bioethics
Should Fathers Have a Say in Whether an Abortion Is Carried Out?
LNAT Section B · Model essay
The essay prompt
When a woman is deciding whether to end a pregnancy, should the biological father have any legally binding power over that decision, or is the choice hers alone?
The stance
No. A biological father should have no determinative legal say - no veto and no consent requirement - over whether an abortion is carried out, because the burden of pregnancy is borne by one body alone and decisional authority must track that burden. His views may be ethically relevant and morally weighty, but they cannot bind. Crucially, this is a position about legal power, not about emotional irrelevance: to deny a father a veto is not to deny him grief, interest, or a voice.
The case for
Bodily autonomy is indivisible: the womb cannot be democratised.
Pregnancy happens inside one person's body. To grant a father a veto is to compel a woman to continue gestating against her will - to conscript her body to sustain a life. The law compels no one, not even a parent, to donate blood or an organ to save a born child; it cannot consistently compel nine months of gestation. Judith Jarvis Thomson's violinist analogy makes the point sharp: even a full right to life does not include a right to use another's body. A father's interest is real, but it cannot override the integrity of a body that is not his.
The case against
The father is an equal genetic parent and will bear legal and financial duties if the child is born.
Half the genetic material is his, and once the child exists he is liable for child support and may seek custody. If contribution and post-birth obligation are real, the argument runs, it is unfair to give him zero say over the single decision that determines whether those obligations ever arise. This is the strongest version of the fathers'-rights case and must be steel-manned, not dismissed.
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