No

by Jeanne Deaux

Created on: March 17, 2008

It is true that abortion is a very sensitive issue both culturally and politically. It is also true that marriage is supposed to be about trust and mutual responsibility, and we generally assume that one of the main purposes of marriage is the production and upbringing of children. That said, I don't believe spousal consent should be required before a married woman can have an abortion.

Marriage law has evolved greatly in the past hundred years or so. Husbands used to have absolute rights over their wives; married women generally could not own property, could not work outside the home without the husband's consent, and sometimes could not even secure a divorce. Husbands could often dispose of marital property as they saw fit without consulting the wife first, even if it was something the wife paid for out of her own funds. Women could not even hope for custody of their children upon divorce; before the feminist movement, fathers were given custody by default.

Among the rights a man had over his wife, he had some say over whether she got medical care, and could consent to surgery in her place without consulting her. It was not uncommon, in fact, for men to have their wives committed for mental illness even if there was little evidence of same other than the wife being miserable in a bad marriage.

Nowadays the situation has improved. Speaking specifically to the medical example, I used to work in medical records for the military. In order for someone to be able to pick up their spouse's records for an upcoming appointment, the spouse had to have issued express written consent beforehand and it had to be filed in the chart. I don't know if the civilian world was as strict about it back then, but it is now thanks to the HIPAA medical privacy law. Additionally, no one can consent to surgery for their spouse unless the spouse is incapacitated, and there are very strict standards for what constitutes inability to consent. Likewise, no one can refuse a medical or surgical procedure being done to their spouse, since legally what one adult has done to them medically is not the business of any other adult.

Now, with abortion, when it is assumed the husband should have a say in the procedure, this has several pitfalls. The most obvious is that the husband is stepping in and trying to make a medical-surgical decision for the wife without her permission. In no other instance is this remotely legal. I suppose it could be said jokingly (or not) that a pregnant woman is by definition not in her right mind, but then we don't have any laws limiting a pregnant woman's right to drive a car, gain employment, open financial accounts, or vote, so it would be a tough sell to say that a husband should decide about abortion for his wife because she's mentally ill or mentally deficient.

It could then be argued that it is the husband's duty to protect his prospective child from being destroyed by the mother, and pro-lifers do argue this point-frequently. To understand what is wrong with this argument, consider the relationship between a pregnant woman and the fetus ("unborn baby") she is carrying. She is essentially a life support machine for the duration of her pregnancy.

Can we think of any other medical situations which are equivalent to this? I can think of two: blood donation and organ donation. Now, by definition, in order to donate blood you have to be alive. You can also donate some organs and tissues while alive: for instance, bone marrow, kidneys, and pieces of your liver. (The latter regenerates.) So by definition, when you donate one of these things, you are being someone else's life support.

Can we donate blood, tissues, or organs to our born children? Sure we can; that's a dumb question. Now, here's the rub: Can we refuse to donate to our born children? Not only can we refuse, we can refuse when we are a perfect tissue match to our children, or when refusing to donate results in their deaths. We might be racked with guilt afterward, we might face censure from society for making that decision, but we will never be legally charged with a crime.

Now, in an abortion, if it is an elective abortion not done because of serious problems with the pregnancy, what the woman is saying is that she does not wish to be life support for her fetus any longer. The equivalent in donation terms is that we are legally allowed to change our minds about the blood or tissues or organs we've donated, right up until they're put into another person. Nobody questions this. If it isn't a problem when the prospective "person on life support" is born already, I'm not sure why it's a problem when the person isn't born yet. And innocence really isn't the issue; a one-day-old baby is innocent too, but you don't have to donate anything to your one-day-old baby ot keep her alive, either. You don't even have to breastfeed her. Heck, you don't have to keep her.

It is curious that certain segments of society present the husband as champion of the unborn, whose job it is to protect his "baby" from the depredations of the evil woman carrying it, while she is pregnant but at no other time. I never hear anyone suggesting that a husband should force a wife to donate a kidney to their child. I never hear anyone get into a tizzy that a mother didn't donate a pint of O negative to the kids. Somehow it just never seems to be a deciding factor in marital discord or in divorce. And that's odd, because a born child ought to have a closer connection to his father than an unborn child would. And you would think that somewhere, sometime, a parent refused to be a donor for their child on religious grounds if for no other reason. Muslims generally oppose organ donation, for instance, and Jehovah's Witnesses forbid blood transfusion. But these parents acting on their beliefs somehow just about never make the news.

What is it about pregnant women that sets off so many men's inner control freaks in a way that nonpregnant mothers and born children don't? I wish I knew, but meanwhile, I see nothing fair about treating pregnant women as a separate and unequal class with fewer rights than any other class of human being. Furthermore, if a man's right to produce offspring is in question here, I would respectfully suggest that the best time to discuss this matter is before the marriage takes place, not after your wife has gotten pregnant a year earlier than planned and before she's finished college, or two weeks after she's filed for divorce.

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