Abortion rights and paternity tests

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This morning my thought is pretty simple: abortion is seen as a woman’s issue, which of course it historically has been, but with the advent of paternity tests, it could easily and quickly become a man’s issue.

Back before abortion was legal, and especially if the women were unwed or otherwise shameable, the fathers could just deny paternity. But what with the science we now have, men who are proven to be fathers will be on the hook for caring for their babies much more.

Of course DNA tests are not new, but we’ve had abortion rights for a while now. So for the past few decades if a man were worried about being forced to pay he could try to talk his girlfriend or mistress into an abortion. That’s obviously gotten much harder in some places.

Finally, this argument depends on courts actually making fathers pay. That might not always happen, but then again it might happen to well off, powerful men who in the past would have had opted for an abortion. This scenario makes abortion a man’s issue in a way that I am interested to see play out in red states.