Missouri Republican Floor Leader Rick Brattin has introduced a bill that would allow a man to stop a woman from getting an abortion by withholding written permission. Brattin is under fire not only over the bill but his description of the condition of confirmation of a “legitimate rape” to secure and exception under the law — a decryption that reminded many of the controversy over the use of the same term by former Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.).
The requirement for consent of the male involved in a pregnancy includes an exception in cases of rape or incest. Otherwise, the bill says “No abortion shall be performed or induced unless and until the father of the unborn child provides written, notarized consent to the abortion.”
Brattin insisted that “Just like any rape, you have to report it, and you have to prove it. So you couldn’t just go and say, ‘Oh yeah, I was raped’ and get an abortion. It has to be a legitimate rape.”
There is only one abortion clinic in the state in St. Louis.
Brattin added to the bizarre aspect of this legislation by saying that, as a father of five, his recent vasectomy was the inspiration for this bill: “When a man goes in for that procedure—at least in the state of Missouri—you have to have a consent form from your spouse in order to have that procedure done. Here I was getting a normal procedure that has nothing to do with another human being’s life, and I needed to get a signed for . . . But on ending a life, you don’t. I think that’s pretty twisted.”
I am not an expect of Missouri law but I would be very surprised if there is any law requiring a man to get consent for a vasectomy.
Putting aside the statements, the bill itself appears facially unconstitutional given cases like Casey v. Planned Parenthood, where the Court struck down a requirement that a woman inform her husband if she haves an abortion. There is also the holding in Eisenstadt v. Baird where the Court ruled that “[i]f the right of privacy means anything, it is the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child.”
Brattin has previously attracted national attention and criticism over his campaign to compel the teaching of creationism in school.
For those who want to see additional challenges in the area, this bill is ill-conceived for those who want to challenge abortion rights. It is likely to amplify past rulings rather than chip away at current precedent. It will likely push those judges or justices on the margin to rally around the core principles of Roe, as the plurality stated in Casey:
The sum of the precedential enquiry to this point shows Roe’s underpinnings unweakened in any way affecting its central holding. While it has engendered disapproval, it has not been unworkable. An entire generation has come of age free to assume Roe’s concept of liberty in defining the capacity of women to act in society, and to make reproductive decisions; no erosion of principle going to liberty or personal autonomy has left Roe’s central holding a doctrinal remnant. Roe portends no developments at odds with other precedent for the analysis of personal liberty; and no changes of fact have rendered viability more or less appropriate as the point at which the balance of interests tips. Within the bounds of normal stare decisis analysis, then, and subject to the considerations on which it customarily turns, the stronger argument is for affirming Roe’s central holding, with whatever degree of personal reluctance any of us may have, not for overruling it.
I don’t support abortion either. So if the law currently allows a woman to kill “their” mistake unilaterally then they should also allow the man to unilaterally not provide support. Make it a joint requirement to kill the baby and then you can also make it a joint requirement to support. Why isn’t that fair?
If she wants to be able to compel a father to support a child she chooses to keep, then the state has to also allow him to compel her to keep it should she decide to abort.
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You speak as if dad had no say in making the child. He had sex with mom irresponsibly if the result was a pregnancy and that was not what he wanted.
Not to mention your statement is not supported by one state’s law.
The bottom line, mom is the one holding the cards biologically speaking in carrying the baby, and it should be her decision.
For the record, personally I am anti abortion. But I have no right to force a woman what to do with regard to that baby.
If the state wants to give the woman the unilateral right to decide to abort (not be a mother), then they should give the man the unilateral right to not be a father. If she wants to be able to compel a father to support a child she chooses to keep, then the state has to also allow him to compel her to keep it should she decide to abort.
Jettexas, the 14 week old NOT viable fetus would’ve died with its mother had not the hospital panicked and refused the family’s wishes to turn off life support. Does the FAMILY of the deceased have NO RIGHTS? The baby had a very good chance of being brain damaged from the lack of oxygen when the mother was dying. Did you read NONE of the reports? IF you think the STATE should be allowed to supersede the family’s wishes and legal rights, you have veered into totalitarianism. The Judge mad the right decision, it’s too bad that the ideological excesses of Texas interfered with nature and the rights of the family to speak for their dead.Tex, you need to feel sorry for this country if you think a STATE can dictate who should be kept alive artificially. It could be YOU on that ventilator one day. Would you wish to be kept alive that way? You haven’t a clue about what happens to a body as I decomposes DESPITE being on life support. That fetus had a slim change of survival and could have been profoundly damaged. You think that was FAIR to either the baby or the FAMILY? My concern is BECAUSE I’m a nurse and a mother and a grandmother, unlike you I’m not just speaking emotionally without thinking about the REALITIES of the situation.
Abortion should be illegal past 20 weeks other than medical reasons.
My baby is 11 years old now, and her mother refuses to let me see her at all.
After 14 times in a row, over two year of asking, the court refuses to issue a visitation order, and refuses to give any reason for that refusal.
So don’t tell me the courts are not biased.
Gary T – sorry about your visitation rights. You might try moving to a different state and get them involved. Some states are more male friendly.
Inga ~ “The state was found to have acted illegally.’
If they acted illegally then why was there no charges? The bottom line to me is, there was a 24 week old baby KILLED. You are a nurse and believe in letting a 23/24 week baby die! It’s bad enough that killing of babies is allowed at 8 weeks. But this baby would have been able to breathe, he had a heart beat too and probably a soul. And you worry about rights! I feel sorry for you.
Abortion is the most difficult thing to discuss, with anybody. Now the fathers feel the angst of losing a child.
I have my own rule. If you have sex, pregnancy may follow. If neither of you wants a baby, use protection. Without protecting against pregnancy you may get pregnant. I know several kids who turned up by accident. I get a laugh from that comment. I’ve never had sex accidentally. Taking all your clothes off should be an alarm. I took the pill and always felt pregnancy wouldn’t happen. Found out late in life that I could never have had children!
Men, this includes you! Keep a rubber in your wallet. These sexual “accidents” sometimes are a complete surprise! A welcome one, but be prepared. Use your rubber!
So, the woman is pregnant with a man’s child, tell him? Absolutely! Being a woman does not give us the right to destroy the child of a man you agreed to have sex with. I think any man stepping up and wanting the baby is rare and beautiful.
This site gets wrapped up in morals all the time. So, what is the next step?
I’ll wait for some responses because it’s a waste to blather on about something nobody cares about.
Sandi – the condom in most men’s wallets is so old it is no longer safe.
You want to bet that baby and mother aren’t intertwined?
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A pregnant woman’s blood stream contains not only her own cells, but a small number of her child’s, as well.
During pregnancy, and even decades later, a baby’s influence on mom runs deep — cell deep. While the fetus develops inside the womb, its cells mix and mingle with the mother’s after traveling through the placenta, and can stay there for years.
In a new study, researchers discovered cells from the placenta and the fetus inside a pregnant mouse’s lungs. They were even able to tell that some of the cells were immune cells, while others looked like undefined connective tissue.
“We and other people have shown they stay around for decades. They aren’t the original cells so there must be some way they can give rise to daughter cells in the mother’s body,” study researcher Diana Bianchi of Tufts Medical Center, told LiveScience. “We strongly believe that there are implications for the future health of women who are or have previously been pregnant.”
The researchers aren’t sure how fetal cells get across the placenta into the mother, but it’s possible that there are leaky spots (which get bigger as pregnancy reaches term) in the cells that form the barrier between the baby’s blood and the mother’s blood in the placenta.
They also don’t know what the cells do in the mother’s body, or what types of cells they are. So Bianchi and her colleagues studied pregnant mice to see what types of cells they could find in the mother’s lungs. [8 Odd Changes That Happen During Pregnancy]
To track the fetal cells, Bianchi’s graduate student, Stephanie Pritchard, mated a male mouse that had two copies of the green fluorescent protein gene with a normal female. This gene was present in every fetus he fertilized, so when these fetal cells made it into the mother’s organs, the researchers were able to recognize the fluorescent signal and separate those cells from the mother’s own cells.
Next, they analyzed the genetics of these captured fetal cells to see which genes were turned on, comparing these “expressed” genes with data for the genes expressed by various cell types. They found the genetic signatures of cells matched those derived from the placenta, and from two types of fetal cells: immune cells and undifferentiated cells that make up the connective tissues, called mesenchymal cells.
Special cells
The immune cells may help ensure that the mother’s immune system doesn’t “reject” the fetus (as it would a transplanted organ that isn’t a genetic match), but the researchers don’t really know what role the undifferentiated mesenchymal cells have.
These mesenchymal cells could play a role in regeneration or healing of the mother’s tissues, the researchers speculate. For instance, these fetal cells have been found integrated into lung tissue, and researchers have seen them come to the rescue when maternal heart tissue is injured. They’ve also shown up at the site of tumors.
“They are younger cells and they do appear to have different capabilities,” Bianchi said. “That’s an area for future research: to determine if an undifferentiated cell from the fetus has different regenerative capability than the mother’s own stem cells.”
The study was published today (June 6) in the journal Biology of Reproduction.
Follow Jennifer Welsh on Twitter @microbelover or LiveScience @livescience. We’re also on Facebook & Google+.
Despite the impression I may have given, I lean towards giving the woman the right to continue or terminate the pregnancy on her own recognizance.
What I don’t lean toward is putting the consequences of that unilateral decision upon the father, if he is to legally have no legal part in the decision of term pregnancy.
I lean against compelling a woman to carry a child to term. However, if a woman does not inform a man of her pregnancy he should not be held responsible for the child’s upbringing if he does not wish to be. If he is made aware of the pregnancy he should be able to make a decision as to whether he wants to be a parent to that child. If he does not he must inform the woman giving her sufficient time to decide if she wants to abort or not.
As long as he allows her enough time to make a decision which would be based upon his intentions. He is not forcing her in any way. Once his intentions are known then she can make an informed decision as to how to proceed. She still has the option to abort, keep the child and raise it as hers alone [or co-parenting with the father if he has agreed to this], put it up for adoption or drop it at a safe haven.
This is such a complicated issue. At what point does the zygote become a being? What about the rights of the man to protect that being? And how about the rights of the woman over her body? But, at some point, there’s another person in her body and that person has rights. The older I get the less liberal I become on this subject.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-discover-childrens-cells-living-in-mothers-brain/
Excerpt:
Scientists discover children’s cells living in mother’s brains.
The link between a mother and child is profound, and new research suggests a physical connection even deeper than anyone thought. The profound psychological and physical bonds shared by the mother and her child begin during gestation when the mother is everything for the developing fetus, supplying warmth and sustenance, while her heartbeat provides a soothing constant rhythm.
The physical connection between mother and fetus is provided by the placenta, an organ, built of cells from both the mother and fetus, which serves as a conduit for the exchange of nutrients, gasses, and wastes. Cells may migrate through the placenta between the mother and the fetus, taking up residence in many organs of the body including the lung, thyroid, muscle, liver, heart, kidney and skin. These may have a broad range of impacts, from tissue repair and cancer prevention to sparking immune disorders.
It is remarkable that it is so common for cells from one individual to integrate into the tissues of another distinct person. We are accustomed to thinking of ourselves as singular autonomous individuals, and these foreign cells seem to belie that notion, and suggest that most people carry remnants of other individuals. As remarkable as this may be, stunning results from a new study show that cells from other individuals are also found in the brain. In this study, male cells were found in the brains of women and had been living there, in some cases, for several decades. What impact they may have had is now only a guess, but this study revealed that these cells were less common in the brains of women who had Alzheimer’s disease, suggesting they may be related to the health of the brain.
We all consider our bodies to be our own unique being, so the notion that we may harbor cells from other people in our bodies seems strange. Even stranger is the thought that, although we certainly consider our actions and decisions as originating in the activity of our own individual brains, cells from other individuals are living and functioning in that complex structure. However, the mixing of cells from genetically distinct individuals is not at all uncommon. This condition is called chimerism after the fire-breathing Chimera from Greek mythology, a creature that was part serpent part lion and part goat. Naturally occurring chimeras are far less ominous though, and include such creatures as the slime mold and corals.
Microchimerism is the persistent presence of a few genetically distinct cells in an organism. This was first noticed in humans many years ago when cells containing the male “Y” chromosome were found circulating in the blood of women after pregnancy. Since these cells are genetically male, they could not have been the women’s own, but most likely came from their babies during gestation.
In this new study, scientists observed that microchimeric cells are not only found circulating in the blood, they are also embedded in the brain. They examined the brains of deceased women for the presence of cells containing the male “Y” chromosome. They found such cells in more than 60 percent of the brains and in multiple brain regions. Since Alzheimer’s disease is more common in women who have had multiple pregnancies, they suspected that the number of fetal cells would be greater in women with AD compared to those who had no evidence for neurological disease. The results were precisely the opposite: there were fewer fetal-derived cells in women with Alzheimer’s. The reasons are unclear.
Microchimerism most commonly results from the exchange of cells across the placenta during pregnancy, however there is also evidence that cells may be transferred from mother to infant through nursing. In addition to exchange between mother and fetus, there may be exchange of cells between twins in utero, and there is also the possibility that cells from an older sibling residing in the mother may find their way back across the placenta to a younger sibling during the latter’s gestation. Women may have microchimeric cells both from their mother as well as from their own pregnancies, and there is even evidence for competition between cells from grandmother and infant within the mother.
Jim, the baby is also “made up” by genes that came from grandparents. Maybe they should have a say as well..?
A woman is the singular vehicle for birth. Men named Jim are external, and should hold zero legal weight in forcing the pregnancy of another.
Dave – a natural outcome of sexual intercourse is the possibility of pregnancy. Between two consenting adults, it is very legal. Should the pregnancy occur shouldn’t the same consenting adults agree to an abortion of the outcome of their sexual intercourse? And if one disagrees, shouldn’t they be completely responsible for the resulting child?
How about these Representatives be required to get our consent before they take away our rights.
The baby growing in a mother is not her body. It is made up of both parents.
In the bathroom wall at the Missouri Legislature there is a sign posted:
In Days of Old When Knights Were Bold
And Rubbers Weren’t Invented…
They tied a sock around the cock…
And babies Were Prevented.
A woman owns her body: even if that body is impregnated.
News-flash: it’s still her body.
To declare therefore that the impregnator — or the government! — has a right to force the respective woman to give birth, is outrageous. Should the father be consulted? Should he have a say? Sure. But only morally speaking.
Legally, and in reality, a woman has the sole right to decide whether or not to permit life to emerge inside of her.
Mind your own business.
Jack, one of the main reasons for child support laws are so the rest of society doesn’t have to pick up the tab for providing for that child. While you can argue fairness all you want, after mom, dad is in the best position to make sure that a child is not conceived that he does not want (or does not want to financially support). The biological fact that mom carries the baby, I think, gives her every right to be the final decider as to whether she wants to have the baby.
O’k, the republicans take control of both houses now it’s time to put both of their feet into they’re mouths. It never fails.
Gary T: Not sexist at all. Mom is just as responsible as dad for having that child. Now, biologically, it just so happens that mom is the one to have to carry it until birth, eliminating any doubt as to who is the biological mother. If the parties are unmarried, no doubt mom has superior rights under the law because dad first has to establish paternity to enforce his rights. If they are married, however, dad is just as entitled to custody as mom.
“The fact is, that’s all he can do, seek to be, because women are granted sole custody by the courts 93% of the time, no matter what the dad seeks.”
I can only speak of the area I practice in, metro STL, but this is simply not true in the STL metro area (and I suspect in most urban/suburban areas). Generally speaking, you give me a dad involved in the everyday care-taking of the child as a client, and I will get him 50/50 custody, or something very close, the large majority of the time. For the younger generations, dads are a lot more involved in the care-taking of the child. The family dynamic has really changed over the last 50 years. I just recently got a dad sole custody and child support payments from Mom. Mind you, for infants, generally speaking Mom’s are better equipped to care for the child. But not always. A lot of variables play into custody matters, as you are likely aware.
But don’t get me wrong, I agree with you that the law has taken a while to catch up and is still catching up (depending on the judge), and there are still biases out there and long-standing practices that default to Mom getting “default” custody. But that is where a good attorney can make a huge difference. I take pride in bucking the trend, and the older normal attorneys do not like my attempts to do so.