It is a strange topic because regardless of what is said a sad thing that comes out of it is that when it comes to Mother's rights to abort the baby society said unanimously "Yes, of course she has the right. It is her right" then if asked what are the Father's rights?", society falls rather silent on this point.
Simply put and by any reading, Women have rights in this discourse and Men don't.
Sad, huh?
You're right that it's sad, but I think that it has to be that way because all a father has to do to make a baby is to ejaculate and he could choose to walk away from the mother and baby after that point with no risk to his life or health, while becoming a mother involves a much greater personal investment. She's the one who has to put her life and health at risk to gestate this baby, so choosing to go through with it or not must be her own personal decision and nobody else's.
After the baby is born, both parents do have rights, which is why a mother can't sign away a father's rights to the baby, but while the baby can live only as a parasite inside the mother, the mother's rights have to trump the father's.
Yes it is a funny topic Father's rights. When my ex decided to keep the kids off me for 9 months. She had right to the kids and I had none. They had been born and I had been an active and involved parent. Yet I had no "right" to see them.
I had to accept the fact that I could not see my children.
I had to endure a length and financially crippling court procedure (and a stress induced heart attack) to see them.
I had to do this and hold myself out by my commitment and actions as being worthy to have the right to be a Dad.
Funny one really.
In all of this her actions as a woman and mother were not called into dispute and have never been.
She had rights and I had none.
A Father "could" do all of these things. They "could" walk away. "I" could have walked away. I did not and I would not yet my ability to was enough as the hypothetical father could to invalidate the rights.
I think things are not transparent and as cut and dried and that there definitely is a lot to be said for the inequities that society fall silent on. It won't change and to point them out really does nothing except shine a torch to a sad plight.
I will say whenever i hear stories of Father abducting kids and the like I often think, even in the ones with horrific consequences, "I know the media and society at large will take her side but I wonder what he went through and what she did to him to drive him to do what he did?"