A Chance to Succeed

They were living it up.
Popularity was key.
Every day, a party.
They were living free.

Everyone expected the pregnancy
except for the parents-to-be.
They went off blaming everyone but themselves.
It was neither of their faults, they both agreed.

Finally, after thinking long and hard,
he liked the idea of his child,
even though just weeks ago when he first found out,
he'd have thought it impossibly wild.

After telling his parents and storming out,
he made a trip to the store
to get stuff for his boy.
He hoped it was a boy. He could do no more.

Once there, he picked up a hat
that he'd love to put on his boy,
then, he looked at the cribs
and went straight to the toys.

Things he hadn't seen in years
and things he'd never seen before.
Toys had become so complicated
since he was a boy of less than four.

He was standing in an aisle
with potential purchases in hand
browsing the shelves again
for things for his child unplanned.

He was looking at the diapers
when he got a call
that told him not to buy anything.
Indeed, he bought nothing at all.

He threw down the items
he thought he'd get to buy
without explaining to the baffled saleslady
exactly why.

Why had she done it?
He hadn't agreed
that she could kill his baby
for, as she called it, a chance to succeed.

**There are men who honestly regret their partners terminating their children, and have gone to great lengths to try to prevent their offspring from being terminated.' In recent years, a New Jersey man took his case (unsuccessfully) to the Supreme Court to prevent his partner from aborting his child. The legal oddity is that once born, the father may sue for paternal rights, but before the magical moment of birth, the father has no legal say whatsoever in the disposition of the child -- in fact, the Supreme Court struck down spousal notification in the _Casey_ decision. Another fact to consider is that post-aborted fathers are increasingly being treated for the post-abortion effects of losing their children.

**Courtesy: http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/ProLife.News/pln-0505.txt

Author's Note: I was inspired to write this after the realization hit me in government class that the fathers of terminated children may not WANT the children killed. I was unsuccessful in my search for statistics on the subject, but if anyone can find them, I would love to hear them. :) I believe, just as the father gets the same (or more) blame in an unplanned pregnancy and sometimes has to pay child support for a child they never see, a father deserves say in the prevention of their child's birth/murder.