Single Parents

[Eulalia]

I don't want to start yet another message board so will tag on here as it is relevant.

I wondered what the parents here thought of the case in the news of the father who is fighting to prevent his partner from having an abortion. He says he will bring the child up himself. As the current law stands the embryo is said to belong to the mother but an abortion can be refused. However in practice it rarely is and we effectively have abortion on demand.

So who is right? Are some women becoming to lax with getting rid of unwanted babies (and unwanted partners)?

Should a father have the right to force a mother to go through pregnancy and then take the child away? What about breastfeeding? Is it right for a child to be knowingly brought up single handed?

I feel that abortions are too easy to get but as for this individual case I don't know enough details. I do know that there was a case similar to this recently and the woman did go ahead with the abortion and regretted it afterwards.

An incredibley sensitive issue and I don't really know what my view is. On the one hand it must be utterly apalling for a man to helplessly stand by and watch as a much wanted baby is aborted but on the other, I'm not sure that a woman should be forced to bear a child she clearly doesn't want. I just don't know.

This is such a difficult issue. I find myself constantly unsure of what I think. On the one hand I loathe the idea of abortion, I cannot get away from the fact that a living thing is being killed. On the other hand I believe very strongly in the right of the individual to make their own informed choices about their bodies.
I feel so distressed for the father as he seems prepared to raise the baby and the woman's reason for not wanting it (according to the papers) was that she didn't want to interrupt her career. If she wasn't going to keep the baby then the interruption to her career wouldn't be much longer than an extended holiday. My instincts say that she should be encouraged to have the baby as it will have at least one loving parent.
However, I would be interested to know what others think.

Without knowing the real reason behind the breakdown of their relationship I don't know what to think. I don't like the idea of terminating a healthy pregnancy but I also don't like suspecting that going to the courts is an act of revenge against the other party and not primarily in the unborn child's interests.
While there are very few circumstances in which I think I'd choose an abortion for myself I can't imagine how I'd feel about going through a pregnancy which I did not want and giving birth to a baby I did not want, particularly if it arose out of a publicised court case. Everyone knows her name now. I'd have thought that the stress this must be placing on her must be awful. I do have sympathy with the man as well, but in circumstances where one parent wants a child and the other doesn't, I think ultimately the right to decide rests with the parent who has to bear the child.

I feel sad for the unborn child and sad for both parents. Ultimately I think that the mother's body is hers alone and so the final decision is hers alone. To tamper with this hard-won right is dangerous.

If this woman was forced to go ahead with the birth and the father then changed his mind and walked away, what would her legal positon be?
I'm not a legal expert but I'm sure she would face more far pressure on her to assume full responsibility for this child than the father ever would.

This last sentence was going to read: She would face more pressure on her to mother the child than the father would to father it.

Then I realised that this just didn't sound right. To my mind, to mother a child implies long term caring. To father a child just implies conceiving it. Interesting......

Well, I do think this sounds very odd. how many men do you know that would want to bring up a baby alone,bearing in mind the baby was clearly an accident. . Its doesn't sound like they are married, so if the sex was a fling, its certainly strange. I mean if a baby is planned and longed for then you can understand the father having already 'boneded' with the baby. But at a few weeks old, how does a father bond with a baby he hadn't even thought about having.

I'm with marina on the revenge motive. I can't believe he has thought about the change to his life as a single parent. Maybe its like in Eastenders, and its his mother pushing him into it!!!

Lil, there are lots of men who would try and bring up a baby on their own if they had to. I was adopted because my mother didn't want me but my father did. Believe it or not in the late 1960s it was not even considered an option for a father to raise a child, so I was adopted. My point here is not to dismiss the father's motives, he may be genuine

I think the 'father-to-be' is quite a sincere person and for all we know would make a good father. However he should have been more careful about who he had sex with. I think far too many men leave it to women to sort out the contraceptive side.

If he thought he wanted to have a child he should have found a women who would be happy to bear their baby. I know easier said than done - not always a good topic of conversation ...

However I think in this day and age people should be more responsible. I think in this case both parties haven't show this.

I wonder why the woman told him though when she could have just gone and had the abortion. Kind of puts people off being honest.

I think the mother has a duty to the child and its father not to have an abortion - after all, she presumably had sex of her own free will, and no contraception claims to be 100% effective. She exercised her choice about controlling her own body when she chose to have sex. Broadly I agree with what you just said Eulalia, but it shouldn't put people off being honest - once she was pregnant it was too late and if she'd just gone off and had an abortion without even telling the father of the baby, that would have been even worse.

Presumably if one asks for an abortion many factors are taken into account, age of woman, income, whether they are in full-time education etc and of course the father. If a father was willing to support the mother then this should be a factor in deciding not to allow the mother to have an abortion.

Just read that the woman involved was 31 and the man was 24. Am even more convinced he is not correctly motivated! At his age its not as if his clock is running out is it?

Anyway, she's disappeared apparently, so good on her.

Star - yes you have a point. What about the poor kid.

I was reading in a mag about kids whose parents had compensation from their local health authorities for failed steralisation. They got quite a fair sum. Not sure if I agree with this as none of these ops are 100% successful. And the poor kids grows up knowing it wasn't wanted (despite the parents saying that they love them)

I'm sorry Star and Eulalia but it is possible to have a happy life even if your original parents didn't want you. I would rather be alive and frequently feel hugely grateful that abortion was not so widely available in 1969.

Fair point Bugsy.

I read yesterday that the father of the unborn child in question is going to court to get custody of the aborted foetus....

Croppy, that's amazing. Just what is he trying to prove?

He wants to give the foetus a funeral, and ensure it is not used for research, according to today's Metro (London commuter freebie tabloid brought to us by the publishers of the Daily Mail).
The same quality paper has also revealed that the relationship had been going on 2 months when the woman became pregnant: that they got involved as neighbours and he already has a wife and two children: that he only started making a fuss about her terminating the pregnancy when she packed him in. This is the only the media version of events, of course.

Plenty of children are born with their father not wanting them and the mother wanting them, and we seem to think this is OK. What's the big difference if it's the other way round? (apart from the assumption that mothers are more important?)

Are you suggesting Tom that women should be forced to carry children they do not want if their partners do?

Come on Tom, this is an unborn child here, not about male v's female parenting, who has made the assumption regarding the mother being the better parent?, I have not seen any evidence to back that up, there are questions here that only the woman and man can answer. With the info that has been provided, he seems to have been having his cake and eating it at the same time. Another point if this woman does not want this child, has neither of them and I say NEITHER of them heard of contraception in any form?. This case I would imagine will be a minefield, at the end of the day one person, not either of the parents has to decide if this child should be born. How will the 2 people feel, 1 if she has to continue and the father if it is to be terminated?. Very difficult, and at the end of the day I don't think either person will be happy.

Tom, how can you suggest that the only difference between a man rather than a woman wanting a child is the assumption that mothers are more important?. How about the fact that she would have to carry the child for nine months, give birth to it and recover her health afterwards. Obviously, in the mean time, her job prospects are likely to suffer and we all know about the huge restrictions pregnancy imposes on you in all manner of speaking. Then when the baby is born, how could the mother be 100% sure the father would stand by his promise to look after the child? What if the child is disabled?. And of course, what about the significant health risks to the mother of borth pregnancy and the birth process?

Very few women who give birth do so without the full intention of caring for their child, sadly the same cannot be said of a significant minority of fathers. Witness the apalling record of the CSA in extracting adequate support payments.

Sorry Tom, I normally agree with you but in this case I think you have missed the point. If the father could physically bear the child it would be different, but he is demanding 24/7 coverage for 9 months, and as most women will agree, the body is never the same after pregnancy. I ended up in hospital in the early stages of my pregnancy, and had so many drips put int hat all the veins in my arms collapsed. My sister ended up with a total hysterectomy after the birth of her son, and we are not the major 'scare' stories, just classed as fairly average pregnancies. I personally would not like to have an abortion, and in my situation, if my partner agreed to look after the child, I could not justify it, but we are setting a very dangerous precedent if we give the fathers equal rights in the decision, because they don't have equal risks in the process.

Hear hear Debsb. Sorry Tom, I think this is an area where legislation can only go so far.

Tom, I don't think many of us would think that it is OK for a Dad not to want his child. It is a desperate shame for any parent not to want their child but there is a fundamental biological difference between a mother and a father. I don't think that genderising this argument is very helpful. At the end of the day each case is uniquely individual and despite quite prolific media coverage I'm sure we have not heard the full details of this particular case.
Perhaps the lesson here for all of us is to be alot more careful about having sex with people without thinking a bit more about the potential consequences. That sounds so moralistic and it is not really meant to, but it is tragic that a baby/foetus was aborted because two grown "responsible" adults hadn't been a bit more careful.