Thursday, December 01, 2005

A Man's Right to Choose

Dalton Conley writes:
Many liberals who oppose Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr.'s nomination to the Supreme Court focus on his (losing) position in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a 1991 case about a Pennsylvania law that would have required women seeking abortions to notify their husbands. "Pennsylvania has a legitimate interest in furthering the husband's interest in the fate of the fetus," is the most widely quoted part of his opinion in that case. ...

Judge Alito's thinking about the role of men in reproductive decision-making is in keeping with how legal thinking needs to evolve in this age of readily available DNA testing. Nor is his position contrary to national sentiment: a majority of Americans feel that the husband should be notified about an abortion.

His only problem was not going far enough, ...
The inequity is that the woman gets to make the abortion decision, but the man has to pay child support.