Letters to the Editor
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A Different Take on Spousal Notification
It seems to me that the "logic" espoused by ranndino ("... but there is absolutely nothing wrong with requiring this decision to be made by the two people who produced the child in the first place. When the child is born the father usually feels that it's his as much as the mother. As a man I would be extremely angry if my wife made the decision to abort OUR child on her own without consulting me.") has a major flaw, one that Judge Alito seems to share. Even without the results of a recent DNA study a few months back that revealed that over 20% of the children in a marriage weren't fathered by their mother's spouse, shouldn't it be pretty obvious to everyone over the age of 12 that there'll always be babies who are conceived outside of the marriage, either as a result of an affair, a 1-night stand or rape? By all means lets do legislate that every woman who conceives a child outside of her marriage must notify her husband of her wish to terminate her pregnancy even if her husband isn't the baby's father. That's bound to put a lot of spice into those marriages! And what percentage of children, I wonder, are conceived in a loveless marriage where the wife and children are all victims of physical and/or sexual abuse. By all means lets do legislate that every one of these women must also notify their abusive spouse that they're going to terminate their pregnancy rather than raise another child to be a victim of his abuse. So what if that husband violently retaliates as long as we all get to preserve some ridiculous notion of what marriage in America is or should be.
Show me a judge who adjudicates spousal notification and I'll show you someone who's either criminally naive and/or stupid, or perhaps he's just perfectly willing to put a small group of women in harms way in pursuit of some lofty principle or maybe, just maybe, he doesn't really have all that much respect for women.