Abortion and Child Support: Equal Rights for Men

I have just read Daniel Doyle's article on men's vs. women's reproductive rights (Is There A Double Standard for Responsibility in Right to Life and Pro Choice?), which I thought was very well written. When I came to the section listing his questions for comment, I initially went for the comments button, and then realized that I had very much more to say than a comments section would do justice to.

All of his questions seem to me to be questions that no one has answered in the public forum, and in fact they have not been allowed to come to public debate. The feminist left so often seems to be the calm and reasonable voice - yet, when we come to hard questions like this, well meaning people are often shut up through various techniques of rhetoric, and the discussion some of us would like to hold simply isn't. It seems to me that it will take open content sites like Associated Content to have our views heard, and I am thankful for the opportunity.

Before I get into the meat of my thoughts here, I want to tell you all that I am a woman. I'm not a prude; I've had my share of partners and learned from my share of mistakes. I have sons and daughters, and part of my opinion is based in how our public policy affects them now, could have in the past, and may in the future. I'm still young, and I may have more children, so this is more than merely academic for me.

That said, what again were the questions?

A. If men are to be held accountable for life for the child, should men be offered the same protection under the law from unwanted pregnancy as women?

Short answer: Of course. To hold a man responsible for a child he did not wish to conceive is to constrain his freedoms. This is the judgment put forth by the Supreme Court as it applies to women, after all; it is the effect of abortion - to remove the woman's responsibility, on the grounds that her body is her property. So, how does this argument apply to men? After all, they don't carry the child. Their bodies are involved in a very limited way.

I can think of several applications. First, the issue for men isn't primarily about the body, but about whether their future is theirs in the same way as their bodies are. The issue is responsibility and the commitment of his future resources. These are what are tapped in a child support order. For the next 18 years of his life, his resources are severely drained. If he did not consent to the birth of the child, but is still constrained to support and pay for him or her, this can be a form of imprisonment for him; it can sharply limit his future financial success, in that he may not have enough to invest for a future family he may have planned for. If the lady in question had his child on purpose, without his consent, it can even be a form of theft, for which many men are justifiably angry. We ladies need to understand this. Men who have had this happen to them can feel like their whole lives have been hijacked.

This may sound harsh and irresponsible to some, who will be thinking of the needs of the child. My question to them is this: If the mother has a constitutional right to opt out of the pregnancy before the child is born, why does the father not have a commensurate freedom? Or put another way: If the father has the responsibility to support a child (i.e. see to its bodily safety and provision) even if he took adequate measures in preventing conception, why does the mother not have the responsibility to both child and father to protect that child's bodily safety and see to its provision before it is born?

But let's turn Mr. Doyle's question around. Let's phrase it this way: If men are to be held accountable for life for the child, should men have the right to keep their child even if the woman wishes to abort?

If men and women have equal rights under the law - as women themselves have been pushing to achieve for decades - then the father already has as much right to keep his child as the mother does. Once again, his right to keep his child conflicts with her right to govern her body; and, I would argue, transcends it.

Why would I argue this? Because of the relative differences of what the man and the woman would give up in this situation. A woman carries a child for nine months of her life. In a financial sense, a man "carries" the child for 18 years. As a relative tradeoff, her involvement is more intimate, but much shorter; and since, in this situation, she would presumably not wish to keep the child but turn it over to its father, she would not be encumbered with an unwanted baby following the birth. Secondly, there is again the issue of fairness under law. Income is a measure of time spent doing a certain thing, or put another way, the value of a man's use of his body. If a man is to be involuntarily required to pay a large percentage of his income to the child's mother for the length of the child's minority years should the mother wish to keep the child, as is true under current law, it is only fair that she be involuntarily required to carry that child to term for the sake of the father's parental rights if he wishes to keep the child: a similar use of her body.

B. Since women can use birth control as well as men, should they be offered an option to carrying a child to term while men have no word or voice in that similar matter?

My answer would be this: Being that birth control is freely available to both sexes, and being that (in theory) both sexes have equal parental rights, as soon as a pregnancy is recognized, both parents should have equal say as to whether that pregnancy continues. If one parent wishes to keep the child, that should be the deciding factor as to whether an abortion is considered. Should there be doubt about paternity, DNA tests are quickly and easily obtained.

C. Is there an existing double standard that favors women and extracts men from an equation that does ultimately involve him?

I do believe there is - and remember, I am a woman who believes I have equal rights with men. What I do not believe is that I have more rights than men. However, there seems to be a large faction of women's rights groups in this country who act in opposition to equal rights for the sexes. While I don't have exact figures, I have been hearing of isolated cases of parental dispute over abortion over the past few years. In each case, the woman had her abortion without the father's consent. How many of these cases must actually be happening for me to hear about these few?

In a November 6, 2005 New York Times article, "The Right To Be A Father (Or Not)," Pam Belluck talks about the two parallel tracks our courts are taking with regard to abortion and the implantation of frozen embryos. The courts have so far ruled that the father does not have any right to stop the mother from getting the abortion - even in cases where the couple were married. Paradoxically, they have ruled that the father can stop the mother from implanting frozen embryos that the couple has in common - even if the couple is divorced. There seems to be little connection between the two lines of decision, and no continuity.

Additionally, there is the issue of a father's frustrated love. Our society is making great progress in understanding the grief of parents whose children miscarry. There are miscarriage support groups and psychological help for people in this awful, sad situation. Has anyone considered the grief of a father who learns that his child has been killed - and there is no legal recourse, not even the ability to bring a charge of custodial interference? There is no help for these men, and no recognition that they have a right to grieve in the first place. Were this any other issue, we would be talking about the dollar amount of the wrongful-death suit.

D. Do women and men have an equal and shared obligation to responsible sexual activity or is it only the man who is to be held responsible?

I have a difficult time believing that men and women are held equal under law in every case but this. However, it appears to be so. As it currently stands, men are held to be responsible financially even in cases where the woman became pregnant under false pretenses, or lied about using birth control. In Illinois, a woman went through the bathroom trash to obtain sperm from her date's used condom, became pregnant using it - and won the child support suit. (She was a fertility expert and had the necessary knowledge.) In my opinion, this is the greatest theft that can be perpetrated on one person by another: the theft of their body, the subversion of their wishes, and the theft of their future resources.

Here is my suggestion. Simply make the father's wishes of equal weight with the mother's - from conception. If this is too onerous a burden, consider this. There is a model that works and that leaves out the complications we are discussing today, if it is implemented correctly. It is absurdly simple, a slice right through the middle of the Gordian knot. Step by step, it works thusly: A man comes through the weird winds of adolescence without having any sex at all, because his parents told him it was wrong, and he wanted to save himself for his future wife. Miraculously, he meets a woman who has done the same thing. They marry. They stay married. They have children. They both want to keep them. They live together in the same house, so he doesn't have to pay child support for anyone at all - and back before he met his wonderful wife, he didn't take the risks that would have put him in that predicament. He never has a moment's worry about who has his sperm.

Old fashioned? Yes. Uncommon? Yes, lately, but it does still happen. Bad?

You know what they say - if it ain't broke, don't fix it.