When a woman unintentionally becomes pregnant she has options
such as abortion, carrying the child to term, adoption or becoming
a mother. But when a man unintentionally fathers a child he has few
choices. If the woman chooses to have the child, then the man
involved is held financially liable for the child without having
any say in the matter. While women seem to have the freedom to have
sex without the burden of procreation, men are left at the mercy of
the woman’s decision.
Some men, rightfully, are crying foul. In fact, the National
Center for Men has filed a lawsuit in Michigan that specifically
addresses this concern, nicknamed “Roe v. Wade for
Men.” The lawsuit is not trying to give men a say in the
matter of whether a woman decides to have an abortion or not; its
goal is to provide them the option not to be a father, financially
or otherwise.
The men involved in this lawsuit don’t give specifics as
to what restrictions should be placed on the choice to opt out of
fatherhood, but given reasonable restrictions, their right to this
choice makes sense. If they’re forced to make their decision
in time to allow the woman to safely choose whether or not to get
an abortion, then men should be allowed to make the choice of being
a father.
In fact, if you’re really pro-choice, there isn’t an
argument to counteract theirs. The arguments that could be used
against them are either the same ones used against women who want
the right to get an abortion, or they’re simply not strong
enough reasons to disallow men a right to choose.
You could argue that men need to be held responsible for the
consequences of their actions ““ they had sex, they got
someone pregnant, and now they need to be responsible for raising
and financing that child.
But this is the same argument used by anti-abortion advocates
““ that if a woman is sexually active she needs to be ready to
step up to the responsibility of having a child. If she
doesn’t want children, then celibacy is always an option.
This is unreasonable. Since the advent of birth control, and
especially since Roe v. Wade, it’s been generally accepted
that sex and procreation play separate roles in people’s
lives: A child is not always an intended result of sex, and sex is
certainly not always motivated by the thought of creating a child.
We can’t hold women to one standard and men to another.
Another argument is that abortion isn’t always a choice.
Some women have been brought up in pro-life environments where
abortion, to them, equates to murder. Sometimes they are influenced
by their families and friends not to get an abortion.
But no choice is made in a vacuum, and just because a woman
feels one way doesn’t mean a man has to agree. If it were a
man who equated abortion with murder, it wouldn’t mean a
woman should be forced to keep the child.
Lastly, people argue that the very nature of the choice of
having an abortion is unique in some sense. Obviously reproduction
isn’t equal ““ women are much more physically taxed by
the entire process than men are.
But does this then give women the right to opt out, while
forcing men to come along for the ride? I don’t think these
are grounds for forcing a father to support a child for eighteen
years.
There are legitimate concerns associated with allowing men to
opt out of fatherhood, but again, none of them are enough of a
reason to not allow them this choice.
For instance, it’s a possibility that men could threaten
to decline fatherhood as a leverage point to convince women to get
abortions ““ they could threaten to opt out of helping support
the child. In a country where there are already wealth disparities
between genders, this is a legitimate concern. Especially when,
according to the National Association of Child Care Resource and
Referral Agencies, child care in California can eat up about 44
percent of a single parent’s income.
But this is an issue that all single parents face, not just
those whose partners opted out. Sometimes women don’t want to
tell the putative father ““ they just want to raise the child
on their own. Sometimes either parent is left alone with the child
for unexpected reasons such as death or illness.
Whether or not men have a right to opt out of fatherhood,
single-parent households need to be supplied with enough state
support so that they can survive. They need to be provided with
services such as free child care, and perhaps some support from the
state to cover the child’s basic needs. This support
shouldn’t be enough to make it beneficial for the man to opt
out of fatherhood, but enough so that a woman wouldn’t have
to worry about survival if he chose to opt out and she chose to
have the child.
Obviously, there need to be restrictions. Men, like women,
should have a certain period of time after conception to make their
decisions (enough time to allow the woman to safely get an
abortion). And after the child is born, opting out is, of course,
not an option.
If we really do believe in a woman’s right to choose
““ the power to choose when and where and how she has children
““ then we need to extend similar rights to men.
E-mail Loewenstein at lloewenstein@media.ucla.edu. Send
general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.