A Man's Right to Choose

I read an interesting article by Katie Roiphe on Slate this week that addressed the following question: Should men who don’t want to father children be forced to pay child support?

Roiphe does not probe very deeply into the issue. In fact, she seems almost reluctant to think it through, saying, at one point:

Our tendency is to give to the pregnant woman the moral high ground, whatever she chooses, but there may be a more honest, rigorous interpretation that does not involve high ground and instead involves the ambiguous murk in which most of the rest of our lives take place.

I was with her until she got to the murk. It reminds me a little of the emanating penumbra.  

Might there not be a more honest view of the issue of “choice?” Roiphe may be satisfied to let her life take place in an ambiguous murkiness, but I am not sure we all should be. Why not examine the issue outside of the murkiness?

Should men have to pay for fathering children? If a woman has a “right to choose” that trumps the life of her unborn baby – why shouldn’t the man? Is there something that ought to prevent him from having the same right?

Some would argue that there is. The man does not have to carry the baby – therefore, in order to choose to father a child when the woman involved does not want to have one, he would have to violate a woman’s right to “bodily integrity”  by forcing her to give birth to a child she did not wish to have.

Alright. Maybe. But this is not an argument that ought to prevent a man from choosing to walk away. By walking away, he does not force the woman to carry a child she does not want to carry. He does not put a burden on her body that she has not chosen to bear herself. Is it, then, truly fair to say that a man should not have the right to just walk away? Shouldn’t he have the right to choose?

Roiphe admits that it may not always be fair to force men to pay child support for children they never wanted.  But, she asks, “In a practical world how could we enforce the idea that a man who didn’t really want a child wasn’t responsible for the child?”

Easy. Just say the man has the right to choose. Make child support optional. Do away with it altogether.  It’s really not that hard.

But Roiphe asks another question.

How many deadbeat dads would step forward with their reluctance, their ambivalence, as a way to worm their way out of responsibility?

I don’t know. How many deadbeat moms have wormed their way out of responsibility? Why is it “worming” when a man does it, but an act of great independence when a woman does? Why is it ok to label Dads who are unwilling to take responsibility for their actions as “deadbeats”, while we praise women for their decisions when they choose to abort their children? Why not praise men for exhibiting their independence? Why not applaud the fact that they can now go on to achieve their dreams?

NARAL’s web site has pages of stories of women who brag that because they chose to have an abortion, they were able to go to college, get a degree and do well for themselves. I have never seen such a site for men who choose to embrace their freedom, rather than allowing another person to become a burden on their lives and finances. Is there really any good reason why there shouldn’t be one?

Finally, Roiphe writes the following:

It is very hard to see how this could be written into law, the didn’t-want-him argument, without wide-scale abuse and harm to the children involved.

Oh! Harm to the children involved! I suppose the father’s rights couldn’t trump the rights of the children involved. Could they?

-Miranda

(I apologize for not signing this post earlier. I did not realize typepad was no longer publishing names. Thanks, Dr. Schaff.)

Comments

[Brian]

And what about the cases where the woman gets pregnant and wants an abortion while the father wants to keep the child? He is out of luck.

So why should the reverse be any different?

[tedp]

Well Brian, because feminists are selfish pigs for the most part.

[duggersd]

Here is a scenario: A man has sex with a woman and uses a condom. Unbeknownst to him, she fishes the condom out of the trash after he leaves and uses it to "baste" herself and get pregnant. Should that man have to pay child support? I do not know if it is an urban legend, but I have heard of it happening to NBA players.

[larry kurtz]

That's what lawyers are for, Barnes.

[Bill Fleming]

There's an easy fix, boys. Stop trying to screw every thing that walks. LOL.

[caheidelberger]

"If a woman has a “right to choose” that trumps the life of her unborn baby – why shouldn’t the man?"

Because, until men have wombs and fetus transplant thereinto is possible, the woman faces a unique bodily subjugation that the man does not.

Now my sons, go say 5 Hail Marys and 10 Man's Prayers and quit pretending you're oppressed by women's rights.

[caheidelberger]

[dang: I keep forgetting SDP's comment box strips out HTML links! See here for Man's Prayer text: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Red_Green_Show]

[Donald Pay]

Welcome to one of the problems of the nuclear family, and the failure to use birth control.

Our laws have been structured around the concept of the nuclear family, so it is not surprising that the many and varied consequences of an unwanted pregnancy would be visited on the two people responsible for that pregnancy. In other societies, child rearing would be a more communal endeavor, the entire clan or tribe would see to it that the child was reared. In these societies there is less need to hold the father responsible for 18 years.

The big push to hold father's responsible came when feminists and conservatives joined together to strengthen child support. Conservatives didn't like it that the welfare system was picking up the costs of deadbeat dads.

[larry kurtz]

Years of worship on a kneeler causes self-induced meniscal osteoarthritis in Catholics yet birth control is a sin: gawd.

Wait a minute: cannibalism is illegal yet transubstantiation through the Eucharist is a sacrament; that makes my bong a chalice.

The twitterverse has been awash in reports that Willard made millions with a company that mitigated medical waste that included the evacuated tissue from dilation and curettage procedures: hardly surprising for a capitalist with a Mormon education.

[Miranda]

Thank you all for your comments! I'm sorry I haven't responded until now.

Cory gives an answer to Brian's question, suggesting that a woman has more rights than a man because of her "unique bodily subjugation." I think that if the amount of bodily subjugation someone suffers entitles them to greater protection or more rights, then, perhaps an unborn baby ought to have more than any of the participants involved.

I would also point out that while Cory's response partly answers my question, it does not explain why men are not allowed to choose to walk away (without a penalty). That does not place any additional bodily subjugation on a woman.

Donald: Thank you for your perspective. I will have to look into whether or not babies raised on communes actually turn out to have healthier lives than children raised in nuclear families.

Mr. Kurtz: I can't help but admire the way you've tied together everything from osteoarthritis to cannibalism. But I'm not quite sure how any of it has to do with a man's right to choose.