A Father's Right to His Unborn Child

982 Words2 Pages

Unlike most topics of abortion, this paper is not about whether a woman has the legal right to end a pregnancy with an abortion, but whether or not it is ethically justifiable to ruin a father’s relationship with his unborn child (Father’s rights, N.D., par. 1). Different circumstances call for different measures to be taken, but when a father wants his child, the outcome should be obvious.
Because of the infamous court case Roe v. Wade, women everywhere have the right to terminate a pregnancy, with or without the father’s consent. A father legally does not even need to be informed of an abortion taking place. The writer is not arguing that all abortions are wrong, or that all sperm donors would be good fathers, but for those men who make an attempt to care for their unborn child, they should have the option of having their child.
Suppose a young couple is in their second year of college. The couple accidentally gets pregnant, and both the mother and father consider an abortion. In this case, there is no reason for the abortion to be objected. Now imagine the same couple getting pregnant. But this time, the father does not want an abortion, and the mother does. Even though he has created half of the fetus being carried by the girlfriend, his rights and the fetus’s right to live are not enforced by law.
When abortion is brought up, the arguments are usually in defense of the pregnant woman. Arguments range from the mother not being financially or emotionally stable, to not being physically healthy to carry out a pregnancy. Some women just do not want to have children. Specifically, the arguments presented here reflect women’s need to have equality with men. First, women have the right of privacy to their own bodies, ...

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Lewin, T. (2006, March 19). Unwed fathers fight for babies placed for adoption by mothers. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/19/national/19fathers.html?pagewanted=all
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USCCB Publishing. (2005). Roe v. Wade: Questions and answers. USCCB Publishing. Retrieved from http://old.usccb.org/prolife/issues/abortion/roevwade/RoeVWadeBI.pdf

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