Mayaness, some women don't have the luxury of being able to have anyone else to support them, so often it is their DH by default. That is why they HAVE to be on board with what the woman wants and any problems need to be worked out. Someone said earlier 'your body, OUR baby' and I think that it is so relevant to the situation. Why shouldn't the father be able to say what he thinks about a situation that is involving his child? I know my DH would be incredibly ****ed off if I told him I didn't want him at the birth of his child simply because he disagreed on something I wanted. THat's a pretty negative thing that can impact the entire relationship. It's not really about women's rights, but it's about the relationship you have with your partner. Of course if the partner is placing his entire opinion and choices on the woman, then that's not cool at all, but why is it so hard to accept that some fathers might actually like to have a little input into the birth of his child? Why can't both people in the relationship work on it together? However I have always said that ultimately the choice lay with the mother because her bodily autonomy is of vital importance, but it doesn't mean that the father should have absolutely no input.

The baby is coming out of YOUR body - birth needs to happen on YOUR terms and your partners are either going to realise they don't call the shots here or they're going to get a say in something most of them are really quite unqualified in. You don't ask your dentist for advice about where to service your car.
I don't know why a man is always deemed to be unqualified in the process of birth simply because he doesn't own the vagina. When I was pg with my first baby we were BOTH totally clueless about the process of birth until we educated ourselves on it. If anything, he knew MORE about birth than I did because of his work with birthing livestock. You don't need to own a vagina to be able to be well read and educated about birth and be able to contribute equally to choices made. Women generally don't know much about the process of birth either until they need to. It's not something our brains come automatically wired with so we just have to think about it and we know all we need to know.