Young Men Attempt To Save Their UnBorn Children, To No Avail
The Pro-Life Infonet
prolifeinfo.org
Steven Ertelt
Subject: Young Father Comes of Age After Losing
Abortion Battle
Source: Cybercast News Service; August 12, 2002
Young Father Comes of Age After Losing Abortion
Battle
Washington, DC --
When Nicholas DiGiovanni left
his small-town home just
outside of New Orleans for college in 1997,
things like abortion and raising
a child could not have been further from his
teenage mind.
But when a short romantic relationship during his
second year of college
resulted in a pregnancy, DiGiovanni had no choice
but to start thinking about
it. And think about it he did.
What began as a simple objection to his
girlfriend's growing determination to
have an abortion led to a firm conviction of
fatherly responsibility toward
his unborn child, and it wasn't long before he
was offering to raise the
child completely on his own. He soon found
himself embroiled in a full-blown
court battle to preserve the unborn baby's life.
DiGiovanni was a 19-year-old sophomore at
Louisiana Tech University when he
filed a lawsuit that imposed an abortion
injunction on his pregnant
girlfriend in 1999. The injunction held up for
weeks, but was eventually
overturned. The young woman immediately responded
by having the abortion.
DiGiovanni's case was not unlike that of John
Stachokus, who went to court in
Pennsylvania July to stop his girlfriend, Tanya
Meyers, from having an
abortion.
Like DiGiovanni, Stachokus did not prevail, and
both cases illustrate the
three-way tug-of-war over a woman's legal right
to abort her unborn baby, the
child's right to life, and the father's right to
have any say in the matter.
DiGiovanni, whose parents raised him and his two
sisters Catholic, remembers
his childhood fondly, saying that much of the
person he is today can be
attributed to the values instilled in him by his
father.
"Fatherhood breeds fatherhood," DiGiovanni
explained, saying that, although
he left for college not having given much thought
to such matters as
abortion, his eventual decision to take a strong
pro-life stance essentially
stemmed from what his father taught him about
responsibility.
DiGiovanni's early frat-house days were what he
called the "typical college
lifestyle," saying he was too busy "partying and
not really thinking about
anything other than myself and where I'm going to
drink tonight" to consider
any issue as serious as abortion.
"I didn't really know what abortion was or
anything," DiGiovanni said,
recalling how he had to look up the word
'contraception' in the dictionary.
"I had no idea whatsoever. All I knew was she was
pregnant and that she was
talking about abortion."
"She was confused, she was obviously very
emotional, [and] she didn't want to
be a mother," said DiGiovanni, who became equally
convicted that he had a
responsibility to protect their child.
"I spent a lot of time praying about it and I
realized, you know, that I have
a good father and I always wanted to be the same
father to my child that my
father was to me," DiGiovanni said. "I [wanted]
to assume my responsibilities
[for] the action that I made, even though the
initial action wasn't good."
After several attempts to set up counseling
sessions and convince his former
girlfriend that he "wasn't just going to leave as
soon as the baby was born,"
DiGiovanni said he grew desperate and decided to
seek legal assistance.
"Basically, time was crunching and I had to do
something," DiGiovanni said.
DiGiovanni said he contacted several lawyers
before finding one that would
even talk to him, but managed to find an attorney
who was able to obtain an
injunction that was served to the pregnant woman
on her way to the abortion
clinic, preventing the abortion.
"I was basically saying, 'hey, I'm suing for my
fatherhood here,'" DiGiovanni
said. "If she didn't want to be a mother, then at
least [she should] carry
the baby and let me be a father."
The last-minute injunction survived almost four
weeks before being overturned
in later court proceedings.
DiGiovanni said his former girlfriend "had
lawyers from the Center for
Reproductive Law and Policy that literally tried
everything they could to
kill my child as quickly and as efficiently as
possible."
"They were fighting ruthlessly to kill my child
and they don't even know me,
they don't know her, they don't know my baby," he
said.
When the original injunction was overturned, the
student's only hope was to
appeal, but DiGiovanni said it was the end of the
week preceding the Easter
holiday, and he was unable to take action in
time.
The abortion was performed on Good Friday, 1999,
rendering DiGiovanni's case
legally moot.
DiGiovanni's battle for his unborn child was
bigger than he anticipated,
attracting almost as much media attention as
opposition.
Since the case more than three years ago, he has
been determined to preserve
the memory of his unborn baby - named Baby
Genesis - in order to further the
pro-life cause and fight against what he calls a
"culture of death."
DiGiovanni, 23, is now a junior studying
psychology at George Mason
University in Fairfax, Va. In addition, he is
involved in pro-life work.
For DiGiovanni, preserving life means ensuring
that Baby Genesis has a
positive impact on people's lives.
"That's what I'm here to do, and that's what I've
been trying to do for the
past couple years," he said. "And hopefully will
have the opportunity to do
for the rest of my life."Back Home