“I am here for the men who actually want to have their baby.”
These are the words of an American man, suing on behalf of his aborted child.
Even though there’s nothing he can do for his baby, Ryan Magers wants to try and do something for future men, who might be put in similar situations.
Put simply, he thinks a female partner should give birth against her will, if the other partner wants the baby.
Listen to The Quicky’s deep dive into this case below. Post continues after podcast.
On February 6, Mr Magers filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the Alabama Women’s Centre, where his former girlfriend got a medical abortion at the age of 16.
At the time Mr Mager’s then-girlfriend made her decision (when she was six weeks pregnant), Magers was only 19 himself and unemployed.
Mr Magers says she had the abortion without his consent.
Two years later he has decided to sue, under newly created laws that allow him to do so.
“The case is based on an amendment passed in Alabama last year during the mid-term elections, which made unborn babies have the full rights of a person. That amendment was passed by voters and put into the constitution and it’s referenced in this lawsuit as an area of law that supports the complaint,” American reporter Rosemary Westwood told The Quicky.
This is the first time an embryo or a fetus has been legally recognised as a person, and the case could have implications for women across the world.
Mr Magers has successfully had his unborn child named as his co-plaintive, “Baby Roe”, and his legal fees are being fund-raised by a pro-life group called ‘Personhood Alabama’.
“In filing this complaint the girlfriend is not named, but the abortion clinic is and so are its staff and the makers of the abortion pill she took,” explained Ms Westwood.
The young girl is named as the ‘mother’ in the case, which is also a cause of controversy in American press.
Through Ms Westwood’s research, her sources have told her the case doesn’t have any merit and and essentially won’t get through. “The issues brought up in the case have been decided at the Supreme Court level, so it has no hope,” she relayed, from a conversation she’d had with a prominent lawyer with experience in this area of law.
Here in Australia, there is concern the story and Mr Mager’s attempts in a court of law will give pro-life groups more ammunition.
“What it will do is embolden the anti-choice groups in Australia to push harder. We’ve already seen several attempts in Australia at personhood style laws,” President of Reproductive choice Jenny Ejlak told The Quicky.
“That’s the implication for Australia – the tactics used in the United States are imported over and copied here with a couple of years time-lag. So we need to be aware and support our pro-choice colleagues in America,” she warned.
Ms Elak thinks the case is actually very scary.
“It’s treating women as incubators who don’t have any rights over whether they consent to continuing a pregnancy or not,” she said.
“It says a lot about the principal of bodily autonomy. In any other area of law, we can’t force someone to for example donate blood, or donate an organ without their consent.
“Even if someone else will die without that donation, we can’t force them. So if we force women to continue a pregnancy if they don’t want to, we’re not giving women the same right to bodily autonomy that we would give under any other circumstance,” Ms Ejlak explained.
Even after people die in Australia, you can’t legally harvest someone’s organs.
“We don’t want pregnant women to have less rights than a dead person. That doesn’t make sense,” exclaimed Ms Ejlak.
Once a fetus or an embryo is legally recognised, the bigger fear is that it could open up pregnant women to a range of offences.
“This isn’t just about abortion rights, for instance if someone sees her [a pregnant woman] smoking, or drinking alcohol or not wearing a seat belt, she can be charged under these kinds of laws.
“It’s science fiction stuff, it’s insane,” concluded Ms Ejlak.
Mr Magers case continues on April 1st. That’s when the abortion clinic he is suing is legally required to respond.
Top Comments
The outcome of this legal action does open a can of worms for sure!
But the language "forced to be incubators"; “less rights than a dead person” and some of Elak's comments are severe.
In this particular instance, two consenting people having (I assume) unprotected sex are consenting to the possibility of falling pregnant and the financial, emotional, physical aspects that follow. If you have watched “The Handmaid’s Tale” there is no comparison. In that TV series, the women are forced to have sex.
This article is not balanced, it only leans to one side of the abortion issue. For the people that believe that a fetus or an embryo is a person, they would argue that the baby has even less rights than all persons (whether man, woman, or dead) mentioned in this article.
For the women who have difficulty falling pregnant and would give anything to be an “incubator”, they would probably find this article offensive.
For the woman that finds herself in an unwanted pregnancy, this article promotes fear and disempowerment about her own body.
As for me, I don't say this lightly or ignorantly. I am a mother (4 pregnancies / 4 labours but only 3 successful). I know the sacrifice it is and the feeling that I am an "incubator". The fact is we are for a moment in time. But we are also so much more than this. I am a woman exercising my opportunity to carry someone inside of me. I find this sacrificial yet so empowering.
And it's also empowering to exercise one's opportunity to NOT carry someone inside one's person. To force someone into to doing so is to reduce them into nothing but an unwilling incubator. That's as violating as rape.
You're entirely missing the point and just as judgmental. The key here is that you've given the impression that you WANTED to carry your children and you felt empowered, which is great. If you felt that your sacrifices were worth it to carry your babies, then your efforts are being rewarded by the family that you've desired. Other women who want to be mothers are going to have your attitude as well and shouldn't find anything offensive here because that's not what this article is about.
But you surely have to realize that feeling is pretty much the opposite in a woman with an unwanted pregnancy forced to carry it to term against her will, correct? That someone else taking away her bodily autonomy does essentially make her an incubator and nothing else for that moment in time. What could possibly be positive or empowering about that? Also, you assumed that they had unprotected sex, as if birth control methods don't fail. Many unplanned pregnancies occur while birth control was being used.
Several US states have now passed a "6 week law" or a "Heartbeat law" forcing women to carry a child past 6 weeks of pregnancy. Many women don't even know they are pregnant at 6 weeks. Yes, it's barbaric and inhumane. What these laws really say is "Keep your legs shut or you'll be forced to have a baby whether you like it or not". Let's stop calling them "Pro-life" and call them "Forced-birth", because that is their aim.
And the pro-birthers are usually the ones against contraception, sexual education and any social services or universal healthcare.