When NOW says “husband” or “father,” it’s usually preceded by the word “abusive”; the word “wife” is generally modified by “battered.”
- Glenn Sacks
A lot of ink and righteous indignation will be spilled over Samuel Alito’s role in 1991’s Planned Parenthood v. Casey, and rightfully so. Alito’s view on the rights and responsibilities of women is no small thing. Given that, if confirmed, he likely will be on the Supreme Court for many years, Alito could have a tremendous impact on the legal rights of American women for generations to come. Are women to be regarded as independent agents, with the right to control their own bodies and reproductive functions? Or should they not be allowed to make life-altering decision absent input from the man in their life (or from government)?
I’ve always proceeded from the assumption that women are not and should not be considered the property of men. They are, and should be, considered independent agents capable of exercising control over their bodies and reproductive functions. That men may not be wholeheartedly in agreement with this belief is understandable, but let’s be real. We no longer live in a time or place that affords men control over the decisions that women make. No one should expect a man to be happy when a woman decides to terminate a pregnancy, but until modern science discovers a way for men to carry a pregnancy to term themselves, life will remain an inherently unfair proposition. Get used to it. Life is an inherently unfair proposition.
IMMEDIATELY after President Bush nominated Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. to the Supreme Court, the National Organization for Women sent out a nationwide “action alert” announcing that it is “ready for the fight” against Alito, and that he “opposes our rights.”
Planned Parenthood also wasted no time before blasting the nomination, saying that Alito had shown “callous disregard of battered women.”
How did Alito do these terrible things? Apparently his sin is his 1991 vote to uphold a section of a Pennsylvania law that required women to notify their husbands if they intended to have an abortion. That law, according to women’s rights groups, would have put women in harm’s way by subjecting them to the wrath of their angry husbands.
As if it wasn’t bad enough that a woman might find herself in a situation with an unwanted pregnancy, Alito seems OK with forcing that woman to secure the permission of her husband- angry or no. Yes, men contribute to a pregnancy, but that contribution amounts to (pardon me if this seems crude) but a squirt- a split-second of sperm contribution that then leads to nine months of the woman carrying a child to term. Who is doing the work here? Who’s body is responsible for functioning as the incubator?
Being male myself, I don’t mean to belittle the contribution of men to the creation of children, but let’s face facts. This reminds of a story a friend from Mississippi once told me about what a chicken and a pig bring to a bacon-and-eggs breakfast. The chicken, she explained, is involved; the pig is committed. So it is with a pregnancy. The man is involved for a split second; the woman is committed for nine months.
Alito simply acknowledged the principle that husbands and fathers also have a reasonable interest in their unborn children.
And the truth is that the statute contained numerous, well-enumerated protections for women ‚Äö√Ñ√Æ protections that Alito cited and supported. Section 3209 of the law specifically stated that a woman’s obligation to inform her husband did not apply if she had reason to believe it was likely to result in the infliction of bodily injury. (If she were to claim this falsely, it would be punished ‚Äö√Ñ√Æ gasp ‚Äö√Ñ√Æ as a third-degree misdemeanor.)
What’s troubling in all this is how indignant women’s advocates become at the simple suggestion that husbands be granted any consideration in these matters. Over the past 30 years, the issue has been loaded with anti-male double standards.
For instance, when a woman gets pregnant she — and she alone — has the right to decide whether or not to carry the baby to term, and whether to raise the child herself or to give it up for adoption. Fathers have no say in the matter.
Well, guess what, guys? Life isn’t always fair, is it? This is one of the risks a man assumes when he becomes sexually involved with a woman. Is it “fair” that a man is afforded no legal rights when it comes to “his” woman terminating a pregnancy? Perhaps not, but “fair” does not necessarily correlate to a legal right. That fleeting moment of ecstasy (le petit mort) sure can open a can of worms, eh?
In Los Angeles today, bus stop posters read “No shame. No blame. No names.” The posters explain that in California, as in more than 40 states, a mother can terminate all parental responsibility by returning the baby to the hospital within a few days or weeks of birth, with no repercussions (and no consultation with the father).
Yet if the mother decides that she wants to keep the child, she can demand 18 years of child support from the father, and he has no choice in the matter.
Well, unless we’re talking about the Immaculate Reception Conception here, the man responsible for impregnating the woman in questions most definitely does have a responsibility, and one that should NOT be negotiable. If you’re mature enough to get a woman pregnant, then you’re mature enough to deal with the consequences.
Sacks seems to have a fair degree of pent-up anger when it comes to the issues of men’s right in custody issues. Some of the anger may well be justified and well-placed, but that’s a separate issue from the issue of whether or not a woman has the right to control her own body.
Feminists base their support for Roe v. Wade in large part on the idea of “my body, my choice.” Yet men also help create children. Why should they have no say? Fetal protection laws now severely punish anyone who harms a fetus ‚Äö√Ñ√Æ except for mom. A Texas teenager, Gerardo Flores, is serving life in prison for the death of two fetuses, even though his girlfriend, Erica Basoria, acknowledged asking him to help end her pregnancy.
According to Basoria, four months into her pregnancy with twins she regretted not getting an abortion and punched herself in the stomach while Flores stepped on her stomach to induce a miscarriage. Basoria, who stood by Flores and cried when he was sentenced, could not be prosecuted because of her legal right to abortion.
Alito may or may not have been correct in supporting the Pennsylvania law. But he wasn’t wrong in acknowledging reproductive rights for men.
Yes, men help create children (they’re involved), but women do the heavy lifting of carrying them to term (they’re committed). In a perfect world, decisions regarding the future of an unborn child wouldl be made together, and that child will grow up in a loving and protective home. Things don’t always go according to plan, though, and when you get down to it, women, while 50% responsible for the creation of a child, are 100% responsible for doing the work of carrying that child to term. To my way of thinking, then, it would stand to reason that a woman should absolutely have the right to control her own body. When a woman is forced to secure the permission of the man in her life to terminate a pregnancy, can you blame her for feeling as if she has been reduced to property in the eyes of the law? A woman is more that a sperm receptable and a two-legged incubator, and she is certainly NOT to be thought of as the property of men.
Alito may not have been wrong in Sacks’ estimation, but that hardly makes him correct. A woman deserves to be considered an independent agent in control of both her own fate and that of her body. When she is forced to cede that control to a man, a woman becomes nothing if not a second-class citizen. Is that really the status that we want 50% of the population to be relegated toi? Women deserve better; we all do.
