Should Men be Able to Chose Abortion?

Comicaze247 said:

It's because a woman can only have so many in her lifetime that she can form a bond with a child before it's even born. It's in a woman's biology to do so. So a severance of that bond, even if mentally intentional, is biologically devastating (on varying levels), and can therefore, not be avoided.
But because a man can continuously "have babies" if he wanted to, he's not biologically set to form an immediate bond. So IMO, any bond that a man has with his unborn child is a lot more psychologically and socially constructed.

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I'm sure there's some truth in that, but I don't think it's as pronounced as you're making out. I knew one girl at school who didn't even know she was pregnant until she went into labour (she was quite heavy to start with, in case you were wondering how on Earth she couldn't notice).
So I think it may be more psychological than chemical for women too.

LuisDantas said:

With all due respect, I'm scared at the idea of just glossing over a man's feelings about his offspring like that.

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I'm sorry for any man who's made unhappy by the decisions of his partner, and I would hope that in an ongoing relationship the couple would have enough of a relationship to be able to discuss it together. But ultimately, no man has a right to decide that a woman will or will not have an abortion. It's her decision.

Easy answer, no. I think I woman should have the final say in regards to her body.

However, I don't believe that a woman is only caring for HER body when pregnant and for those fathers that genuinely want to be fathers...I believe that right should be theirs.

How often this proves practical irl is beyond me. I've been fortunate and haven't found myself in such a position.

Sunstone said:

How much say, if any, should a man have in a woman's reproductive decisions? Assuming, of course, that the man is the woman's sexual partner.

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If, and only if, it is teh father?

IMHO, if he wants the women to abort and she refuses, which is well within her rights of course, the man should not have to pay child support.

If he wants the baby and she doesn't, well, that I am undecided on ATM.

AxisMundi said:

If, and only if, it is teh father?

IMHO, if he wants the women to abort and she refuses, which is well within her rights of course, the man should not have to pay child support.

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You do realize how easy it would be for a system like that to be abused right? All it would take is for any man to say "well I never wanted the child to begin with." and they would instantly be off the hook for paying child support. I agree with you in theory axis, but in practice such a policy would be so easily abused that child support could be damn near impossible for a woman to obtain.

Even if it could be made to work, what would you do in circumstances where the baby is the result of the man having forced himself upon her, either through coercion or physical force? I don't think such a man should be given a loophole for getting out of paying child support.

Ultimately the decision has to lie with the woman. If the man gets any legal say in whether or not a woman gets an abortion it would cause way too many problems. What would happen if the man wanted her to get an abortion but the woman didn't want one? Or if a woman wanted an abortion but the man DIDN'T want her to get one?

Yes either way a side loses. So considering the fact that women go through far more with childbirth and pregnancy and abortion than men do and the fact that it's her body the child is growing in I believe the woman should get the final say.

It's ultimately the woman's decision. However, if a man sleeps with a woman who wouldn't include him in such a decision, then he's probably not very interested in taking part in it anyway.

Sunstone said:

How much say, if any, should a man have in a woman's reproductive decisions? Assuming, of course, that the man is the woman's sexual partner.

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None. In the same way that a wife can't stop her husband from getting a vasectomy.

Absolutely not even if they have been together for years and are married, the reason being there is way too much potential for abusers to use this to victimize women. I do kind of agree with the child support thing, but not the get an abortion or no child support because that is up for abuse as well. More like Judges need to be more sane when considering child support because whoever doesn't have custody, man or woman is at the whim of the judge.

MoonWater said:

You do realize how easy it would be for a system like that to be abused right? All it would take is for any man to say "well I never wanted the child to begin with." and they would instantly be off the hook for paying child support. I agree with you in theory axis, but in practice such a policy would be so easily abused that child support could be damn near impossible for a woman to obtain.

Even if it could be made to work, what would you do in circumstances where the baby is the result of the man having forced himself upon her, either through coercion or physical force? I don't think such a man should be given a loophole for getting out of paying child support.

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There is no such thing as a perfect system that cannot, or will not, have the potential for abuse.

And I was unaware that rapists payted child support.

Baydwin said:

I'm sure there's some truth in that, but I don't think it's as pronounced as you're making out. I knew one girl at school who didn't even know she was pregnant until she went into labour (she was quite heavy to start with, in case you were wondering how on Earth she couldn't notice).
So I think it may be more psychological than chemical for women too.

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(This could take me into a whole different debate entirely, lol)
That's one of the problems I have with society today. We've all been so removed from nature, that we ignore our instincts. If she had been more in touch with what her body is telling her, she would have noticed the change in her moods, appetite, menstrual cycle, etc., and would have suspected something.
Just because we aren't aware of something does not mean that it's not affecting us.

Shadow Wolf said:

I want to say it should be up to the woman entirely, but if the father really wants the child, then it would be very selfish of the woman to deny him that.

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But that's where the problem lies. It would also be very selfish of the man to have his wife go through months of mood swings, cravings, morning sickness, loss of bladder control, and possibly death while giving birth, when she didn't want to.

Shadow Wolf said:

I want to say it should be up to the woman entirely, but if the father really wants the child, then it would be very selfish of the woman to deny him that.

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If the man really wants her to have an abortion, would it be very selfish of the woman to deny him that?

Smoke said:

If the man really wants her to have an abortion, would it be very selfish of the woman to deny him that?

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No, because he can just walk away.

I agree with Madhuri. There is no simetry here.

I think the father of the baby should have a say in if it lives, but cannot decide to kill it. I feel the mother shouldn't be able to kill it either, but since she can, we should at least let the father have some say, since it's his child too.

Madhuri said:

No, because he can just walk away.

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No he can't. If she gives birth, he can be forced to pay child support for eighteen years.

Abortion is a sugrical procedure that a woman shouldn't have to be forced to do by a man. It's her body and I don't believe a man should have the right to make that decision. Just like I believe a woman should not have the right to decide how a male penis should look (circumcision), that desicion should always be a man's.

Smoke said:

No he can't. If she gives birth, he can be forced to pay child support for eighteen years.

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I don't know how strict the system is in America. I know plenty of men who walk out and never pay a cent. It defintiely depends on the country you are in then. You go to many places in the world and the man can impregnate many women and leave them all without having any responsibilities. Happens all the time. When I lived in India, our cleaner lady had two little kids and was raising them alone because her husband, after taking her dowry and sticking around briefly decided he wanted out. He went to another village and married another girl and got a new dowry.

Comicaze247 said:

I'm pretty much making generalizations. In comparison to the amount of emotional trauma women go through with abortions, men suffer relatively nothing.

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I know a grown man who, after a couple of beers, will still break down and cry about the child of his that he feels he helped kill. He is tormented by grief and guilt because thirty years ago he paid for his college girlfriend to have an abortion. Only after he became a father a decade later, did he truly realize what he had done. His wife at the time refused to have more children. They had tried desperately for years for her to conceive, and when she finally did, she poured all her attention and affection into this one child and refused to have any more.

You know why it was so difficult for her to conceive in the first place? It was because she had used abortion as birth control when she was a teenager and young adult. She had had at least three abortions and the scarring of her uterus was so severe that she it took her ten years to be able to carry one baby to term.

An aside note - she felt so guilty about all those abortions that she fixated on her only child, so much so that this fixation has wrecked several marriages. Her husbands can't deal with the unbalanced attention that she gives her only child. And the child? All I can say is that I hope he turns out OK - but he's been raised in an unrealistic setting. It's going to be a shock to him when he realizes that the world doesn't revolve around him. And furthermore - he's had to deal with his mother's multiple marriages and drama.

So now you have the irony of a man who wanted to have two or three kids, a child he helped abort, a wife who had had numerous abortions who ten years later realizes that she desperately wants a baby, and the irony that once she finally conceives successfully, she refuses to have more children, and a man who realizes too late that he DID have the opportunity to have more children - but he threw that opportunity, and that child, away.

Sad.

Abortion can leave a trail of emotional damage - one that can impact several generations.