With the recently predicted overturning of Roe v Wade (1973) and the windfall to affect cases such as PLANNED PARENTHOOD OF SOUTHEASTERN PENNSYLVANIA, et al., Petitioners, v. Robert P. CASEY (1992), the fundamental question of “Privacy” and “Equal Protection” remain unanswered.
Decades of debates on definitions, terminology, timeframes, and funding have been settled over the years, carving a path for special interest groups [Planned Parenthood] to grow into the Forbes top 100 Largest Charities, coming in at #30 with total revenue of $1.6 Billion ($618 million from Government support) in 2021.
The implication that the right to privacy, under the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, and 9th amendments and the equal protection clause under the 14th provides little insight on the equality between man and woman, in cases of abortion. Sure, Roe v. Wade (1973) cites case law regarding the rights of parents to form their healthcare, marriage partners, family life, upbringing, and child(s) education; lacking is the formal recognition that a man’s constitutional right bares weight against an abortion, either wanted or unwanted. Roe v. Wade (1973) and Casey place the decision to have a child, or raise a child, solely onto the woman, with or without the man’s consent. Wouldn’t this logic go against a father’s right to privacy and equal protection under the law? If one party has complete say over the future of multiple people’s lives, how is this “equal” under the 14th amendment?
The Federal government addressed this issue…it’s known today as child support. To ensure the balance of state welfare systems, the federal government had to act. Just three (3) years after Roe v Wade (1973) the child support system was officially created through the federal government’s use of title IV-D funds via, the Social Security Act. “The 1970s and ’80s saw profound social, economic, and demographic changes” –npr.org There were changes all right, huge shifts in control of family planning were taking place, leaving one of the participants out of the picture. Wives and single women across the nation could now rest easy knowing that due to the financial support from un-intended fathers, they wouldn’t have to risk their souls to have an abortion. This concept remains true today, men are continued to be viewed as donors and check books to the underlining social “good” and rights of women.
So where are the reproductive rights for men? CRICKETS
With only a couple of opinions on contraceptives for men, there are 100 more for women. Certain elements of Roe address the “need” for abortion for reasons of contraceptive failure… as though medical science has caught up to that reasonings tenfold. Casey threw out the idea that married women should have signed consent from their husband prior to the abortion, and women now make up 68-70% of petitioners for divorce. It would seem over the past 50 years that men have been removed from the reproductive health/family planning discussion and replaced by billion-dollar organizations like Planned Parenthood and the top sugar daddy, the federal government.
Removing a man’s choice is no different than if Roe v Wade (1973) was never heard. Demanding compliance with someone else’s decision regardless of its impact by ensuring financial reward (child support) with or without their active participation is a violation of our constitutional rights under the 9th and 14th amendments. When the dust settles on this trend of federal government overreach and abortion is still available to every woman in the U.S. and providers are still practicing under the protection of privacy and women can still control their bodies, and the number of children being born out of wedlock continues to increase just keep this in mind…
Men will continue to weep for the children they wanted, men will continue donating their DNA under false pretenses of the use of contraceptives, men will be forced to financially provide for children they did not wish for or want, and men will forever be enslaved to archaic views that a women’s right to privacy more valuable than any one person’s right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The only way to practice equal protection under the law surrounding the use of abortion as a “right;” is to pass a law that allows a man to abort his child, to remove all responsibility for that child both physically and financially. To provide the same timeframes as abortion regulates, for the parties to fulfill their actions prior to the birth of the child. If a man “chooses” to have an abortion, then he is without child (figuratively speaking), and for those who say, “men can sign away their rights and walk away” yes you would be correct however, most states will still hold that father financially responsible throughout the years. There must be laws in place to protect men and women equally, not because we’re the same in theory, but because that is what the U.S. Constitution sees fit to provide and if the state and the federal government must abide by a woman’s right to have an abortion, in turn, they must take care of the children that were financially aborted by men.
