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In a loving relationship, probably the majority of women would be sensitive enough to consider the father's position prior to making the decision about whether or not to abort. On moral grounds, I personally believe that married couples should mutually decide the fate of a pregnancy.

However, the law CANNOT and SHOULD NOT be amended to give fathers the opportunity to challenge a woman's right to abort, or to compel her to have an abortion. While the father can have an opinion, he CANNOT have any legal say about whether or not a woman aborts, as this would be EXTREMELY detrimental to women and legally impossible to enforce.

Where there is a divergence of will between the father and the mother, whose will should supersede and be enforced? Would the courts decide which parent to favour on a case by case basis, and what criteria would they use in making their decision? If men were given a say, they would have to resort to legal methods to enforce their paternal rights and courts would have to favour the will of one of the two parents. Courts would be overwhelmed and stalled for months, and by the end of the bitter ordeal, it could be too late or too dangerous for the woman to abort. For pragmatism and simplicity, the decision to abort must remain a private decision that rests with the woman, who carries most of the physical and emotional consequences of either the abortion or childbirth.

In order to allow a father to have a say as to whether or not the mother aborts, it must be clear who the father is, so there must be pre-partum paternity testing to determine his identity. Paternity DNA testing is only possible after a child is born, or at the very earliest during the second trimester, when it is either too late or much more dangerous to abort. Allowing a father say in an abortion could mean that a woman would have to wait until the second trimester to abort and be forced to undergo obligatory paternity testing and/or disclose the identity of the father, which is a clear invasion of privacy. This is also indiscreet, insensitive and potentially devastating, especially if she is unsure about the identity of the father, or the child was conceived under volatile circumstances, or if the woman has a poor relationship with the father. A cunning man can manipulate paternal rights in his favour by claiming to be the father of the child even if he is not, intentionally impeding a woman's abortion, or ruining the woman psychologically by compelling her to abort.

Giving the

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