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Dad's Sad, Mad: Too BadWhy dads don't count when it comes to abortion.

By Dahlia Lithwick
Posted Wednesday, Aug. 7, 2002, at 7:00 PM ET
Illustration by Robert Neubecker

This week's "Dad's rights case"—the Pennsylvania battle over whether John Stachokus could legally override his ex-girlfriend Tanya Meyers' decision to have an abortion—has launched a thousand overheated conversations, the most striking element of which is this: People, even sensitive, feminist, pro-choice people, empathize with the father. Perhaps they don't empathize with this father specifically—John Stachokus is allegedly a pretty controlling, and maybe even abusive, man. But this case reminds us of the truth at the heart of reproductive rights law in this country: Women have all the power, and men have none at all. That makes most fair-minded people very uneasy, but there's not much we can do about it.

Until the Associated Press report this morning that Meyers has miscarried, fathers' rights advocates had been seizing their sound bite moment. Dianna Thompson, co-founder of the D.C.-based American Coalition for Fathers and Children, offered up at least a dozen fight-the-power quotes this week. "Stachokus may have ended up like the hundreds of thousands of American fathers who love children they are not able or allowed to see, and whose suffering is ignored by a society that seems capable only of denigrating fathers," she co-writes in an editorial in today's Newsday.

Pro-life and fathers' rights groups have used this case to argue vigorously for changing existing laws. We already know which laws the pro-life groups are targeting. The fathers' rights groups have a tougher time suggesting laws to protect fathers from being shut out of reproductive decisions because ironically, while just about everyone agrees that excluding fathers from these decisions is unjust, no better alternative exists. The womb wins. The courts won't stomach forcing a woman to bear a child against her will.

The law on paternal vetoes has been settled since 1976, when Planned Parenthood v. Danforth invalidated a Missouri statute requiring that a woman provide the written consent of her spouse before being allowed to undergo an abortion. Roe v. Wade had legalized abortion three years earlier. The intent of the Missouri statute was not to keep women down or reify the patriarchy; it was to preserve the principle that couples jointly make the important decisions for a family. A noble goal, said the court, but, as Justice Potter Stewart wrote in his concurrence, when push comes to shove, "we are called upon to choose between these competing rights" of husband and wife. In situations where one parent was being given a veto—have the baby or don't—the court determined that it could not give fathers veto power the state itself did not posses. The court found that a woman's relationship with her own body is simply too intimate for the state to interfere.

This was the logic of Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the 1992 abortion decision that reaffirmed a woman's right to privacy in part because "The mother who carries a child to full term is subject to anxieties, to physical constraints, to pain that only she must bear. ... Her suffering is too intimate and personal for the State to insist, without more, upon its own vision of the woman's role." What can dissenters do with that logic, other than grouse about what any of it has to do with the Constitution?

On almost every other front, men have achieved legal parity in asserting their constitutionally protected rights in the care and oversight of their offspring. Where a mother's body is not involved, the law has gone a long way toward establishing equality: The presumption for mothers in custody battles is no longer the law. Several state courts have held that unwed biological fathers have the right to veto an adoption initiated by the biological mother. And even unwed fathers have significant custodial rights in their children's lives since the Supreme Court decided Stanley v. Illinois in 1972.

But the woman's monopoly on abortion persists because the law just can't overcome our gender-bound bodies. As a result, few very satisfying resolutions to what is, ultimately, a zero-sum problem have emerged. One law review article urges a "cultural feminist" approach: creating a legal rule requiring counseling between parents that might "open the communication lines between the wife and husband." Fathers would at least feel "heard" under this regime; before, their opinions could be disregarded. Of course in the case of Meyers and Stachokus, the clock was ticking (she was 10 weeks pregnant), there were allegations of abuse, and the father was filing for injunctive relief within days of learning of the planned abortion. It's unclear that "counseling" would have satisfied him.

In the piece in today's Newsday, fathers' rights advocate Thompson and her co-author Glenn Sacks don't do much to propose a solution for this problem. They concede that "NOW and NARAL were legitimately concerned that the Pennsylvania anti-abortion injunction ... could have established a precedent for giving men and the government control over an important aspect of women's lives," and then go on to list a dozen other ways that life sucks for dads. They propose remedying these other problems. But even they don't argue that fathers should legally force women to bear children against their will.

So for all the huffing and puffing, and even despite our own innate sense of injustice, this week's case was mostly a big so-what. As a legal matter, the judge should never have granted this injunction in the first place. And until medical science enables us to transplant embryos as easily as we transplant sweet peas, there simply cannot be a balanced weighing of paternal and maternal rights. That day is coming, mind you.

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Dahlia Lithwick is a Slate senior editor.
Illustration by Robert Neubecker.
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Notes From The Fray Editor:

The Fray runneth over. The most common posts fall into two camps: first, those who feel that men have no rights until they are able to bear children themselves; second, those who feel that if men have no say in a woman's decision to get an abortion, they should bear no financial responsibilities for children they did not intend to father. But the sketchy science of Omni magazine and the Judge Mathis staple of righteous indignation over child support aside, there was still much to be said. And the Fray said most of it.

Remarks From The Fray:

We need to find some middle ground. Right now, Planned Parenthood specifically prevents their counselors from even asking about the father. I know--it happened to me. I can assure the immature jerks who have posted silly bullshit on this topic, that this is not a subject for levity.

I do not exaggerate when I say that Planned Parenthood makes no distinction between fathers like myself and rapists. When "processing" an abortion request, fathers simply do not exist. Whether or not a pregnancy was "Planned" is not even considered.

This must change.

-- And The Sadness Lasts Forever

(To reply, click here.)


Abortion: Women have choices, men have responsibilities (as said by steve martin, I believe)

The problem is not that women have choices. The problem is that men do not have a corresponding choice.

If women are going to be allowed to make a unilateral decision -- then men should be allowed to make the same unilateral decision.

Today, a women gets some 26 weeks to decide if she wants to be parent. The man should get the same choice. If the man chooses the not to be a parent, he should give notice to the women and then she can decide whether to continue the pregnancy. If she does, she alone will have parental rights -- and she alone will bear all the financial responsibilities.

Sounds "pro-choice" to me.

-- sjp

(To reply, click here.)


My heart goes out to all those poor fellas out there who want to intercede in a woman's decision on what to do with her own body. As soon as those guys out there stop putting it in any available place, and start getting to know the object of their affection then discussions like these will keep on. As a man I have no right to say to any woman what she should do with her body. Leave the birthing decisions to the people that can do the job. Guys, if you want to have a child... Go find someone who feels the same way that you do. If my wife chose to not have a child, then that is her choice, if I want one and she doesn't then I would have to consider my alternatives. Plain and simply put. Butt the heck out of other peoples lives, and if you feel so strongly about children... Adopt one of the many thousands of children that need a loving parent......

-- Kevin T

(To reply, click here.)


When she claims that fathers have achieved parity with mothers in the eyes of the law, Dullia is wrong on such a basic level that one wishes she had talked to a single family attorney. Because fathers, particularly unmarried fathers, continue to be treated like the unwelcome party crasher whenever they attempt to exercise their rights.

Several states, including New York, have provisions that require fathers to register themselves if they even think they've gotten a woman pregnant--and if they fail to do so, they have essentially waived all future rights should the pregnancy be carried to term. So you had sex with a woman last night, you have no idea that she's pregnant (she doesn't either), but you're expected to march down to city hall and put your name on a list. If the woman is married, fuhgeddaboutit--her husband has all the rights regarding the child that results from an adulterous union, you have zero.

And while courts may not award custody without some kind of mock trial, a mock trial is what unmarried fathers should expect, because the courts all over regard them as shiftless nuisances.

-- Brian

(To reply, click here.)

I think a lot of the trumpeting of "father's rights" around this case is phony. Do any of the people arguing for a paternal veto in this case believe that where a mother woman wants to have the baby and a father doesn't, the mother should be compelled to have an abortion (or that the father's opinion should be given any weight at all)? If the issue is the father's rights, the father's support of an abortion should be given the same weight as the father's opposition to an abortion.

What is really at issue in this case is no different than what is at issue in every other abortion case-- there are some people who do not believe abortion should be legal. They are simply hiding behind this father, who in this particular case, agrees with their position. But the general cause of "father's rights" has nothing to do with it.

-- Dilan Esper

(To reply, click here.)


…obviously the mother has the tougher road to hoe. still, few seem comfortable with the idea of the father getting no say at all in reproductive choices. but why does this discomfort only break through the surface at the dead sea of abortion law? if you think about it, the father never has any say in the reproductive process.

after deciding whether or not she will see the potential sperm donor, physical contact is entirely at the woman's discretion. if and when that contact begins, she decides which base the would-be runner will end up on. she decides what form of birth control will be used: to condom or not to condom? the pill? the patch? none at all? it's hers to weigh the advantages and drawbacks, it's hers to assume the ultimate risk. if at any point she decides to take her ball and go home, then the game is over. with some minor modifications, this all holds true within the framework of marriage as well.

"so what's your point, locdog?"

the point, my friend, is this: barring rape, the woman has complete control over the process from beginning to end with a hundred failsafes in between and a point of no return which is located just a few nanoseconds this side of la petite morte itself. she had every opportunity to exercise control and judgement, and if she got pregnant against her will it's because her judgement, or her birth control, utterly failed her. in either case it's her risk, her responsibility. up until roe vs. wade, what happened after conception was the only part of the process the woman did not legally control. why not? because she'd had her dance and now it was time to pay the fiddler. oddly poetic that supreme irresponsibility could saddle one with the greatest obligation imaginable: the creation and care of another human being….

-- locdog

(To reply, click here.)

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