baby birth

(AP Photo/The Saginaw News, Jeff Schrier)

A woman is allowed to keep her child's father out of the delivery room when she is in labor, a New Jersey judge has ruled according to the New Jersey Law Journal.

Superior Court Judge Sohail Mohammed — who handed down the February decision regarding a case between estranged, unmarried parents — determined that a woman may keep the father out of the room, based on her right to privacy, the report states.

The judge noted that such an issue — whether a father has the right to be notified when a woman goes into labor and whether he's allowed to be in the room even if the mom objects — has "never been litigated in New Jersey or the United States."

"A finding in favor of plaintiff for both notification and forced entry into the delivery room would in fact be inconsistent with existing jurisprudence on the interests of women in the children they carry pre-birth," he wrote in the decision Plotnick v. DeLuccia.

"It would create practical concerns where the father's unwelcomed presence could cause additional stress on the mother and child. Moreover, such a finding would also lead to a slippery slope where the mother's interest could be subjugated to that of the father's."

The judge cited Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which went against a state law that required women who were having an abortion to notify their husbands, the Law Journal reports.

Brian Schwartz, chairman of the New Jersey State Bar Association's Family Law Section, told the New Jersey Law Journal that the decision "clears up the issue for once and for all that the woman gets to make that decision."

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