Paper abortion

Last updated October 31, 2024

Paper abortion, also known as a financial abortion, male abortion or a statutory abortion,^[1] is the proposed ability of the biological father, before the birth of the child, to opt out of any rights, privileges, and responsibilities toward the child, including financial support.^[2]^[3]^[4] By this means, before a child is born, a man would be able to absolve himself of both the privileges and demands of fatherhood.^[1]^[5]^[6]^[7]

The male abortion

The concept begins with the premise that when a woman becomes pregnant, she has the option of abortion, adoption, or parenthood. It argues, in the context of gender equality, that in the earliest stages of pregnancy the putative (alleged) father should have the same right to relinquish all future parental rights and financial responsibility -- leaving the informed mother with the same three options. At present, the putative father is held financially responsible for a child no matter what the circumstances of conception, including statutory rape of the father by the mother (see Hermesmann v. Seyer),^[8] and fraud (the mother used the father's sperm to become pregnant without his knowledge or consent).^[9]

The term "male abortion" was coined by Melanie McCulley, a South Carolina attorney, in a 1998 article, "The Male Abortion: The Putative Father's Right to Terminate His Interests in and Obligations to the Unborn Child". McCulley argued that men should be able to terminate their legal obligations to unwanted children.^[10] According to McCulley:^[11]

When a female determines she is pregnant, she has the freedom to decide if she has the maturity level to undertake the responsibilities of motherhood, if she is financially able to support a child, if she is at a place in her career to take the time to have a child, or if she has other concerns precluding her from carrying the child to term. After weighing her options, the female may choose abortion. Once she aborts the fetus, the female's interests in and obligations to the child are terminated. In stark contrast, the unwed father has no options. His responsibilities to the child begin at conception and can only be terminated with the female's decision to abort the fetus or with the mother's decision to give the child up for adoption. Thus, he must rely on the decisions of the female to determine his future. The putative father does not have the luxury, after the fact of conception, to decide that he is not ready for fatherhood. Unlike the female, he has no escape route (4).

Debate and public attention

Support

In a 1996 article "Abortion and Fathers' Rights,"^[12] philosopher Steven Hales made an argument that presupposes the following assertions:

That women have an absolute right to elective abortion care;
That men and women have equal moral rights and duties and should have equal legal right and duties; and
That parents have a moral duty to support their children once they are born and legal duties of support should supervene on this moral duty.

Hales contends that the conjunction of these three principles is prima facie inconsistent and that this inconsistency should be eradicated by firstly acknowledging that men have no absolute duty to provide material support for their children, and secondly by admitting that fathers have the right of refusal.

Laurie Shrage, professor of philosophy and women's and gender studies, questions whether men should be 'penalized for being sexually active', and she puts the subject in the perspective of feminists who had to fight the same idea with different gender portent, namely that consenting to sexual intercourse is not the same as consenting to parenthood. Furthermore, both men and children are punished, according to professor Shrage; children have to live with an absent father who never 'voluntarily' became a parent.^[13]^[14]

[If] women’s partial responsibility for pregnancy does not obligate them to support a fetus, then men’s partial responsibility for pregnancy does not obligate them to support a resulting child.
— Elizabeth Brake in the Journal of Applied Philosophy, 2005^[14]

At most, according to Brake, men should be responsible for helping with the medical expenses and other costs of a pregnancy for which they are partly responsible.

Interestingly, there is overlap between masculists and feminists on this point. For example, Australian writer and comedian Catherine Deveny makes the point that requiring the male to be automatically resigned to forced parenthood is a violation of a man's right to choose when women have various options to absolve the man of parental responsibility; namely, she says, "the options are abortion, adoption, parenting together or sole parenting." Deveny also condemns the antiquated notion of "men [being] obligated to provide for women", which she considers to be reminiscent of "oppressive heteronormative values [that] belong in the 1950s".^[15] As a solution, Deveney suggests a "no kids yet" register that would give men an opt-out solution that would prevent fathers from being forced to father a child against their will—or at least prevent them from being forced to pay child support.

Opposition

Paper abortion has met opposition by those who see it as an excuse for men to shirk their responsibilities as a father.^[16]^[17] Critics say that men should use birth control (either contraception or sterilization) or practice abstinence if they want to avoid the financial and personal responsibilities of fatherhood.^[18]^[19] This stance does not account for those men who conceive a child even after taking reasonable precautions, or involuntary conception as a result of birth control sabotage, sexual assault, statutory rape of underage boys by adult women, or sperm theft.^[20]^[17]

By country

Argentina

Lilia Lemoine, elected deputy from Argentina and ally of president-elect Javier Milei, announced that her first bill will be to offer parents the possibility of renouncing paternity. The project determines that the pregnant woman must notify the father of this pregnancy within 15 days and the father will be able to decide whether he wants to recognize the child or not. Lemoine states that if the man does not want to, he will not have the obligation to pay child support.^[21] According to the deputy, it is unfair for a woman to be able to renounce motherhood by killing her child, referring to the 2020's approval of abortion in Argentina.^[22]

Denmark

The concept of a paper abortion was first introduced in Denmark in 2000 by the socioeconomicist Henrik Platz. He says that it is necessary from an egalitarian perspective, to ensure that women and men have equal rights under the law. According to a Gallup poll from 2014 and earlier polls, between 40% and 70% of Danes agree with legalizing paper abortion.^[1]

Sociologist Karen Sjørup, who conducted research on the topic^[23] argues that it would give women more freedom by allowing those who want to become mothers without having to share the rights and duties of parenthood with men an additional way to do so. She also suggests that it could decrease the abortion rate because it would prevent men who wished to avoid fatherhood from pressuring women to abort.^[24]

Advocates argue that just as women are able to choose whether to have a child or not, men should also be able to choose whether to assume paternity or not. Allowing men to have the opportunity to renounce the economic, social and legal responsibility for an unborn child during the first three months of pregnancy would give men and women as close to equal opportunities as possible.^[13]

Sweden

In 2016, a regional branch of the Swedish Liberal Youth Party decided to support paper abortion for men until the 18th week of pregnancy, the time limit on abortions for women. The proposition was supported by some commentators, but not by the LYP's parent party.^[3]

United States

Related Research Articles

Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the Constitution of the United States generally protected a right to have an abortion. The decision struck down many abortion laws, and caused an ongoing abortion debate in the United States about whether, or to what extent, abortion should be legal, who should decide the legality of abortion, and what the role of moral and religious views in the political sphere should be. The decision also shaped debate concerning which methods the Supreme Court should use in constitutional adjudication. The Supreme Court overruled Roe in 2022, ending the constitutional right to abortion.

A father is the male parent of a child. Besides the paternal bonds of a father to his children, the father may have a parental, legal, and social relationship with the child that carries with it certain rights and obligations. A biological father is the male genetic contributor to the creation of the infant, through sexual intercourse or sperm donation. A biological father may have legal obligations to a child not raised by him, such as an obligation of monetary support. An adoptive father is a man who has become the child's parent through the legal process of adoption. A putative father is a man whose biological relationship to a child is alleged but has not been established. A stepfather is a non-biological male parent married to a child's preexisting parent and may form a family unit but generally does not have the legal rights and responsibilities of a parent in relation to the child.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">United States abortion-rights movement</span> Support for womens right to elective abortion

The United States abortion-rights movement is a sociopolitical movement in the United States supporting the view that a woman should have the legal right to an elective abortion, meaning the right to terminate her pregnancy, and is part of a broader global abortion-rights movement. The movement consists of a variety of organizations, with no single centralized decision-making body.

Child support is an ongoing, periodic payment made by a parent for the financial benefit of a child following the end of a marriage or other similar relationship. Child maintenance is paid directly or indirectly by an obligor to an obligee for the care and support of children of a relationship that has been terminated, or in some cases never existed. Often the obligor is a non-custodial parent. The obligee is typically a custodial parent, a caregiver, or a guardian.

Libertarians promote individual liberty and seek to minimize the role of the state. The abortion debate is mainly within right-libertarianism between cultural liberals and social conservatives as left-libertarians generally see it as a settled issue regarding individual rights, as they support legal access to abortion as part of what they consider to be a woman's right to control her body and its functions. Religious right and intellectual conservatives have attacked such libertarians for supporting abortion rights, especially after the demise of the Soviet Union led to a greater divide in the conservative movement between libertarians and social conservatives. Libertarian conservatives claim libertarian principles such as the non-aggression principle (NAP) apply to human beings from conception and that the universal right to life applies to fetuses in the womb. Thus, some of those individuals express opposition to legal abortion. According to a 2013 survey, 5.7/10 of American Libertarians oppose making it more difficult for a woman to get an abortion.

Paternity law refers to body of law underlying legal relationship between a father and his biological or adopted children and deals with the rights and obligations of both the father and the child to each other as well as to others. A child's paternity may be relevant in relation to issues of legitimacy, inheritance and rights to a putative father's title or surname, as well as the biological father's rights to child custody in the case of separation or divorce and obligations for child support.

The abortion debate is a longstanding and contentious discourse that touches on the moral, legal, medical, and religious aspects of induced abortion. In English-speaking countries, the debate most visibly polarizes around adherents of the self-described "pro-choice" and "pro-life" movements. Pro-choice supporters uphold that individuals have the right to make their own decisions about their reproductive health and that they should have the option to end a pregnancy if they choose to do so, taking into account various factors such as the stage of fetal development, the health of the woman, and the circumstances of the conception. Pro-life advocates, on the other hand, maintain that a fetus is a human being with inherent rights that cannot be overridden by the woman's choice or circumstances and that abortion is morally wrong in most or all cases. Both terms are considered loaded words in mainstream media, where terms such as "abortion rights" or "anti-abortion" are generally preferred.

The fathers' rights movement is a social movement whose members are primarily interested in issues related to family law, including child custody and child support, that affect fathers and their children. Many of its members are fathers who desire to share the parenting of their children equally with their children's mothers—either after divorce or marital separation. The movement includes men as well as women, often the second wives of divorced fathers or other family members of men who have had some engagement with family law. Most Fathers' rights advocates argue for formal gender equality.

Reproductive rights are legal rights and freedoms relating to reproduction and reproductive health that vary amongst countries around the world. The World Health Organization defines reproductive rights as follows:

Reproductive rights rest on the recognition of the basic right of all couples and individuals to decide freely and responsibly the number, spacing and timing of their children and to have the information and means to do so, and the right to attain the highest standard of sexual and reproductive health. They also include the right of all to make decisions concerning reproduction free of discrimination, coercion and violence.

The paternal rights and abortion issue is an extension of both the abortion debate and the fathers' rights movement. Abortion can be a factor for disagreement and lawsuit between partners.

Many jurisdictions have laws applying to minors and abortion. These parental involvement laws require that one or more parents consent or be informed before their minor daughter may legally have an abortion.

Dubay v. Wells, or the Matt Dubay child support case, was an American legal case in 2006 between Matt Dubay and his ex-girlfriend Lauren Wells, both of Saginaw Township, Michigan. The case was dubbed "Roe v. Wade for Men" by the National Center for Men. The case concerned whether the Michigan Paternity Act violates the United States Constitution's Equal Protection Clause, in that the Act allegedly applies to men but not to women.

In the United States, child support is the ongoing obligation for a periodic payment made directly or indirectly by an "obligor" to an "obligee" for the financial care and support of children of a relationship or a marriage. The laws governing this kind of obligation vary dramatically state-by-state and tribe-by-tribe among Native Americans. Each individual state and federally recognized tribe is responsible for developing its own guidelines for determining child support.

The genetics and abortion issue is an extension of the abortion debate and the disability rights movement. Since the advent of forms of prenatal diagnosis, such as amniocentesis and ultrasound, it has become possible to detect the presence of congenital disorders in the fetus before birth. Specifically, disability-selective abortion is the abortion of fetuses that are found to have non-fatal mental or physical defects detected through prenatal testing. Many prenatal tests are now considered routine, such as testing for Down syndrome. Women who are discovered to be carrying fetuses with disabilities are often faced with the decision of whether to abort or to prepare to parent a child with disabilities.

The parents' rights movement is a civil rights movement primarily interested in human rights affecting parents related to family law, including child custody. Parents' rights are connected to parental responsibility and Right to family life.

In Judaism, views on abortion draw primarily upon the legal and ethical teachings of the Hebrew Bible, the Talmud, the case-by-case decisions of responsa, and other rabbinic literature. While most major Jewish religious movements discourage abortion, except to save the life of a pregnant woman, authorities differ on when and whether it is permitted in other cases.

Abortion in Colombia is freely available on request up to the 24th week of pregnancy, due to a ruling by the Constitutional Court on February 21, 2022. Later in pregnancy, it is only allowed in cases of risk of death to the pregnant woman, fetal malformation, or rape, according to a Constitutional Court ruling in 2006.

Abortion in Denmark was fully legalized on 1 October 1973, allowing the procedure to be done electively if a woman's pregnancy has not exceeded its 12th week. Under Danish law, the patient must be over the age of 18 to decide on an abortion alone; parental consent is required for minors, except in special circumstances. An abortion can be performed after 12 weeks if the woman's life or health are in danger. A woman may also be granted an authorization to abort after 12 weeks if certain circumstances are proved to be present.

Forced abortion is a form of reproductive coercion that refers to the act of compelling a woman to undergo termination of a pregnancy against her will or without explicit consent. Forced abortion may also be defined as coerced abortion, and may occur due to a variety of outside forces such as societal pressure, or due to intervention by perpetrators such as an intimate partner, parental guardian, medical practitioners, or others who may cause abortion by force, threat or coercion. It may also occur by taking advantage of a situation where a pregnant individual is unable to give consent, or when valid consent is in question due to duress. This may also include the instances when the conduct was neither justified by medical or hospital treatment, which does not include instances in which the pregnant individual is at risk of life-threatening injury due to unsustainable pregnancy. Similar to other forms of reproductive coercion such as forced sterilization, forced abortion may include a physical invasion of female reproductive organs, therefore creating the possibly of causing long term threat or injury preventing viable future pregnancies. Forced abortion is considered a human rights violation by the United Nations due to its failure to comply with the human right to reproductive choice and control without coercion, discrimination, and violence.

Between 1914 and either 1963 (Kitaa) or 1974, Danish law deemed the children of unmarried Greenlandic women legally fatherless : having no right to know or inherit from their biological fathers. Many of the fathers were Danish, so the laws, in effect, racially segregated Danish men from their responsibilities and duties in Greenlandic society. Legally-imposed racial segregation existed in some form in Greenland throughout Danish colonial rule, including laws prohibiting miscegenation.

References

1 2 3 "Manden bag begrebet 'juridisk abort': Det handler om ligestilling" [The man behind the concept of 'legal abortion': It's about equality]. DR (in Danish). February 2016. Retrieved 2016-03-13.
↑ Adam Taylor (8 March 2016). "Men should have the right to 'abort' responsibility for an unborn child, Swedish political group says". Washington Post.
1 2 Parker Richards (22 March 2016). "Liberal Swedes Call for Legal Abortion For Men - Observer". Observer.
↑ "Should men be given 'legal abortion' rights?". The New Zealand Herald. 14 April 2016.
↑ Andersen, Marianne Holst. "Aarhus University: Law" (PDF). Aarhus University, Law. Retrieved 2016-03-14.
↑ "Juridisk abort | Foreningen Far" [Legal abortion]. www.foreningenfar.dk (in Danish). Archived from the original on 2016-03-14. Retrieved 2016-03-14.
↑ Matt Campbell (2014-08-19). "Ectogenesis: Will Artificial Wombs Help Men Fight the Child Custody War?". International Business Times . Retrieved 2016-03-15. Ectogenesis does not provide men the right to a "paper abortion", a legal right to renounce parental rights (such as they are) and obligations (a lot of those) within a given time after a man is named the father by the mother or the state, as does women's option to abort.
↑ Higdon, Michael J. (2011). "Fatherhood by Conscription: Nonconsensual Insemination and the Duty of Child Support". Georgia Law Review. 46. doi:10.2139/ssrn.1761333. S2CID 142616163.
↑ "Father loses damages claim over forged IVF signature". The Guardian . 17 December 2018. Retrieved 19 June 2021.
↑ Young, Cathy. (April 2003). "Aborting Equality: Men's Odd Place in the Abortion Debate." Reason. Retrieved June 11, 2007.
↑ McCulley MG (1988). "The male abortion: the putative father's right to terminate his interests in and obligations to the unborn child". J Law Policy. 7 (1): 1–55. PMID 12666677.
↑ Steven D. Hales (1996). Humber, James; Almeder, Robert F. (eds.). Abortion and Fathers' Rights. Springer Science & Business Media. pp. 5–26. ISBN 978-1-4757-6403-1.{{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
1 2 Anne Sophia Hermansen (2016-01-30). "Skal mænd have fri abort?" [Should men be free to abort?]. ASH (in Danish). Archived from the original on 2016-03-14. Retrieved 2016-03-14.
1 2 Shrage, Laurie (2013-06-12). "Is Forced Fatherhood Fair?". Opinionator. Retrieved 2016-04-12.
↑ "Financial abortion: Should men be able to 'opt out' of parenthood?". ABC News. 2016-12-03. Retrieved 2022-07-26.
↑ "Aldrig har mænd udstillet sig selv mere kællingeagtigt" [Never have men exhibited themselves more hag-like]. politiken.dk (in Danish). Retrieved 2016-03-14.
1 2 Gudme, Maria; Dyrkjær, Maja Vedel (2016-02-04). "Fædre skal tage ansvar for børn - ikke kræve juridisk abort" [Fathers must take responsibility for children - does not require legal abortion]. Debate. Politiken (in Danish). Retrieved 2016-03-14.
↑ "Stor guide: Sådan undgår du at blive far" [Great guide: How to avoid becoming a father]. politiken.dk (in Danish). 5 February 2016. Retrieved 2016-03-14.
↑ "Skyl 'juridisk abort' ud med badevandet" [Rinse 'legal abortion' out with the bathwater]. politiken.dk (in Danish). 14 February 2016. Retrieved 2016-03-14.
↑ Johnson, Dana. "Child Support Obligations That Result from Male Sexual Victimization: An Examination of the Requirement of Support" (PDF). Northern Illinois University Law Review . 25. Retrieved 26 July 2022.
↑ "Milei's candidate launches controversial paternity renouncement proposal | Buenos Aires Times". www.batimes.com.ar. Retrieved 2023-11-30.
↑ "Argentina Stalls the Extreme Right (For Now)". NACLA. Retrieved 2023-11-30.
↑ Sjørup, Karen. "Men´s right to paper abortion – a feminist perspective". Interacting Minds Centre. Aarhus University. Retrieved 28 June 2016.
↑ "Juridisk abort er en god ting – også for kvinderne" [Juridical abortion is a good thing - even for women]. Information (in Danish). 5 February 2016. Retrieved 2016-03-14.