A recent Wall Street Journal story drew national attention to a growing wave of lawsuits filed by men whose partners ended pregnancies without their knowledge or consent. These cases, filed under wrongful death statutes, attempt to challenge the legal framework that excludes fathers from decisions about the lives of their unborn children. But behind the headlines and legal filings lies something deeper, something the article only begins to touch. There is more to these fathers' grief than a lawsuit can express. There is more to a father's broken heart than any court can measure.
Imagine a soon-to-be father envisaging raising a child, being there for their first steps, sharing the everyday moments that form a life. But when the pregnancy ended without his knowledge or consent, he was left with nothing but questions. The law didn't require his involvement. He couldn't object. He couldn't grieve openly.
What he lost wasn't theoretical; it was a future and a baby he was ready to embrace. And yet, his role in that loss didn't exist in the eyes of the law.
SUPPORT LIFENEWS! If you want to help fight abortion, please donate to LifeNews.com!
He is not alone.
A 2022 study by Support After Abortion found that more than one-third of men whose partners ended a pregnancy said they wanted the child. In some cases, they were never told until after the abortion had taken place. Others found out only by accident, too late to try and intervene by offering support and promise of care. These men didn't walk away from fatherhood; it was shredded from them by a culture and legal system that offered them no place. Their pain often goes unacknowledged, not because it isn't real, but because it is inconvenient to a narrative that leaves them out.
The emotional toll can be severe. Studies show that 40 percent of men whose partners have abortions experience chronic PTSD even fifteen years later. Eighty-eight percent report grief. Eighty-two percent struggle with guilt. More than 70 percent suffer from anxiety and anger. These aren't political claims. They are the lived experiences of men who mourn in silence. One man described his loss as "a death without a funeral." Another said he feels like "a father to no one."
The psychological effects are compounded by isolation. Most men never tell anyone. They bottle it up or dismiss it as something they should move past. But grief doesn't work like that. It waits. It reappears when other children laugh on a playground or when birthdays come and go without candles. For some, the pain fractures relationships. For others, it becomes a quiet shadow that follows them for the rest of their lives.
Their pain is real. Their loss is real. A child existed, even if only for a few weeks. That child mattered. And so did the father's hope.
Our legal system offers no avenue for protection, no ground for appeal. Even when men beg for the life of their child, the answer is silence. Their role disappears the moment the pregnancy is deemed unwanted. They cannot act, speak, or intervene. They are erased because the so-called "reproductive rights" championed by abortion profiteers disenfranchise half the population. Men have no legal standing when it comes to reproductive decisions. They can't choose when to become fathers, if they become fathers, or how many children they will have.
This isn't theory. And these are now the men walking into courtrooms with nothing but their pain, asking the system to see them. To see their child. To say, at the very least, that their loss counts.
One courtroom bears this wound. In a federal suit filed in July, Jerry Rodriguez accuses a California doctor, Rémy Coeytaux, of using the mail to deliver abortion pills to his girlfriend, ending a pregnancy she allegedly wanted and the life of a baby he was prepared to raise. He invokes Texas law, calling it a wrongful death. He seeks $75,000 in damages and an injunction to stop further deliveries of the dangerous drugs that killed his child. He filed another suit in state court against the woman's mother and estranged husband, who allegedly pressured the young woman into ending the pregnancy.
This suit is one among several that men have now filed in Texas and elsewhere. They invoke wrongful death and challenge the sweeping protections offered by shield laws in blue states, aiming to hold those who profit from abortion accountable. Some legal advocates use these cases to broaden the law, demanding recognition of men's grief as real and juridically valid.
These lawsuits are not political stunts. They are acts of desperation from men who have exhausted every other way to be heard. They walk into courtrooms because the law has left them nowhere else to go. In their filings are stories of babies they were ready to raise, relationships that collapsed under the weight of secrecy and loss, and a legal system that refuses to acknowledge their stake in the life of their own child. These cases ask the courts to do something the culture has refused to do: recognize that fathers can grieve and that grief deserves a place in the conversation.
Fathers are finally asking to be seen before their child is destroyed and killed by abortion, and if they cannot be, then to have their grief legally acknowledged.
They should have justice.