ISSUES
: Abortion
Chapter 2: Abortion debate
38
permission before the abortion could
be performed. If the father cannot be
identified, the woman would not be
allowed to terminate her pregnancy.
Where the woman says that the
pregnancy is the result of rape,
she would have to provide a police
report as evidence before she could
have the abortion.
Heavy sanctions would back up
these provisions. A woman who
forges the signature of an alleged
father and a man who falsely claims
to be the father in order to help
a woman in getting an abortion
would both be subject to criminal
prosecution – as would the doctor
who performs an abortion without
the written consent of the father.
Wow! The Ohio bill is, apparently,
very unlikely to pass into state law;
but even if it is not going to shake
our earth it looks, at least, as if it
might be a straw in the wind. In its
unequivocal radicalism, it eclipses
all previous attempts to assert any
rights of men in abortion.
I thought I was being daring in my
1992 book
No More Sex War
when
I wrote:
“Women who choose to have an
abortion might be a good deal better
off if their men were required to
endorse and support their decision.
If the man agrees, the burden of
the decision will be shared. If the
man does not agree, he ought to
be provided with a means to say
so. His opinion ought, at least, to
be registered and recorded. I’m not
saying it ought to have any restraining
force in law. I’m not saying a woman
should be prevented from having an
abortion if the father disapproves.
I’m just saying he has a right to be
heard.”
These tame suggestions got me
hauled over the coals of the feminist
orthodoxy on my way to a pelting
in the stocks. Not for the first time.
When, in 1989,
The Times
published
a column of mine in which I mourned
the absence of two aborted children
whom I might have fathered, the
paper received so many letters in
response that they had to be run on
full half-pages on consecutive days.
19 out of 20 of those correspondents
furiously told me that, as a man, I
had no right to express any opinion
on abortion and I could keep my
feelings of loss to myself.
When my book was published,
I was summoned to the cellars
of Broadcasting House for an
inquisition at the hands of that
Torquemada of
Woman’s Hour
, Jenni
Murray. “A woman’s rights over her
own body must be indisputable,”
she thundered. “OK,” I answered.
“But they are not the only rights at
issue in a pregnancy” – a proposition
which, to my surprise, she seemed
to accept without demur.
That’s the bottom line. The woman’s
right to choose is, obviously, not the
only concern – despite the fury with
which feminists have been insisting
on that position for 50 years.
On top of the highly contentious
question whether the foetus in the
womb has philosophical, moral
and legal rights which place a duty
of care on the wider society, the
inseminating man must clearly,
undeniably have an active interest
which ought to be established and
recognised with legal rights. And
then, too, the wider society which
pays for the operation under the
NHS in Britain should also save a
say. Is it in the interests of taxpayers
that 150,000+ abortions should be
performed every year? Is it in the
interests of the wider society that
those lives – more or less equal to
the annual figure for net migration in
the UK – should be stilled?
Or are those questions only allowed
in Ohio?
28 May 2014
Ö
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