Does a man who impregnated a woman have a right to stop her from having an abortion?

Abortų problema yra prieštaringai vertinama daugelyje pasaulio valstybių. Dažniausiai diskusijų sukelia tokios temos kaip vaisiaus ir motinos teisės, tačiau tėvo teisės sulaukia mažiau dėmesio, nors šis klausimas yra ne mažiau aktualus. Jei tėvas prisideda prie gyvybės sukūrimo, tai kodėl neturėtų dalyvauti sprendžiant ir jos nutraukimo klausimą? Vyro teisės priimant aborto sprendimą ne visada buvo vienodos ir keitėsi su laiku. Jeigu senovėje nutraukiant nėštumą lemiamą sprendimą priimdavo vyras, tai dabar ši teisė priklauso moteriai. Tačiau vyrai toliau kovoja už teisę turėti palikuonį, remdamiesi vaisiaus teisės į gyvybę teorija, moterų ir vyrų lygių teisių įstatymais, Konstitucija ir kitais teisės aktais. Atlikus tarptautinių dokumentų, Jungtinių Amerikos Valstijų, Jungtinės karalystės ir Lietuvos nacionalinių teisės aktų bei tarptautinių ir nacionalinių teismų praktikos analizę vyro teisės priimant aborto sprendimą klausimu, prieita prie išvados, kad tarp būsimųjų tėvų iškilus nesutarimui dėl nėštumo nutraukimo sprendimo priėmimo, lemiamas žodis atitenka motinai, o tėvui tenka susitaikyti su moters priimtu sprendimu, kadangi jis neturi jokių įstatymuose garantuotų teisių uždrausti moteriai darytis abortą, nesvarbu ar jis būtų moters sutuoktinis ar ne. Šiomis dienomis, kai visur yra pabrėžiamos vyrų ir moterų lygios teisės, kai moterys ir vyrai atrodo, kad visose srityse pasiekė lygybės, liko bent viena sritis, kurioje vyrai turi mažiau teisių negu moterys – tai priimant sprendimą dėl nėštumo nutraukimo.Abortion is a very controversial issue in various countries. The discussion it arises is mainly concerned with mother’s and unborn fetus’s rights but father’s rights are rarely discussed. The aim of this thesis is to analyze father’s rights in abortion decision. The attitude towards father’s rights has been changing with time. The first law against abortion appeared in ancient times protecting the father's right to have an offspring and the woman’s opinion was not important. But nowadays the situation has changed – the abortion decision is left for the mother. In most countries men have no right to stop a woman from having an abortion with a small exception of some mostly Muslim countries. The thesis analyzes international documents and jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR); national laws, related to abortion decision and father’s rights and case law in the United States of America, the United Kingdom (UK) and Lithuania. The analysis of international and national laws and jurisprudence shows that when a woman becomes pregnant, the man who impregnated her has few legal rights with respect to that pregnancy. He can neither require the woman to remain pregnant if she chooses to have an abortion nor force her to have an abortion if she wants to give a birth. Furthermore, if the woman chooses to bear a child, the father is legally liable for child support. The question arises – if men have financial responsibilities for their children, should not they have rights in abortion decision? The United States Supreme Court answers “no” to this question. It has found spousal notification requirements in abortion laws to constitute an unconstitutional “undue burden” on a woman’s decision to terminate her pregnancy, defining ”undue burden” as a regulation that has the purpose or effect of “placing a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion”. The United States Supreme Court holds the position that the father's interest in an unborn child is outweighed by the mother's constitutionally protected right to privacy and when a father and a mother disagrees on decision to abort, the decision rests solely with a woman because she is the one who physically bears the child and who is more directly affected by pregnancy. Lithuanian jurists agree that pregnancy is a physiological state that is inherent only for a woman, thus the final decision whether to abort fetus should be left to decide for a woman and man’s opinion should be advisory but not obligatory. There was a case in Lithuania when a man applied to the office of Equal Opportunities Ombudsman asking whether the rights of men are not violated if the abortion decision rests solely with a woman. The Equal Opportunities Ombudsman did not find any violations of the law on Equal Opportunities for Women and Men because women have been given some special rights in areas related to the physiological and biological characteristics inherent only for women, such as pregnancy, procreation or nursing. Moreover, Lithuanian law does not treat fetus as a “person” whose rights would be protected by law either, because the right to life is guaranteed only from the moment of birth when a newborn starts breathe independently. Similar treatment of a fetus can be found in the UK law. There were several attempts in the UK to stop women from having an abortion without father’s consent but they all failed. The court was asked to give a locus standi to the father, and to recognize the unborn fetus as a party to the case, on the grounds that it was alive, albeit immature, and therefore capable of being born alive under the Infant Life (Preservation) Act. The court held that the UK law does not protect an unborn and fetus does not grant any rights until he/she is born and start to exist separately from the mother, thus cannot be a party to a case. International documents, such as Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (ECHR) or the Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine do not define whether a fetus is a “person” whose rights are protected by these documents. In the absence of a unanimous agreement on the definition of these terms among member States of the Conventions, it was decided to allow domestic law to define them for the purposes of the application of the Conventions. There were three cases in ECtHR where fathers tried to prevent women from having an abortion claiming the violation of ECHR Article 2 - right to life (“everyone's right to life shall be protected by law”) but they lost the cases, because ECtHR did not held that the protection of fetus is covered by a word “everyone” in ECHR Article 2. The advocates of women rights in various international organizations such as the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women do not agree that men should influence women’s choice whether to abort a fetus or not and has specifically recognized spousal consent requirements for abortion as a violation of Article 15 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, which requires States parties “to accord women equality with men before the law.” The Committee claims that mentally competent adults have the right to make autonomous decisions in matters concerning their health care and are neither subject to third-party consent nor veto in their decisions, including from a spouse or a partner. The hypothesis of the thesis – a man who impregnated a woman has a right to stop her from having an abortion – did not confirm. The analysis of international and national laws and jurisprudence shows that the current legal situation does not give equal rights for men and women in abortion decision. On the one hand, women have reproductive rights while men have only reproductive responsibilities. On the other hand, allowing a paternal veto would give a man an authority over a woman’s body. It is difficult to decide whose rights are superior – woman’s right to privacy, father’s right to have an offspring or fetus right to life. Another issue is that the law does not make any difference between married and unmarried men in abortion decision. Usually, the family and the equality of spouses in a family are protected by the law. But in abortion situation, men have no rights. The question is what is a point of the marriage and creation of a family if married men have the same rights as unmarried ones in family planning? The law should at least require to inform a husband before obtaining an abortion. But even if such requirement was imposed the problem would be how to enforce it. If a woman stated that she orally informed her husband before having an abortion and later her husband claimed that he had not been informed, it would be very difficult to prove otherwise. The possible solution would be to get husband’s statement in writing that he has been informed about the abortion. This would give men at least some rights in participation in decision making in abortion situations.Vytauto Didžiojo universiteta