Texas man rightly sues women who facilitated abortion of his pre-born child

© Provided by Washington Examiner Dr. Elizabeth Brett Daily gives patient Haley Ruark the first of two pills taken for a medical abortion during a visit to a Planned Parenthood clinic Wednesday, Oct. 12, 2022, in Kansas City, Kan. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

Men who want to be responsible adults and raise their children deserve a voice, and they deserve legal recognition that they are just as much a parent as the mother of their children.

This is why Marcus Silva, a Texas resident, is right to sue three women who helped his ex-wife and mother of his child obtain an abortion. He brought the lawsuit using Texas’s novel Senate Bill 8, which allows for private action against abortionists and anyone who assists in an abortion.

FROM CALIFORNIA TO SOUTH CAROLINA, ABORTION EXTREMISTS POLLUTE PUBLIC POLICY

The lawsuit targeted three women who helped Silva’s ex-wife obtain abortion drugs in violation of the law.

“Under the law of Texas, a person who assists a pregnant woman in obtaining a self-managed abortion has committed the crime of murder and can be sued for wrongful death,” Silva’s legal team argued in its filing. His wife is not a defendant.

“In July of 2022, while married to Marcus, Brittni discovered that she was pregnant with a child conceived with Marcus,” the lawsuit alleged. “Brittni concealed this pregnancy from her husband and decided to kill the unborn child without Marcus’s knowledge or consent.”

Silva is absolutely right to use the full force of the law to seek damages against the women who deprived him of his child. Fathers have the same moral rights as mothers to raise their children, and the actions his ex-wife and her co-conspirators took violated his right to be involved with the life of his son or daughter.

The lawsuit is brought by pro-life leaders, including Briscoe Cain, who is also a Texas state representative in addition to being a licensed attorney, and Jonathan Mitchell, who helped draft S.B. 8. The pro-life Thomas More Society is also assisting on the case. (As a matter of disclosure, I’ve been involved with the Thomas More Society in past jobs.)

The team behind Silva’s lawsuit deserves credit for bringing this to the forefront of the abortion debate. Silva is a model of how men must be proactive in standing up for their rights as fathers. Of course, all men should take responsibility for the children they create.

However, abortion activists want it both ways: They correctly want to require men to be involved in the lives of their children when the woman wants the child but also want men excluded when the woman wants to abort a baby.

The pro-life movement has the correct position, which Silva illustrates: Men have both a duty to be involved in their children’s lives and also a right to be involved in their children’s lives.

Barring anything that would make them unfit to be involved, such as serious criminal activity, men should and must be allowed to fulfill their parental role that began the day the child was conceived.

The millions of dollars in damages Silva seeks will not bring back his child, but the punitive nature could deter activists in the future from facilitating the killing of a pre-born baby and robbing men of their rights to be fathers to the children they create. Men have rights to parent their children, and they should fight for them.

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Matt Lamb is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog. He is an associate editor for the College Fix and has previously worked for Students for Life of America and Turning Point USA.

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Tags: Opinion, Beltway Confidential, Blog Contributors, Abortion, Texas, Fatherhood, Opinion

Original Author: Matt Lamb

Original Location: Texas man rightly sues women who facilitated abortion of his pre-born child