Man sues clinic for performing abortion on his girlfriend without his consent

[amusedbush]

metro.co.uk/2019/03/07/boy-19-sues-abortion-clinic-giving-ex-termination-wishes-8855393/

I don't even know what to say to this. I made the mistake of reading some of the comments about it on Facebook too.

Surely this can't stand up in court?

Even if we can concede that there are situations where the father’s thoughts and feelings should be taken into account with regards to an unplanned pregnancy, such as in the case of an already established marriage for instance, there is a vast difference between that, where hopefully a termination would be carried out with both parties having talked about it, and a seventeen year old who is highly, highly unlikely to be able to step up and even be able to, let alone want to provide a stable upbringing for a baby as a single dad.

Anyone who actually believes that this seventeen year old thinks he suffered a loss and is devastated is deluding themselves.

As for the life begins at conception thought, where does that end? What about embryos created for the purposes of IVF? Should the woman be forced to have them all implanted? Or to even potentially go through multiple pregnancies to ensure that none of them is discarded?

Yes random - it's textbook.

Meanwhile - someone upthread said she thought this case was good in that it was clearly so bonkers they'd lose and Roe v Wade would be strengthened. Sadly I don't think I'm so sanguine. Clearly Kavanaugh is an out and out misogynist (he's other things too, but I don't want this post to be deleted) who will be salivating at the thought of screwing women over. But you also have Gorsuch to worry about. He's the judge who ruled in favour of hobby lobby, allowing employers to restrict the terms of their employees' healthcare benefits, specifically provision of contraception (contraception note, not just abortion), on the basis of the employer's religious beliefs.

Roe v Wade is screwed given Trump's appointments to SCOTUS, and I fear even a Mickey mouse case like this could overturn it

Fermats I think you are underestimating John Roberts. I don't see him allowing the Roberts Court to go down in history as the court that allowed men to force women to give birth. I don't see the supreme court even putting this case on the docket (and it would take years to even get there). It is not in their interest to do so.

I think the real danger will come from other cases which curtail the right to choose more obliquely - reduction in weeks gestation to terminate, requirements for abotion clinics etc. The clever anti-abortion campaigners know that is where the real leverage is. There is already a shocking lack of abortion facilities in large parts of america - which of course disproportionately affects poor women.

If Roe v Wade is overturned, it will not really affect women in places like Massachusetts, California, New York etc on a practical level (it will be a chilling warning to them though). There will still be abortion clinics in those states. It is the poorer women in other states and rural areas who can't afford to travel who will end up dying from botched home-abortions or rearing children in poverty.

This case is probably too weak to overturn Roe v Wade but it is chipping away at pro-choice legislation. The group funding this case will find others to get behind and slowly women's rights could be eroded.

I realise that if Roe v Wade gets overturned the matter reverts to individual states' jurisdictions so places like California will be okay. And as you say thanks to the game of "place restrictions on abortion" like admitting privileges or foetal heartbeat scans, de facto abortion just can't be accessed in a lot of states already.

But it's so depressing. There was an article recently about women having to travel to access abortion for foetal abnormalities incompatible with life (mind you, that happens in the UK if you have the bad luck to live in NI - an anomaly we desperately need to sort out).

A US friend of mine had to run the gauntlet of forced-birth protesters when she had to go to a clinic for an EPRC after she lost but didn't miscarry a much wanted pregnancy.

The NI situation isn't an anomoly - it is a deliberate exclusion based on religious objections. It comes from exactly the same place as much of the US opposition to abortion - evangelical christianity. It is no coincidence that Ian Paisley had an honorory doctorate from Bob Jones University.

Oh I realise that. The UK's politics has been dogged since the 1920s by the need to appease religious extremists, particularly the Protestant ones (simply because they're the ones whose votes count - Sinn Fein don't take their seats). By anomaly I simply mean it doesn't match the rest of the UK, not that it's happened by choice. But now Ireland has amended its constitution, I think it might be time to make a concerted effort to shove the religious nuts to one side (obviously it won't work at the mo while May relies on the DUP, but I think May's for the push in, ooh, 21 days and counting).

But agree with you so depressing.

What I find amazing is that women, left to themselves and properly supported by society, are often inclined to continue with pregnancy. YEs abortion should be safe and legal etc but the reality is lots of women have abortions in situations where if they had more support or less fear or less pressure, they would continue the pregnancy.

And yet women are demonised as if they are these child-killing witches. The reality is the opposite. Men are more dangerous to children than women. men are less likely to support their children than women. Men are less likely to prioritise their children's food intake over their own whereas women do the opposite.

If you were prioritising protecting babies and children from either men or women, you'd be a fool not to pick men. Why not just trust women to do the best they can for their children and focus on making that easier?

My own view is that some men absolutely hate that women give birth - that this important thing isn't something that can be subsumed or annexed or claimed by men. Every single person who ever walked this earth came out of the body of a woman. So control of that birth process is important to them to maintain overall control. It must be f-ing exhausting -as well as toxic - to think like this.

And thunder whatshisface's comment up thread about if he ejaculates in your body you should realise you have given up control to him encapsulates it completely.

He's suing the company that name the pills as well! So basically it's sbout banning abortion. If abortion was legal in Alabama I can't see why he has a case.

He is entitled to his personal feelings and to be upset if he felt he wanted the pregnancy to continue.

He is not entitled to any fucking say about her body and what she should be obliged to do with it.

whytho This is exactly the point. It’s not only commandeering the woman’s body for 9 months, the effects on her of going to term and giving birth can be so much longer lasting.

She was 16

Fucking hell. I didn't know that part of it, though I knew it was an early abortion.

@ThunderStorms I'm speechless. Until women will continue to be so harsh against other women, no International Women's Day or fighting for equal rights with men will have ever sense.

My goodness.

I have sympathy for a man who wants a pregnancy to continue & also for one who doesn't and will have to pay for the child.

But they can't have the say over someone elses body.

Supposing in the case linked to contraception was used & failed-couldn't it be concluded that a baby wasn't wanted so the girl took the next step to ensure that there wasn't one?

"You are too black and white with your thinking and cannot understand that there might be shades of grey."

That is rich, coming from a pro-birther/anti-choicer who thinks the issue is black and white and that women must be submitted into forced-birthing despite considering all the risks, all the reasons a woman may not want to, etc. You have a nerve talking about shades of grey, or you are deeply confused about your own position. The reason real women are against incubatorial slavery is BECAUSE life is not black and white. Something you don't understand.

Don't get upset because your immoral advocacy of forced-birthing demonstrates shades of grey you don't believe exist.

There are no shades of grey with regards to this. There is never a situation where it’s acceptable for a male to be able to override a female with regards to body autonomy.

THIS ^

Over and over again. Men DO NOT HAVE ANY RIGHTS over women's body autonomy!

This is from an LRB essay by the Irish novelist Sally Rooney written just before the Irish referendum that legalised abortion last summer so some of it is specifically about the pre-referendum Irish legislative situation, which considered the foetus and the woman's right to life to be equal, and only allowed termination in circumstances where there was a threat to the woman's life but it's worth a read, I think, especially her points on the 'expanded' rights of the foetus vs the woman carrying it, and on the perceived threat to the social order by women with control of their own reproductive lives:

Pregnancy, entered into willingly, is an act of generosity, a commitment to share the resources of life with another incipient being. Such generosity is in no other circumstances required by law. No matter how much you need a kidney donation, the law will not force another person to give you one. Consent, in the form of a donor card, is required even to remove organs from a dead body. If the foetus is a person, it is a person with a vastly expanded set of legal rights, rights available to no other class of citizen: the foetus may make free, non-consensual use of another living person’s uterus and blood supply, and cause permanent, unwanted changes to another person’s body. In the relationship between foetus and woman, the woman is granted fewer rights than a corpse. But it’s possible that the ban on abortion has less to do with the rights of the unborn child than with the threat to social order represented by women in control of their reproductive lives.

Irish women’s freedom to decide what happens to their bodies has been restricted by many and varied means: the prohibition on contraception until the 1980s, the legality of marital rape until 1990, the threat of incarceration in institutions like the Magdalen Laundries and Mother and Baby Homes. These legal and social practices were not arranged around the protection of unborn life, but around control of reproduction. Even now, it is the idea of female agency that separates permissible forms of abortion from those deemed unacceptable in Irish law. Traumatised or fatally ill women may be granted the right to terminate a pregnancy precisely because they are not seen to be exercising free and independent agency. Those who object to abortion, but make an exception in the case of rape, cannot be primarily concerned with the sanctity of the unborn: a foetus conceived by rape is no different from a foetus conceived by consensual sex. To make an exception for women who can be classed as victims is to display fear and anxiety of the woman who is not one, but who would simply exercise her right no longer to be pregnant.

Whole essay is here:
www.lrb.co.uk/v40/n10/sally-rooney/an-irish-problem

ThunderStorms I've asked repeatedly what happens if he changes his mind or she has birth injuries. What happens if she needs extra tutoring or maternity clothes.

According to the public health laws of Alabama, a woman under 19 can't have an abortion without written parental consent unless she's "emancipated" (which appears to mean married or her parents have had parental responsibility removed by the courts).

Could this be the loophole this person is using to sue?

I don't know how to link properly as it's a PDF, but the link is via
www.alabamapublichealth.gov/legal/public-health-laws.html and it's page 484 of the PDF.

The logic seems to be that her parents have the right to raise the child of their legal minor daughter (paragraph a) on page 483, at the start of chapter 21)

Page 494 of the same document states that the biological father has a right to financial compensation if he has not consented to a "partial live birth" abortion of a viable foetus, where he is married to the pregnant woman and she is under 18. Partial live birth abortions being illegal anyway. That's a very specific (and odd given the under 18 part) set of circumstances! But perhaps also why he things he might have a chance to make some money...

Would be interested to know how a teenager happened to have knowledge of detailed public health laws. 🤔

ThunderStorms I've asked repeatedly what happens if he changes his mind or she has birth injuries. What happens if she needs extra tutoring or maternity clothes.

At the risk of being called a troll again for answering a specific question...

How on earth do you expect me to answer that?

This is EXACTLY the conversation they would need to have. This is what they would need to discuss and agree on. I would expect legally binding documents to be drawn up and signed. I’m sure if you use your imagination, you can think of options, too.

Unfortunately, these sorts of conversations can’t be had, because people don’t want to know. They just want to throw insults at those that don’t agree with them and pat each other on the back for the best insult they can invent.