From: pw@panix.com (Paul Wallich)
Newsgroups: soc.men
Subject: Re: U.S. Supreme Court Ab
Date: 26 Jul 92 02:27:50 GMT
Organization: Trivializers R Us

In article <1992Jul24.013642.28017@zooid.guild.org> goid@zooid.guild.org (Will Steeves) writes:
>pw@panix.com (Paul Wallich) writes...
>PW> In article <1992Jun29.095852.1@mdcbbs.com> rivero@mdcbbs.com writes:
>PW> >  The U.S. Supreme Court has just declared that any mechanism designed to
>PW> >protect the rights and interests of a man within such a marriage is an
>PW> >"unneccesary burden" on the wife.
>
>PW> The striking down of the husband-notification requirement is the
>PW> vestigial remnant of the court's recognition that women still have
>PW> rights to their own bodies, rights that they _cannot_ legally
>
>Paul, what does requiring a man to have the right to know that he is
>likely going to lose a child, have to do with denying women's "right to
>their bodies"?  Remember, the requirement is only for Husband *Notification*,
>not Husband *Veto*.  If it had been a case of a veto, I might think that the
>regulation was closer to being an issue of "women's bodies," but the issue
>of MERE notification is a matter of *dignity* - While you might say that a
>woman should "have the right to choose" for (at least) the sake of her 
>dignity, a father should also "have the right to know".

OK, show me a law that requires husband notification _after_ the abortion
rather than before, and I'll consider your argument that notification
isn't intended to have the effect of veto. (I think it was the late
Grace Hopper who said "It's easier to apologize than to ask permission.")
For every hypothetical you can think up where dignity would require
notification, I can bring up one where notification would be disastrous
and perhaps physically dangerous.

>In fact, there is even more to it than you think ... For example, if the
>husband and wife had not had sex for a protracted period, the fact that she
>was considering an abortion would be *very* big news, and would be grounds
>for a divorce on the grounds of adultery.  Surely, if a *wife* should have the
>right to know if her husband has been unfaithful, a husband should have that
>same right!  Mind you, this is only a minority of cases, but still, the
>question of dignity remains.
>
>
>PW> Sigh. You can divorce a woman who won't bear you children, you

>PW> can humiliate her to her face or on the net, but you can't force
>        ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
>I don't offend easily, but *that* managed to do it...  Just the fact that
>he had the guts to go public and discuss his pain, does NOT mean that he is
>intending to publically humiliate her.
>
>I *KNOW* this, as someone who made the agonising decision to go public about
>my own situation, in spite of the fact that I realised that the woman involved
>would hate me forever for doing do.  It KILLED me to have that happen, but I
>felt that it was also very crucial to break men's silence and men's pain on
>this issue.

Whether any one the people in this group who have gone on at length
about the despicable behavior of their ex-wives _intended_ primarily
to humiliate them, or just humiliated them in the course of venting
their troubles seems at moot point. Furthermore, you had the choice
whether to go public about your situation; once you made that choice,
the woman involved had none. If she hates you forever, remember, it is
because you've just gone and inflicted massive public pain on her. (Hmmm,
should we have "ex-wife notification" before ex-husbands post their
stories?)

>PW> (Of course, if she is pregnant, and a doctor decides that she
>PW> really ought to have a c-section delivery, the court will sign
>PW> an order forcing her to have her belly cut open, so all is not lost.)
>
>Whoa, hold on a second there, Paul...  I'm calling your bluff.  I'd like some
>details on *this* statement, in other words:
>
>1) Has this happened *in North America or Europe* in the past five years?  Ten?
In the past five. I will refer you to your handy JAMA index for the articles,
although some of them also made the news (If you can't find the cites
yourself, under court-ordered surgery, pregant women, I'll dig them up in
the next week or so.) There are something like a half dozen cases total.

>2) How far along was the pregnancy?

Since this was a c-section delivery being order, the pregancies were fairly
close to term -- 7-9 months. The two primary cases were a) a woman with
advanced cancer who died a few hours after being forcibly sedated and
delivered of a stillborn infant b) a woman who went into hiding and
delivered a healthy child at term; a panel of doctors had gotten the
court order on the grounds that there was virtually no medical possibility
of the fetus surviving normal delivery, and they did not believe that
the woman had a right to refuse the operation (a belief in which the
court apparently concurred).

>3) Did the husband/father inform the doctor(s) that he wanted the child?  Or,
>   was the father uninvolved?

The fathers in most of the cases were relatively uninvolved; the issue
was not necessarily whether the child was wantedd but rather the mode
of delivery.
>
>I'm sceptical, because I *really* doubt that any court would make such a
>ruling, except to save the woman's life.

Sorry. In the first case above, the court's reasoning was essentially
that the woman was going to die fairly soon anyway and that the likelihood
of killing her by performing a c-section didn't matter if there was a
chance that the fetus could be saved. As the authors of the review
article note, the judicial reasoning process is not helped by the fact
that these cases are generally brought on an emergency basis so that a
judge has a few hours to become familiar with the facts, hear arguments
on one or both sides and render a verdict.

paul
Xref: sparky soc.men:13849 soc.women:14284 misc.legal:15092 alt.child-support:2289 alt.dads-rights:1641