Jeff Jacoby has just put himself on my marry-me list. He said a lot of what I said about the “men’s rights” case for a “financial abortion,” only he said it without nearly as much emotion.
Not fair, Dubay complains. His ex-girlfriend chose to become a mother. It was her choice not to have an abortion, her choice to carry the baby to term, her choice not to have the child adopted. She even had the option, under the “baby safe haven” laws most states have enacted, to simply leave her newborn at a hospital or police station. Roe v. Wade gives her and all women the right – the constitutional right! – to avoid parenthood and its responsibilities. Dubay argues that he should have the same right, and has filed a federal lawsuit that his supporters are calling “Roe v. Wade for men.” Drafted by the National Center for Men, it contends that as a matter of equal rights, men who don’t want a child should be permitted, early in pregnancy, to get “a financial abortion” releasing them from any future responsibility to the baby.
Does Dubay have a point? Of course. Contemporary American society does send very mixed messages about sex and the sexes. For women, the decision to have sex is the first of a series of choices, including the choice to abort a pregnancy – or, if she prefers, to give birth and collect child support from the father. For men, legal choices end with the decision to have sex. If conception takes place, he can be forced to accept the abortion of a baby he wants – or to spend at least the next 18 years turning over a chunk of his income to support a child he didn’t want.
All true. But it is also true that predatory males have done enormous damage to American society, and the last thing our culture needs is one more way for men to escape accountability for the children they father. Dubay wants more than the freedom to be sexually reckless – he wants that freedom to be constitutionally guaranteed. Truly he is a child of his time, passionate on the subject of rights and eager to duck responsibility.
The culture used to send a clear message to men in Dubay’s position: Marry the mother and be a father to your child. Today it tells him: Just write a monthly check. Soon — if this lawsuit succeeds — it won’t say even that. The result will not be a fairer, more equal society. It will be a society with even more abortion, even more exploitation of women, even more of the destructiveness and instability caused by fatherlessness.
And, in some ways saddest of all, even more people like Matt Dubay: a boy who never learned how to be a real man.
I await the cascade of outraged comments.
OK I am outraged that such a person (as Dubay) exists and can try to get away with such a thing. I wonder why he is not suing for the right to force the mother to murder her baby. The problem is that this society focuses on rights and not responsibilities. It is not that I have the right to do something, which forces you to have the responsibility to respect that right. It is that I have the responsibility to respect your actions which then gives you the right to perform those actions.
While, in most cases the result is the same, the actual meaning is quite different.
I disagree with Sabba, Jacoby and Yourish. If society allows elective abortion, why should the mother be allowed to elect a portion of the biological father’s pocket?
It is exactly the same argument as abortion is solely the prerogative of the mother. However, it will be lawsuits like Dubay’s that will move many states toward allowing abortions only when the mother’s life is endangered by the pregnancy. When that happens, then others like Dubay will have no moral or legal defense. The woman cannot elect; she must bear the child. Therefore, as the mother is left with no choice, then the father must have no choice but to give support.
Alternately, if Dubay wins, then there should be a discernable decline in premarital sex. I would expect earlier marriages, because the probable costs to the woman of an out-of-wedlock child are raised. This would be the same effect observed as when welfare benefits for teenagers did not automatically rise for each child they bore.
chsw
I left out one more point. It has not been established whether Dubay is a “predatory male,” as Jacoby implies. In fact, from what I have read, the woman told him that she was using birth control pills. The non-sexual relationship appeared to have been fleeting. The “predatory male” phrase blows up this small tragedy of three people (parents and baby)into a heroine/villain or hero/villainess thing. Instead, society would be better served by looking at the facts and the arguments with cool heads and cold eyes.
chsw
Just as a woman makes a choice when she has sex with a man (Should I? Is he lying when he said he had a vasectomy?) so does the man. And if he doesn’t use a condom, he’s taking a risk – and not just of disease. Why should the woman be the only one left to deal with it?
There are lots of things we do that might seem trivial but have long-term consequences. This is just another one.
You could argue that the poor shnook driving home sober from a party should have known the other guy was drunk and would swerve into the shnook’s path – or that he should have left the party 15 minutes later. But nobody will buy that one.
If you’re dumb/foolish enough to take the risk, then you’re on the hook for the consequences. The corrolary is if you’re dumb/foolish enough to be chemically impaired (by whatever compound) when you have to make the decision – you already made it when you drank/smoked/injected/swallowed etc.
If the men don’t want kids, they’d better make that decision and stick with it through all of it’s implications. Keep it zipped.
chsw, the woman thought she could not have a baby. Turns out she erred. Did she lie? I don’t know enough about the case.
But if a man doesn’t want to be a father, he shouldn’t be having unprotected sex, and then whine about having to pay for the fruit of his loins.
I’m sorry, but the welfare of the child trumps the father’s annoyance at having to pay child support.
I just love how the same men’s movement that is whining that women get child custody as a matter of course is ignoring completely the father’s responsibility for the child in this case.
You want to talk hypocrisy….
Interesting post, Meryl. I hadn’t thought about it previously, but while I don’t agree with the concept that a man should be able to force a woman to have an actual abortion, as Sabba argues, I agree that a man should have the right to voice his opinion that the child should not come into the world under certain conditions. And if the woman decides she doesn’t agree, and should some sort of arbiter determine that the man had acted in good faith, and hadn’t acted carelessly to cause the pregnancy, then yes, there should be some way to relieve the man of fiduciary responsibility. At least, that’s my first thought. I will definitely be pondering this one further over the next few days. Great post, Meryl!
I would like to be able to make a good, solid point about this issue – something like “What if a man wanted to have sex, and took precautions, and those precautions failed? Should he be required to have an operation, and then ask his partners to trust his word, rather than put himself at risk for fatherhood by trusting their word?”
…I would like to be able to say that was a good, solid point. But the truth of the matter is that men cannot concieve, and therefore reproductive rights can never be meted out evenly to both partners. I cannot think of any way to artificially balance the scales.
Meryl,
I do not want to talk about hypocrisy – I want to talk about results. If you want self-restraint to return to the level of the pre-Pill era, the probable social and/or dollar costs to the woman of having the child must rise. Women are the gatekeepers of sex. If their risks and costs rise for having sex, then men can only take matters in hand. If costs to women rise, in other words, then women will be damn sure they know the man well before making love. Moreover, the discussion hinges not on the fairness/unfairness of biology, but rather on how 14th Amendment law has evolved. Lastly, no one is talking about FORCED abortions as if the Chinese secret police will swoop into a woman’s bedroom and rip the child out of her womb.
chsw
Meryl – I don’t see the actions of the Men’s groups as hypocrisy as much as desperation.
I’m not sure you’re aware of the inequities of current divorce and child-support law.
Basically, even the most devoted father is stripped of all rights in most cases – except the right to support a woman who can obstruct and poison his relationship with his children at will.
It’s all very well to crow about the dearth of responsible fatherhood – but that didn’t just come about through “predatory males”, it came about through a lot of “screw men” and “fathers are superfluous” ideology, enacted through the courts, that slammed the door in many fathers’ faces.
…do you not see any conection between the anti-family, anti-man rhetorical abuses documented in your “strawfeminist” series and the current situation?
Ben-David: Cite me an instance that legislates the anti-father divorce laws that you claim exist, and we will talk.
Until then, you have built a perfect strawfeminist argument.
chsw: I am so done with this. Go read the comments I put on the other post. I’m tired of repeating myself.
Meryl, let’s walk back the cat. First, let’s look at the what the several desired outcomes should be. Then, with an open mind, let’s look at a variety of ways of getting there. I understand your argument advancing the traditional paternity suit approach to the problem of preventing unwanted children, without abortion – that penalties on the man will keep him zipped even as the woman might be undoing hers. However, I do not think that you understand my microeconomic approach to the same problem. Good night to this disagreement.
I agree with Meryl when she says “if a man doesn’t want to be a father, he shouldn’t be having unprotected sex, and then whine about having to pay for the fruit of his loins.” One can say the same thing about a woman. If a woman does not want to get pregnant, then the same applies to her. Modern contraceptive technology has made it possible for people to think that their sexual behavior has no consequences. They are wrong, however, and this is the fundamental problem. No contraceptive method except abstinence is foolproof. One simply should not have sex unless one is willing to accept whatever consequences may come.
I am not familiar with this particular case, but if the woman thought she was unable to get pregnant, and the man had unprotected sex with her based on that assurance, then I can very well understand his reluctance to take any responsibility for what happened. By the same token, if a man lies to a woman about having a vasectomy and gets her pregnant, then she should be able to sue his ass off.
Someone upthread said that women are the gatekeepers of sex. This is true. Unless a man is a violent rapist, it is simply impossible to have sex with a woman against her will. If the term “women’s rights” is to mean anything at all, then a woman must be held just as reponsible for the unintended consequences of unprotected sex as the man. The condom may go on his penis, but she is the one who decides whether the condomed, or condomless, penis enters her vagina. If one is to argue that it is the woman who is stuck with the kid, all that means is that one is saying that there can never actually be any such thing as a real gender blind society.
If a society is truly gender blind, then logically there can be no set of beahviors, rights, privileges, or duties that belong exclusively to one gender or the other. If women want to truly be free, independent and equal and not judged or limited by their gender, then in order for this to really be fair, they can no longer expect any special treatment because they are women. What inevitably will happen in such a scoiety is that you will get men like this fellow who shirks his responsibility, since in a gender blind society if men have no particular rights that women do not have, then they logically they also have no gender-specific responsibilities either. If one believes this, one can hardly blame the fellow for not “acting like a man”. In a gender blind society what is a man supposed to act like?
Just to be clear, I am Orthodox and I do not believe in a gender blind society at all. I believe that in the world of politics and the workplace, women should have equal pay for equal work, etc. and that no woman should be held back in her career because of her sex. However, I think it flies in the face of nature to think and act like there is no essential difference between men and women. On the face of it, this is obvious nonsense. However, a woman cannot on one hand claim to be equal to a man in all respects and then say that she deserves special consideration from the man because she is the one who gets pregnant.
Essentially, all this proves is that people who are not prepared to be parents should probably not have sexual intercourse. It seems more than a little silly for a man and a woman to sleep together and then, when she gets pregnant, say “Gee that wasn’t supposed to happen”.
Grow up.
I hear pro-choicers all the time say the government should stay out of our personal lives. But isn’t the government intruding on men’s personal lives when they are ordered to pay 18 years of child support taking about 20% of their paycheck, and if they fail to do so get thrown in jail?
Men should have a window of oppurtunity, say 3 months, to make a legal choice to opt-out of fatherhood. Coercing a person into something he wants no part of in a supposedly free, democratic society is ridiculous.
A man shouldn’t be enslaved for 18 years by a woman’s unilateral choice. A woman’s body, a woman’s choice, then it should be a woman’s responsibility. If a woman makes a unilateral decision to bring a pregnancy to term, and the biological father does not, and cannot, share in this decision, why should the father be liable for 18 years of support? Why should autonomous women making independent decisions about their lives should expect men to finance their choice?
Just because a person consents to sex doesn’t mean the person consents to parental responsibilities. If that was the case then women would be coerced to go to term and raise the baby. So why should men be coerced into parental responsibilities?
A man can use all the precautions to prevent impregnating a woman such as using spermicide and a condom, but what if it fails? What other recourse does the man have to avoid parental responsibilities? Do you really expect men who absolutely want to avoid parental responsibilities to have a vasectomy or practice lifelong celibacy? Let’s turn it around on women – “women, if you don’t want to get pregnant, then keep your legs closed or get a tubal”. Sounds sexist doesn’t it? Besides, you really don’t expect men to “keep it in their pants” just as you don’t expect women “to keep their legs closed”, do you? You also don’t expect all the millions of young men who tend to be sexually active to get a vasectomy, do you? Many doctors are very reluctant to perform such operation on young men.
There are hardly any pro-choicers out there who support choice for men. It just goes to show how many sexist, hypocritical pro-choicers there are out there.
Feminists often argue that many pro-lifers are motivated less by concern for the unborn than by the belief that women who enjoy sex should pay a penalty for it. But maybe even more people today have a similarly punitive attitude toward men. In some comments I have heard, from both men and women, about the danger of “letting men off the hook,” the real fear seemed to be not that the children would suffer, but that the men would get off scot-free.
The willingness to liberate women but not men from the unwanted consequences of sex may stem partly from the lingering attitude, conscious or not, that sex is mainly for the man’s pleasure and the idea that men should be breadwinners. It may also reflect the belief that men are irresponsible and thus more likely to abuse their freedom.
It’s stunning, isn’t it, how blithely men ignore that the person who most suffers from the man can put the responsibility of being responsible for his issue like this:
When a woman voices concern for “letting men off the hook,” that concern is for the child.
Once again, I point out: Any man who has sex with a woman of childbearing age knows full well that the consequences of that act may be a child. If he is unprepared to shoulder his responsibility should the woman decide to have the child, then he should not be having sex to begin with.
It’s as simple as that.
This isn’t about equal rights. This is about responsibilities.
Amazing how many men are in favor of this legal walk-away clause.
I don’t know if you are aware of it or not, but you are using a common pro-life argument by saying a person should pony-up to responsibilities because the person knew of the possible consequences of sex. Saying a man shouldn’t have sex if he is unprepared to take on parental responsibilities is awfully similiar to the common pro-life argument that women shouldn’t have sex until they are ready to be a mother. Wouldn’t you agree? But we can’t say that to women because that would be sexist, but I guess it is okay to tell men such a thing.
You have something in common with pro-lifers, you both believe the government should interfere in a person’s personal life for the interest of another life… you both believe the government’s and another person’s morals should be imposed on another person because of another human life. Ironic isn’t it? And many pro-choicers say pro-lifers are a bunch of moralizers who want to impose their views on others. I think many pro-choicers need to take a look in the mirror.
The reality is that many people, women and men, have sex all the time who don’t want to take on parental responsibilities. The millions of women who have abortions every year is a testament to that. So only women can have a post-sex option, but not men?
If you believe that a man shouldn’t have the rights to opt-out because it is immoral, think about this: which is more morally repugnant, a woman killing her unborn baby (or fetus), or a man witholding financial support? The former is legal, but the latter is illegal (so much for consistency with our laws, eh?). Sure the baby may not have all the diapers it needs and a GI Joe with a kung fu grip, but at least the man’s choice didn’t involve killing a human life.
Even to say a woman should have a legal right to an abortion but a man shouldn’t have the legal right not to pay child support because a pregnancy is more taxing and involves a person’s body is debatable. Which is more burdensome, a woman carrying to term, or a man paying 18 years of support taking 20% of his paycheck? In my opinion, and I think most people would agree, the latter is. I would rather be coerced to go through just 9 months of pregnancy than be coerced to give up a huge chunk of my paycheck for 18 years.
To an extent, imposing child support payments on a man can also have a negative affect on a man’s body. The man can have a rigorous manual labor job and because 20% of his paycheck is excised, he may have to work harder and longer hours just to keep his lights on and food on the table.
If one is pro-life, then I can see how their position is consistent by saying both parties should take responsibility. But to say that one party should pony-up while the other shouldn’t is one-sided and sexist.
The bottom line is if you can’t coerce women into motherhood, then men shouldn’t be coerced into fatherhood.
I would greatly appreciate if you answered my other questions in my previous post. Thanks.
“Which is more burdensome, a woman carrying to term, or a man paying 18 years of support taking 20% of his paycheck?”
Easy, I’d pay for 40 years whatever you like. Ever been pregnant?
Yeah, okay.
Give me 20% of your paycheck for 18 years then tell me how you feel.