NJ court rules moms can keep dads out of delivery room

Time was fathers never went into the delivery room for the birth of a child, relegated instead to a waiting room where cartoons once depicted them pacing, smoking and handing out cigars.

So much has changed since then, and dads are now a regular presence in delivery rooms. But what if the mother doesn't want him there?

A Superior Court judge in New Jersey has answered the question in what may be a first in the nation.

According to the New Jersey Law Journal (sign up required), Judge Sohail Mohammed in Passaic County held that a woman's right to privacy allows her to shut the father out.

She does not even have to alert him that she is in labor, the judge ruled in a case involving estranged, unmarried parents.

The Law Journal reports that in his opinion, published March 10, Mohammed said ruling in favor of the father "would also lead to a slippery slope where the mother's interest could be subjugated to that of the father's."

Among the precedents the judge cited in his ruling were the U.S. Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that women have the right to control their bodies during pregnancy and the 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision that struck down Pennsylvania regulations requiring married women to notify their husbands before having an abortion.