An Alabama father fought for the rights of his late unborn child Wednesday in a potentially historic court case.
Ryan Magers is suing the Alabama Women’s Center in Huntsville after his girlfriend aborted their unborn baby there against his will. In March, a Madison County judge granted his petition to represent the estate of his child, “Baby Roe,” and sue the abortion facility in a wrongful death lawsuit.
On Wednesday, however, the abortion facility asked another judge to dismiss the case, WAAY 31 reports.
Madison County District Judge Chris Comer did not rule on the case immediately; instead, he asked both parties to submit additional information within the next two weeks, according to WHNT 19 News. However, Comer also warned that his decision almost certainly will be appealed, no matter what he decides.
Brent Helms, a lawyer for the grieving father, expressed hope for his client’s case.
“There’s never been a case like this in the United States of America, it didn’t get dismissed. We have the opportunity to move forward. We are really excited. We’re confident,” he told the local news.
Right now in the U.S., fathers do not have any legal rights to protect their unborn children from abortion. State laws requiring that a father be notified or given a say in an abortion have been struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court.
If Magers succeeds, his case could restore at least some rights to fathers of unborn babies.
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The case is unique because the court recognized Magers’ late unborn baby as the plaintiff and him as the representative of his baby’s estate.
“For the first time in the history of America, the aborted child has been able to move forward with this case,” Helms said.
Here’s more from the report:
Helms says since Baby Roe was granted personhood, the abortion violated the 6-week old embryo’s constitutional right to life, which is the basis of the wrongful death lawsuit. …
An attorney for Alabama Women’s Center filed a motion to dismiss the case in April, according to court records. In court Wednesday, attorney Sara Tucker explained that if the judge decided in favor of the plaintiff it would create a precedent that would affect all women in Alabama who want to have an abortion.
“The bottom line here is that this is a simple case. They have sued for the wrongful death of an embryo and at the time that, that happened abortion was legal in Alabama and still is. So, therefore, there’s no wrongful act. With no wrongful acts there can be no claim for wrongful death on Alabama civil liabilities statutes,” Tucker explained.
It is interesting to note that Tucker acknowledged that the abortion caused the death of Magers’ child.
“The time is ripe for consistency in Alabama’s jurisprudence: either we fully acknowledge the personhood of the unborn or we cherry pick which innocents we protect and which ones we trash for profit,” Helms said previously.
Not long after Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the Planned Parenthood v. Danforth case that spousal consent statutes are unconstitutional if the statutes allow the husband to unilaterally prohibit the abortion in the first trimester. Later in Coe v. Gerstein, the high court extended that decision to a spousal consent law regardless of the stage of the woman’s pregnancy.
Then, in the 1992 decision Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the Supreme Court struck down a law requiring that a married woman notify her husband of her plans to have an abortion prior to it taking place.
Magers said his girlfriend was six weeks pregnant when she had the abortion in 2017. By six weeks, an unborn baby’s heart is already beating; he or she also has their own unique DNA that determines hair and eye color, gender and other traits.
Helms said Magers pleaded with his girlfriend to have the baby and even took on an extra job to prepare for the baby’s birth, according to Refinery 29. The couple broke up after the abortion.
“I’m here for the men who actually want to have their baby,” Magers told ABC 31 in February. “I just tried to plead with her and plead with her and just talk to her about it and see what I could do, but in the end, there was nothing I could do to change her mind.”
The wrongful death lawsuit is against the Alabama Women’s Center in Huntsville, the abortionist and the pharmaceutical company involved in the abortion.
The case is a strong reminder of how abortion affects more than just a mother and child. There are countless heartbroken fathers across the country who have to bear a lifetime of grief because their partners chose to abort their unborn children against their will.
The Men and Abortion Network (MAN) is available to help fathers of aborted children. It provides free resources to fathers like Magers as well as men who agreed with the abortion but now regret it.
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Author: Micaiah Bilger
