Coinciding with Alito Hearings, John Tierney, admittedly pro-choice, gives an interesting voice to the male perspective on abortion rights, poses some good questions, points out what he sees as inconsistencies in the feminist argument, and follows his logic full circle, ending up pretty much right smack where the law currently sits--with the exception of a couple of caveats and tweaks that he feels would be more fair to men.
As for his mention of Alito, my own feeling, after watching the hearings thus far, is that this guy is dangerous in a myriad of other ways which are potentially far more detrimental to our democracy than abortion rights -- not that that issue is not exeedingly high on my list. It's just that I'm more worried about Alito's record of supporting big business and expanded executive powers, and his weak record on privacy, civil rights, and just plain standing on the side of the little guy.
Given the current government abuses, the thought of this guy sitting on the Supreme Court judging this government's illegal spying on citizens, torture, or lying to take the country to war, for example, scares the livin' b'jesus out'a me.
I don't believe for one second that Alito would rule against this administration, on the side of the American people. In fact, I'm near positive that's why he was chosen.
Getting back to abortion, based on the hearings, I believe he would attempt to overturn Roe if he had the opportunity--whether outright or by chipping away at it in various smaller case rulings--thereby setting precedent to at some point completely overturn it.
If one listens closely to how Alito parses his words in answering questions...one can't help but come to the same conclusion--especially given his previous record of rulings and writings.
Hope I'm wrong. But my gut instinct is usually damn good.
Men's Abortion Rights
By John Tierney
The New York Times
Judge Samuel Alito is a reactionary - at least according to feminists horrified by his notion that a woman can be required to notify her husband before an abortion. But Alito's critics in the Senate face two big obstacles this week if they try to make that label stick.
The first is public opinion. Most Americans tell pollsters that they think a husband should be notified before an abortion, and the Pennsylvania law that Alito approved was hardly a draconian version of that principle. It merely required a woman to say, without presenting any proof, that she'd told her husband. If she said she feared physical abuse, she was exempted.
The second obstacle is the logic of feminism. Spousal notification has been denounced as retrograde by the same advocates who have been demanding gender equality in the workplace and at home. If men are expected to be parents with equal responsibilities, shouldn't they at least be allowed to discuss whether to have a child?
This is an easy question for those on the pro-life side of the abortion debate. They'd like men to be not only notified of pregnancies, but also given veto power over abortions.
Being pro-choice, I don't agree with that position, but I admire the logic. It's a gender-neutral policy: if either parent thinks it's wrong to end the pregnancy, then the pregnancy must proceed.
If the pro-choice side adopted a gender-neutral policy, then either the man or the woman would have the right to say no to parenthood. I don't know of anyone advocating that a woman be required to have an abortion, but there's another right that could be given to a man who impregnates a woman who isn't his wife. If the woman decided to go ahead and have the child, she would have to notify him and give him the option early in the pregnancy of absolving himself of any financial responsibility for the child.
This option to have a "financial abortion" has been advocated by a few iconoclasts - not all of them men with child-support payments. The term was coined by Frances Goldscheider, a professor of sociology at Brown University who studies family issues. She compares the current campaign against "deadbeat dads" to the punishments once given to "wayward women" for having illegitimate children.
"It used to be our daughters we worried about being forced into inappropriate parenthood, but now it must be our sons," she says. "Men should not be made to become fathers against their will. They should have the right Planned Parenthood has claimed for women: 'Every child a wanted child.' "
Goldscheider, who's a pro-choice Democrat, has found that her proposal provokes a rare bipartisan consensus. "Neither the left nor the right like my egalitarian ideas," she says. "The right's response is that men should be macho and pay for playing - unless they've gotten burned themselves. The left's response is that men should pay, period - unless it's their sons."
There is, of course, one big physical inequality between the sexes in this regard: it's the woman who must either have the abortion or go through the pregnancy.
But as Goldscheider points out, women also have more power than men to prevent the pregnancy because they have exclusive control over some forms of contraception. It's not fair, she says, for a woman who lies about being on the pill to be able to trick a man into marrying her or making child-support payments for 18 years.
If it were just a question of the woman's rights versus the man's rights, I'd go along with Goldscheider's proposal. But if the man gets a financial abortion and the woman goes ahead with the pregnancy, someone else's rights still need to be considered: the child would suffer because of the parents' decisions.
Goldscheider's solution to that problem is for the government to provide financial support in place of the father. But would this new public subsidy encourage more single-parent homes? To avoid that risk, I'd rather stick with the current system, unfair as it is, of making all men pay.
But there's no reason that it couldn't be a little fairer. As Alito ruled, it's not an undue burden for a wife to notify her husband before an abortion. And it's not unfair, as Goldscheider proposes, for a single woman expecting child support to be required to tell the father as soon as she decides to keep the baby. If men are going to pay to play, they should at least know the score.
Photo: John Tierney. (Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times)
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