Equal Rights?

Encouraged by the very civil conversation in my previous post, here’s another thing that’s been puzzling me.

When a couple has a baby, they refer to it as “our child”. This seems like almost too obvious a point to make. The law recognises that it’s their joint responsibility – to take one example, if there’s a custody battle, both parents are potential custodians.

Yet a pro-choice supporter argues for “a woman’s right to choose”, thereby excluding the contributor of 50% of the genetic material from the decision. So in their thinking, at some point between conception and birth, control of the child has passed from being exclusively the mother’s to being both parents’.

My questions are: when does that happen? And why?

Maybe the analogy is inexact but if control of something of value passes from one person to another, it must be either as the result of a payment, or as a free gift.

It seems to me that once conception has happened, the father has done all that he’s ever going to do in terms of contributing to the creation of what may eventually be called “their baby”. The mother hosts the sperm and egg, carries the foetus to term and gives birth in pain. The father does nothing else until that point (if, for the sake of argument, you leave out the giving of moral support and shopping for food cravings :-).

So I can’t see any extra contribution that he makes, in pro-life thinking, to turn the child from something under the mother’s control (the foetus) to something under their joint control (a born baby). So it’s not the result of a payment.

Yet it’s not also a free gift, because if it were, it could also be not given – and yet the law does not allow mothers to say to fathers, upon the birth of a child, “Sorry, I’m keeping this one for myself, and you have no redress”. (Or does it?)

Surely, therefore, the father’s interest in the result of their union is as strong at conception as it is just after birth, and should be recognised as such? So abortion should be a joint decision, and pro-choice advocates should be arguing for “the mother’s and father’s right to choose”?

(For the sake of argument, let’s look at the principle, and leave aside the practical matter of what would happen if they disagreed.)

20 thoughts on “Equal Rights?

  1. Stating it as “the mother’s right to choose” avoids the problem that might arise if the mother would like to terminate and the father – for whatever reason – is “unavailable” to decide with her.

    To follow your analogy in terms of property exchanging hands: the sperm is passed from the father to the mother as a free gift. The fact that the sperm happens to fertilize an egg and turn into a foetus and later potentially a mini-human are no longer the father’s concern. Unless both “contractants” agree that it will be their joint concern.

    If and when they both agree that it’s their joint concern, then the choice of whether or not to terminate the pregnancy is theirs. If they don’t agree, or one of them is absent or if it turns out after a while they don’t agree anymore, the contractant with the result inside them (presumably the mother ;-)) should be able to decide on her own what she wants to do.

    The reason we (I am very pro-choice) write it as “the mother’s decision” is thus two-fold: 1) it’s pretty clear who and where the mother is – the foetus is inside her – the father is a bit more tricky and 2) the foetus is for all practical purposes a harmful parasite to the mother during the nine months between conception and potential birth and since it’s the mother’s body, she should be allowed to decide how the parasite is removed, by birth or by abortion.

    Before birth, mammals (and marsupials) are parasites grown out of sperm happening to be in the area while an egg is passing through. The avian or reptilian way is a bit “fairer” (though that really is not the right word – I don’t think the mammalian way is “unfair” in any way, it’s just the way evolution turned out – advantages, disadvantages, the usual dance) where both parents put their genetic material together outside each others’ bodies and the result is not attached to either of them in a parasitical way.

  2. The law recognises that it’s their joint responsibility – to take one example, if there’s a custody battle, both parents are potential custodians.

    A little bird (Nadya, actually) once told me that at least in the Netherlands, in the case of a custody battle, almost always the child will be ‘given’ to the mother. See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fathers%27_rights_movement . Which is interesting in a way – it seems like the law assumes that a mother can indeed say “sorry, keeping this one myself”.

  3. Stating it as “the mother’s right to choose” avoids the problem that might arise if the mother would like to terminate and the father – for whatever reason – is “unavailable” to decide with her.

    True – let’s assume for the sake of argument, that he is.

    If your view is true, then by what logic does the born baby ever become “our baby”? Are you suggesting that the turning of “my foetus” into “our baby” is (or should be) something solely in the gift of the mother? Because, as you will know, currently that’s not the view of the law. (Of course, that doesn’t stop it being your view!)

    Also, presumably a consequence of your “parasite” position is that you support unrestricted abortion for any reason right up until the point of birth? If that’s so, how do you deal logically with the situation where, at the time of birth, the baby’s physical geographic location in 3D space defines its ontological (sorry to use a long word; I don’t know of a shorter one with the same meaning – hopefully you can find it in a English-Danish dictionary!) value? I.e. inside womb – can be aborted; outside womb – child to be protected.

    Gerv

  4. Gerv,

    Very insightful… I think it’s another one of those double-standard issues that pro-choice folks can’t fully explain away (despite attempts like Philip’s). You see it in the movies and TV and society in general. If the intent is to follow through with child birth, the mother is apt to refer to the child as a child or baby the entire time. If the intent is to “terminate the pregnancy” or justify abortion, that’s seemingly the only time that words like “tissue”, “fetus”, or in Philip’s case “parasite” get used.

    Carry on…

  5. In abstract, I believe in a couple’s right to choose — their act caused the pregnancy, they are jointly responsible for the upbringing. It’s their decision. Jointly.

    However, that act doesn’t give the father any extra rights over the mother, particularly rights to cause risks to her body.

    However a pregnancy ends, it involves a small risk to the long-term health of the mother. As it is the mother’s body and I believe that she alone has the right to accept or reject risks to her own health then I conclude that, practically, we must have a mother’s right to choose and not a couple’s right to choose.

  6. Take the example of a gestational carrier which I think simplifies the argument. It makes it less about male and female and their genetic material, but about who’s carrying the baby.

    If there are medical risks (mental, physical) for terminating the pregnancy then I would support the carriers right to abort.

  7. Laws are a human construct, can change over time, and seem to try to “please” the majority of people most of the time. So, it is no surprise that there are people that don’t agree especially on a subject that is very controversial. I personally see subjects such as this as my own choice and it is my responsibility to know the person I am involved with well enough so I don’t find myself in a situation that is contrary to my own beliefs vs. just relying on law.

  8. Your mindset approaching this topic is off. Troubled pregnancies are not “Honey, let’s make a baby together” and God breathes another spark of life into a benevolent Universe unfolding as it should, but then things go all pear-shaped; rather, most are “OK, you can f*** me” but then a lot of unintended unreasoned consequences.

    Anyway, compelling a woman to go through pregnancy is simply monstrous, so it’s her decision. Sure the father has a strong interest; he can talk to her just as activists can show her gruesome pictures.

    I can see where you’re going with this, if the father wants the baby and the foetus presumably has an instinct for self-preservation, then it’s 2 against 1. But focus on the pregnancy. If the interests of others can outweigh your control over your body, then society SHOULD drag people with rare blood types and immune-system compatibility off the street to harvest parts of their livers and kidneys, to save lives for the greater good.

  9. It is kind of interesting that even if the man would like for the woman to have an abortion but she goes ahead and has a baby the man still has to pay alimony. Also, if the man wants for the woman to have the baby, the woman can still abort. Seems kind of unfair, but there don’t really seem to be totally fair options.

  10. Me again; I wrote that crazy post on the other article:

    I had this one solved a while ago too.

    The program/fetus/… is not alive yet. As such there isn’t a question of the father getting a choice to stop it or not; sometimes the mother doesn’t even get the choice. As it becomes alive (capable of sustaining itself, except in the case of humans where we don’t really know when that is and so take the easy way out and just say “when it is born”) it becomes aware of its surroundings and receives its parents. The child never becomes under “joint control” of the parents; it is the other way around: the parents become obligated to the child. The law terms this as “joint custody of the child” because laws are nearly always written in the terms of adults. However, the reasoning and consideration done over the outcome of any particular case always comes down to whatever is in the best interests of the child (now, sometimes courts get that wrong, but hey, every program has a bug).

  11. In many parts of the world (US in particular) a child is clearly more the mothers than the fathers (at least legally). Generally speaking a mother never looses custody of their child unless there is a high risk of danger to the child. A father can loose custody or visitation for many reasons including simply being “disrespectful” to the judge (silly example, but obviously says nothing about being a father).

    There is a growing movement (at least in the US) for “Fathers rights”. Though legally not much progress has been made, and doesn’t look like much will be made in the near future.

    It tends to take a long time for society to change it’s views on something. My guess is considering the raising divorce rate (more people growing up in homes with limited access to 1 parent), the next generation will be much more sympathetic to Fathers rights than before.

    People in a generation rarely change, but their actions often have profound impacts on the next generation.

  12. What follows is for the US. Things may be different in the UK.

    > to take one example, if there’s a custody battle, both parents are potential
    > custodians.

    But in practice, something extraordinary has to be going on for the father to get custody. If the parents are unmarried, it’s even less likely.

    In a similar vein, when Emma, Arlan, and I were checking out of the hospital she had to give written permission for me to even be able to see the birth certificate paperwork.

    > It seems to me that once conception has happened, the father has done all
    > that he’s ever going to do in terms of contributing to the creation of what
    > may eventually be called “their baby”.

    I’m having a hard time calling someone for whom that is their entire contribution a “father”. I suppose in a technical sense he is, but there’s a lot more that a father should be doing at this stage of the game. Financial and emotional support come to mind. I’m not sure why you’re dismissing “moral support” in that off-hand way, given that a woman’s state of mind during pregnancy is as important as anything else she does.

    > and yet the law does not allow mothers to say to fathers, upon the birth of a > child, “Sorry, I’m keeping this one for myself, and you have no redress”. (Or
    > does it?)

    It pretty much effectively does in the US. Especially if they’re not married to each other. The mother would have to be pretty seriously screwed up to not get custody of the child in that situation.

    > Surely, therefore, the father’s interest in the result of their union is as
    > strong at conception as it is just after birth

    This I can agree with. Of course in a lot of cases that end in abortions there’s not much interest either at conception or after birth.

    > So abortion should be a joint decision

    It usually is in functional families. Legislating that it always be is difficult; I’m having a hard time thinking of a system where one party or the other doesn’t get absolute veto power in some way.

    I do feel obligated to point out one other thing you didn’t mention. Childbirth is not only painful but hazardous. Things in developed countries are a whole lot better now than they used to be, but nevertheless about 1 in 10,000 childbirths ends fatally for the mother (as low as 0.7 in some socioeconomic groups in the US). I’m having a hard time finding statistics on non-fatal but permanent injuries. This risk of injury or death is something that the father is not subject to, and is a strong argument for the mother having more say in the matter than the father does.

    The above reasoning, for example, is why the traditional Jewish approach to contraception (dating back hundreds of years) is that while men are forbidden to use it (because of the “be fruitful and multiply” commandment), women are allowed to (since for them the risk to life overrides the commandment).

    As a footnote, in the year 2000 there were 853,485 legal induced abortions reported in the US, and 11 deaths related to these abortions (see http://www.cdc.gov/mmwR/preview/mmwrhtml/ss5309a1.htm). That’s at least a 5 times lower risk of a fatal outcome than for childbirth in the U.S. These are all averages, of course; it would be good to have data like this for cases when the outcome is non-fatal but is permanently crippling and to have the childbirth mortality data weighted by the age distribution of women who get abortions, so that the numbers can be compared more directly. But however you slice it, an abortion in the US is in general a lower risk than giving birth.

  13. I’m pro-file, however… I suspect it is because the couple have joint responsibility for the baby, but the mother has sole rights over her body.

  14. My impression of the Pro-Choicer perspective is that the baby does not exist as a separate entity until birth (or possibly independent viability). The fetus is simply part of the women’s body. Therefore the man has no more rights over the fetus than he would her arm.

  15. But as far as I can see, no-one has actually answered the question. Why does the transfer of responsibility happen? Stuart: are you suggesting that the father’s rights spring into being as the placenta separates?

    Also, “the fetus is simply part of the woman’s body” view is incompatible with the “parasite” view Philip used. Generally, biologically, something with different DNA is not considered part of the animal in question, and so the “parasite” view is, at least, biologically consistent.

    I’m trying to find time to come back and consider some of the other comments here… please don’t go away :-)

  16. AdamWood said: However, that act doesn’t give the father any extra rights over the mother, particularly rights to cause risks to her body.

    But surely s/risks/additional risks/? Despite the fact that most abortions in the UK today are performed on the grounds of “risk to the mother’s physical or mental health”, in terms of risk of maternal injury, as I understand it, there’s little difference between having an abortion and carrying the foetus to term. (I note Boris’s reference, but I haven’t had a chance to follow it up yet.) A father insisting that the pregnancy continue would not, in almost every case, increase the risk to the mother’s health.

    skierpage said: I can see where you’re going with this, if the father wants the baby and the foetus presumably has an instinct for self-preservation, then it’s 2 against 1.

    Actually, no. That’s not where I was going. I don’t believe the situation is a vote.

    Boris said: I’m not sure why you’re dismissing “moral support” in that off-hand way, given that a woman’s state of mind during pregnancy is as important as anything else she does.

    I agree it’s very important; but it’s not quantifiable, so I left it out of the argument. For our logical purposes, it only has to come in if you believe that the level of a father’s moral support should affect his level of legal interest in the fate of the foetus/child. Which could be argued, I suppose. But how would a court decide how supportive a father had been?

    Legislating that it always be is difficult; I’m having a hard time thinking of a system where one party or the other doesn’t get absolute veto power in some way.

    Oh, indeed it is. I believe the Bible provides a solution to that, but it’s not my point here – I’m just examing what I see as a logical flaw in the pro-choice argument.

  17. I’m just examing what I see as a logical flaw in the pro-choice argument.

    I don’t think that logic is at the core of either side of the abortion debate. Interesting discussion though.

    I think that the father’s rights starting at birth is simply arbitrary. Kind of like when you turn 18 and suddenly, your parents can no longer tell you what to do.

  18. Stuart’s point is spot on. Civil society has defined timeframes where humans acquire various amounts of rights (birth, majority) and can lose them to guardians or to agents of the State (mental incapacity, criminal behaviour). This is not a property transfer, it is a transfer of control which can involve the death of that person, such as withdrawal of life support/resusitation for the terminally ill.

    There are no “gifts” involved and as I point out below the use of that word in some contexts is entirely unapt. Accordingly, there can be a logical argument for treating the powers of parents differentially at different stages in a child’s existence.

    The point I wish to make is that a woman can be made involuntarily pregnant, a man almost never is. The numerical cases of a man’s sperm being used to create pregnancy are vanishingly small in the overall context (although entirely over-reported) and usually follow the death of that person in the case of frozen sperm. Women are made involuntarily pregnant through criminal rape and incest as well as ethnic conflict rape in conflict zones every single day.

    In addition to the physical change that pregnancy and delivery causes a woman, there is the mental anguish of a man having violated her body not for minutes or hours but for almost a year, and even if the child is given up for adoption there will always be lingering scars, not to mention legislation like that recently struck down in Ontario where a woman who gave up her child in such circumstances would have had her personal details released to that child.

    This is why it is imperative for the rights of fathers to be subservient to mothers prior to delivery, because to do otherwise is to give control of the bodily integrity of a person who is compos mentis to another. There may be a case of giving better rights to fathers after the child is born but I believe that to be a different debate over a different stage of human guardianship.

    In my personal view, I would like to think the State would always be in a position to provide help and counselling to such women with an option to deliver and give up for adoption, but (a) in conflict zones that’s almost never true and (b) the woman’s choice must always be paramount and not unduly delayed to an objective of making an abortion unlawful by reason of gestation period. Often in cases of incest or politically/ethnically motivated rape, such women are too traumatised to come forward for treatment in the early weeks of pregnancy or may have to travel to a safe area to claim her rights.

    Should the right to abortion be solely tied to rape and incest – well, that depends on your outlook I suppose. I would take a broader view of a woman’s rights than that. But to refuse to perform an abortion to someone raped is unconscionable, in my view, as is requiring proof to do so. This should be a societal baseline.

    As for the difference in risk between abortion and delivery – well, that depends. If a woman seeks abortion at 20+ weeks because she has to travel out of state/country to get it due to legal restrictions or hate campaigns against physicians who perform abortions, then that’s likely to be higher risk than abortion at say 10 weeks at a local hospital.

  19. Mark: You can’t base the entire law on the rape case, because it’s making the fallacious logical jump that just because some women are involuntarily impregnated, you have to treat them all as if they have so been. You can’t look at rape, and then draw out the general principle that “This is why it is imperative for the rights of fathers to be subservient to mothers prior to delivery”.

    Your logic, “because to do otherwise is to give control of the bodily integrity of a person who is compos mentis to another”, is precisely the point. In the consensual case, the woman freely gave partial control of her bodily integrity to the man when she agreed to sleep with him and let him put his seed inside her body. If she wanted to maintain bodily integrity, she would not have done that. Therefore, your argument cannot apply in that case.