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

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