
@KrazeeKunoichi009 - lmao! What will the religious think of next in an attempt to control and manipulate???
He can be pro anything he wants to be but no one should be allowed to kill their child. Man or woman.
no, but then again, I don’t support the womans choice to have an abortion either. I believe the soul enters the body at the moment of conception.
@bukeshow Just because the woman may have reasons, be it religion or seeing the fetus as a life she doesn’t want to take, to keep the baby I don’t think the man should get out of helping her out. Just because he doesn’t agree with her doesn’t mean it isn’t his problem. They both did the crime, but her body does the time, so it is ultimatley her decision and he has to support it.
a man has the right to an opinion on the matter. but it is ultimately a woman’s decision, since the man doesn’t feel the effects to the extent that the woman does. i think a woman should talk about both options with the father, though. i tried to do this and the father of my baby was too tired from spending the night with one of my “friends”. so i didn’t care much for his opinion after that. and he didn’t try to talk to me about either. so i made my decision to keep my baby. he didn’t like it, and he doesn’t believe he should have to pay child support. so even though he was one of my best friends beforehand, now i have to take him to court and force him to take responsibility for her.
@bukeshow - that’s what my baby’s father thinks too. thankfully, the state agrees that men shouldn’t be able to impregnate women and then leave them to take care of the children alone. a man doesn’t have to deal with the effects of abortion and if the woman has the baby all he has to do is send a check monthly. he still gets out of the responsibility of being a father. which i think makes him less of a man and more of a scared little boy.
Interesting….I’m not a 100% on what my final opinion though is.
He should have some say in deciding whether or not to become a father, but physically assaulting someone to the point they miscarry is carrying things too far. Now, if he does want to be a father, and it is the woman who is deciding to abort–regardless of his feelings—what then? Should she have the baby–don’t men have some rights here?
@kleptos_get_it_free - but what if he wants the baby and the woman decides on an abortion—he’s not effected?
@foxes_have_holes - suicide IS illegal.
Yes, because it’s a child, his child (as long as it is his child.) I don’t believe in all that “her body” business, because it’s another life, not hers, so in that sense, the man has just as much say.
However, he can’t exactly force the lady to abort it or not, so I am not sure how that can be monitored.
There was a story just today in the paper about the father-of-3 who poisoned more than one drink (with the intention of inducing a miscarriage) of his lover’s who was pregnant with his baby because he thought the baby would ruin his family life, what with him being already married.
@dlm0908 - i wasn’t saying that. i think a woman should talk it through with the man either way.
and i said that the man is much LESS affected than the woman in both cases. i mean, he doesn’t go through an abortion or the effects of it after having one, and he doesn’t carry a baby for 9 months and take care of it for the rest of his life (unless he decides to be involved with it)
but the man should be consulted either way. i tried to do that-my baby’s father is just an asshole.
@kleptos_get_it_free - I figured as much, but just want to state publicly there are some baby daddies who actually become good fathers.
Sorry yours is a butthead! How old is the little one? Boy? Girl? I’m a momma myself–Isabella, 4.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe this is fact:
Man has no legal rights over the fetus until a certain month (I think), since Woman can still terminate up to a certain month. But if Woman terminates w/in allotted time, Man really has no legal standing to object. But yet if Woman decides to carry fetus to term, Man still has no say over it but will have to financially support baby. But if Man tries to abort fetus in some way (still w/in the allotted time for a legal abortion), Man is committing “murder” but Woman would not be…
Strange world we live in ain’t it?
And yes, I’m actually pro-choice.
@kleptos_get_it_free - yes, but SHOULD it be? If we have the rights on our body, how can the government tell us whether or not life flows through it?
I don’t support abortion, period.
Well, even if it is his sperm, it’s still her body, so it’s more up to the woman than the man.
If he doesn’t want it, he can walk away. If she doesn’t want it, so can she. If she wants it, she keeps it- it doesn’t have to have anything to do with him. The only place this gets messy is when he wants it and she doesn’t, and even she can’t deny that he has the right. She can have it and walk away if he’s ready to take on that responsibility.
It might be his sperm, but it is not his body. So, no. If it were him that were pregnant and he wanted to abort the pregnancy, that’s his decision.
But, if he made the woman miscarry and she had no idea what was going on the whole time, that’s poisoning (since it would be obvious if he punched or kicked her in the stomach and then she miscarried, there’d be no suspicion about it, they’d know). Her. Not just the unborn child. And if he did something wrong, she might have ended up dead, too. Or with problems.
The thing that makes abortions safe right now in the US, at least as safe as they are, is that they happen in hospitals and clinics, places where if there are complications or if things look like they aren’t going well, they can likely do something about it.
Now, I don’t know if when you are given a medication such as a pill or whatnot to cause a miscarriage (which is one way you can abort, I think), if they send you home rather than monitor you in the clinic or hospital. But, if they do send you home, you are at least aware of what is going to happen to you so that if you think something is going weird about it, or if you are starting to actually HAVE the miscarriage, you can get to the hospital in case you need medical attention.
Also, this was done apparently (though that link doesn’t specify a lot of information, but since they didn’t arrest the mother and since it was just the man who they think caused it and they are “suspicious” of it and do not KNOW), without the woman’s knowledge. Not just without her consent, but without her knowledge.
I always feel that something like this should be something you talk about with the people immediately involved. Meaning, if the woman is going to get an abortion, she should talk to the father about it. Or whom she thinks the father is. That does not mean he gets the final decision, because ultimately it is her body and she is the one that is going to have to carry the child and give birth to it, not him. A lot more complications go into it for the woman carrying than for the man who helped cause the pregnancy, especially if they are not married. But, no matter the situation, men can just walk away in the end if they want to. There are ways to get around court-ordered child support, too, men do it all the time. Not that women don’t when they aren’t the custodial parent.
I could go on and on all day on it, but I won’t. :p My answer to the question is no. And he also did this in a very irresponsible and dangerous way. Just because nothing bad happened to the woman, apparently, doesn’t mean that it could not have. He’s lucky that it didn’t end in double murder charges, with the woman having accidentally died as well.
It is a man’s right to state his opinion as much as it is for a woman. I do not, on the other hand, believe that a man can tell a woman what to do with her body. Also, with this opinion being stated, no woman should chose to have a baby to trap a man physically and/or financially. If a man tells his SO “I don’t want you to have this child,” that woman should take that, knowing that she will never has his support (or his money), leave him, and deicide for herself is she wants to have that child.
At least that’s my opinion. Pro-choice.