If potential fathers could legally require a potential mother to abort or to carry a pregnancy to term, would there be more or fewer abortions in this country?

Given all the guys out there with nonchallant aproaches to unprotected sex without regard to the consequences, I’d say this setup would result in a lot MORE abortions. I’m quite certain there are more men, being shall we say more “detatched” from the issue who would want to force a woman into an abortion to absolve themselves of responsibility than there would be women who could as easily make this choice. Sure, there are men who would want the baby when the women would not, but that matchup I’d bet happens once to every 100 times the man would want to get rid of the burden and the woman would not be able to make that choice.

And I’d say in regards to the related question, I think most who would force a woman to keep a baby she didn’t want would have to have some motivation to do so and would probably WANT to be an active part of their kids’ lives. That would probably be the #1 reason the later situation would even occur.

I think more women would just not tell the guys they were pregnant if they wanted to abort. If a man makes a woman have his child then I would suspect a high percentage of them would be involved in the life of the child.

fewer. us guys are’nt the ones who have carry it,
then give birth to it.

I agree with jess, I think women would not tell the guy about the pregnancy.
And, I would think that if a guy wanted the woman to carry out the pregnancy, that would be an indicator that he would want maximum involvment in the life of the child

Another way of thinking about this: are there more responsible, upstanding men who make a family wage out there, or are there more poor, unthinking boy-men who would prefer to shirk responsibility, said they “loved her” for the sex, and want to keep their options open rather than being tied down for life?

Yeah. I think I know the answer.

Well first off, there would be a lot more dangerous abortions as unwilling mothers with child turn to sketchy back-alley abortionists in order to not be forced to birth a child, this leads to more women seriously injured or dying from a botched abortion.

If a guy imposes his will to NOT abort, I damn well expect him to be the full father and for the woman to have the choice of not being in the child’s life. The man has NO right to demand the child exists if he doesn’t intend to support it.

Then again, there will also be problems with a man pressuring a woman to abort when the woman doesn’t want to. This may lead to more murders, both the man murdering the woman with child, and the woman murdering the man to live in peace.

I will agree though that today’s rules are not the optimal rules, because men often do not have a say in the matter nowadays. However it goes against one’s basic liberty to allow a man, or anyone for that case, to force their will on a (pregnant or not) women. It’s a very tricky situation. Personally I feel the best solution would be to allow two consenting adults to enter into a contract prior to sex, in which they decide how they will proceed in the case of an unwanted pregnancy, and that contract is the only thing that matters if the situation happened. But let’s face it, people hate contracts anyways, let alone having one for a one-night stand. And it wasn’t until this past century where we’ve been able to seriously control our reproduction and thus this issue has become more prevalent. So until any laws are put in place, the best one can do is assume the other person is lying about their birth control, and protect oneself as best as can be, if you don’t want a kid.

There would be less abortions because the asshole men who came up with this idea wouldn’t be getting any nookie.

@ dave: that possibility had not occurred to me.