A woman’s right to abortion had been well established in our culture, although given the vagaries of politics within our socio-political system, the permanence of this right is chronically at peril. But a man’s right to prevent an abortion has never even been thought about by most people, much less advanced as a social agenda worthy of public consideration, political debate, and fair legislation.

There also is the fact that abortion, abandonment, and putting a child up for adoption all allow a woman the option of walking away from motherhood. But a man has no legal right to walk away from fatherhood. He can be held responsible for child support, and if he tries to avoid this responsibility (just as a mother choosing abortion is avoiding parental responsibility), then he is labeled a deadbeat dad at best, and may lose his assets or even go to jail.

This folio, consisting of three articles by two authors, reveals that there are men who do oppose the abortion of their children, and exposes some startling statistics about the American citizen’s views on fathers’ rights and abortion.

(Commentary by Angela Froesner): “I suppose I have been insensitive and naive all my adult life not to have considered that men might have personal, and not just ideological, feelings about the abortion of a child they have conceived. But now, after reading these three articles, I realize that every time an abortion happens it affects a father. Maybe the father doesn’t know, or maybe sometimes he doesn’t care, but it is a father’s child being aborted and he at the very least should have a right to be involved. Maybe, even, he has the right to say no and have the law enforce his decision. We can’t blame a man for not being a responsible parent after his child is born, when we tell him he has no right to even act like a parent before his child is born. Shame on me–shame on all of us–for having ignored fathers’ feelings on the abortion issue!”