Planned Parenthood: Husbands Should Have No Say if Their Baby is Aborted
Planned Parenthood officials blasted the South Carolina health department this week after the agency proposed a rule requiring that husbands have a say in their wives’ decision to abort their unborn child.
Last month, the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control released a series of proposed changes to the state abortion facility regulations and submitted them for public review, WBTW News reports. Initially, the health department included a new rule requiring a husband to consent when his wife wants to abort their unborn child. However, the agency later backtracked and removed the rule.
Here’s more from the report:
But the agency said Wednesday it was a mistake to even suggest a married woman, if living with her husband, get his signed consent. State law requires a husband’s consent only in the third trimester, and such abortions can occur only in hospitals.
DHEC is taking public comment on its website through Monday, and a public hearing is scheduled for December.
Local Planned Parenthood leaders were incensed when they discovered the proposed rule changes. The abortion chain claimed the new rules are an attempt to “shame women and put barriers in their way of seeking constitutionally protected medical care. Simply put, the regulations are based in politics, not medicine.”
“We stand with South Carolina women and will fight these burdensome, unconstitutional and medically-unnecessary regulations,” Vicki Ringer, South Carolina Director of Public Affairs, Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, said in a statement.
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The abortion group has problems with a number of the new regulations, not just the now-nonexistent spousal notification requirement. Ringer claimed the additional rules that require abortion practitioners have admitting privileges at local hospitals, remove judicial bypass options for minors seeking abortions without a parent’s consent, and mandate surgical-facility requirements are “blatantly unconstitutional.”
Planned Parenthood’s position on men and abortion is consistent: Men only should have a say in an abortion decision if they support it. Pro-life blogger Sarah Terzo pointed to one example of just how callous and unfeeling Planned Parenthood is toward fathers who want to protect their unborn children:
Louise Taylor, who was the vice president of medical affairs at Planned Parenthood, summed up PP’s attitude towards the fathers of aborted babies: “But it doesn’t matter how much men scream and holler that they are being left out [of the abortion decision] There are some things that they are never going to be able to experience fully. I say, tough luck.”
Even if the state had kept the rule, it almost certainly would have been struck down by a court. In 1992, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Pennsylvania law requiring that a spouse be notified of an abortion in the case Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The justices said the measure was unconstitutional, arguing, “A state may not give to a man the kind of dominion over his wife that parents exercise over their children.”
As a result, men do not have any rights to protect their unborn child from abortion under U.S. law, despite the fact that the child is biologically just as much theirs as the woman’s. After their child’s birth, fathers are required to support and protect the child; but before birth, they do not have any legal power to protect the child’s life from abortion. Women are not even required to tell men that they aborted their unborn child.
An unborn child’s abortion death can have a profound effect on the father. There is substantial evidence that indicates post-abortive men suffer silently after abortion. Additionally, according to the Silent No More Awareness Campaign, men who are opposed to abortion but supported their partners’ decision may have an immediate reaction to the death of their child. They may feel sadness, grief, anger and a sense of not being able to protect their offspring.
