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Tuesday, January 10, 2006

Men’s Abortion Rights

Posted by on January 10 at 9:23 AM

The New York Times keeps John Tierney’s column behind their “Times Select” firewall, so you’ll either have to pick up a copy of the paper or surf around a bit and find someone who has posted the entire column on the web. But everyone who is pro-choice should read his column today. In “Men’s Abortion Rights,” Tierney walks folks through this controversial idea: Just as women should be able to accept or reject maternity, men should be able to accept or reject paternity.

If the pro-choice side adopted a gender-neutral policy, then either the man or the woman would have the right to say no to parenthood. I don’t’ know of anyone advocating that a woman be required to have an abortion, but there’s another right that could be given to a man who impregnates a woman who isn’t his wife. If the woman decided to go ahead and have the child, she would have to notify him and give him the option early in the pregnancy of absolving himself of any financial responsibility for the child.

This option to have a “financial abortion” has been advocated by a few iconoclastsnot all of them men with child support payments…

After years of getting letters at “Savage Love” from teenage boys asking me if they’re fuckedi.e. on the hook for 18 years of child support paymentswhen their knocked-up girlfriends decide to go ahead and have the baby, the right to a financial abortion makes sense to me, and I’m not a man making child support payments. It’s a sexist stereotype that all boys who knock up girls were negligent or abusive and are therefore to blame: I’ve heard from boys whose girlfriends swore they were on the pill when they were not; from boys whose girlfriends swore they were pro-choice and would have an abortion and then changed their minds. Not all men are dogs and not all women are righteousthere are women who entrap men, depriving them of their right to make up their own minds about whether or not they’re ready to become parents. So to me it seems only fair that boys, as well has girls, be given the same right to choose.

When I’ve floated the idea to friends (I also touched on the subject in The Kid), I’ve been told that boys do have a choicethey can choose not to have sex. If a boy chooses to have sex, well, he has to accept the consequences, doesn’t he? That language, however, smacks of the rhetoric the rights uses when it argues against a woman’s right to choose an abortionhell, it is the rhetoric the right uses to argue against abortion. “Not ready for parenthood? Then don’t have sex.” How can that be sexist when the anti-choice crowd says it to girls and progressive when pro-choicers say it to boys?

Maybe I’m just so enamored of the rhetoric of choice and the equality of the sexes that I supportat least in concept (there are a lot of details that would have to be worked out)a man’s right to a financial abortion. Women and men should both be able to choose when and how they become parents, and the ability or willingness of the male to chose fatherhood is certainly something a woman should weigh when she’s deciding whether or not to chose motherhood.

Would a man’s decision to reject paternity have a coercive affect, nudging a woman toward making the choice to have an abortion? Yes, it certainly wouldbut what’s wrong with that? Again, the willingness of the man involved to actually be the fatheremotionally and financiallyis something that a woman should consider when she’s deciding whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.

More from Tierney:

If it were just a question of the woman’s rights versus the man’s rights, I’d go along… But if the man gets a financial abortion and the woman goes ahead with the pregnancy, someone else’s rights still need to be considered: the child would be suffering because of the parents’ decisions.

Tierney assumes that the child of woman who goes ahead with the pregnancy is going to live in poverty. But he overlooks the other choice a pregnant woman whose partner has chosen financial abortion can make: she can choose to place her child for adoption.


CommentsRSS icon

OR -- she can raise the kid herself, in a healthy environment, maybe with the help of family. Savage, I know you think it can't be done healthily, but it can and it has.

I've been thinking about--and getting pissed off about--this issue for as long as I can remember. I'm happy to see that the MSM is starting to pick up on it.



It's a questions of what's moral and what's legal. I feel a little conflicted, because were it MY kid, I'd certainly want to make sure
he/she was provided for. But that's my own morality at work. The problem is that by making this a LAW, we've
effectively deprived men of their right to have sex without the distinct
possibility of a massive, legally mandated financial burden that, depending on one's income, could be personally ruinous.



Some men are sexually irresponsible to be sure, and deserve to have that burden hanging over their heads to keep them in check. But the same law
applies to all men, even the ones that are monogomous, communicate with
their partners about their non-kid preferences, and wear condoms just to
make sure. Should those men have to deal with this as well? The law, as you mentioned, is essentially saying "the only responsible decision is not to have sex unless you're planning on having a child." I don't think that's fair, but more importantly, I don't think it's realistic.



Besides, let's consider the other side: a scenario in which the man wants
the child and the woman doesn't. She can terminate her pregnancy and deny me
a child that I might desperately want, because that's her right. But if the
situation is reversed, and I don't want the kid but she does, I'm not only
forced to have my offspring walking the earth, but I have to pay for them as well? Having and eating cake, no?



This should get addressed not by the law, but by the prospective parent
herself. Financial concerns -her own, not her mate's - should be a factor in
the woman's decision about whether or not to have the baby at all. If your
partner doesn't want the baby you're carrying and you decide to have it
anyway, great. But before making that decision, you would have to take into
account the fact that you'll bear the financial burden alone.



That might sound cruel, but really it's not. There is no income litmus test for couples that want children, why should it be different when it's just the woman? The same decision is involved...can we/I afford it? If the answer is no, for couples or for single parents, and they go ahead and have the kid anyway, well...it's probably inadvisable. And arguably bad for the child. But people do it all the time because they figure love will get them through, which it often does.



With the ability to choose comes consequences. Women want and deserve that right to choose, but there's responsibility that comes with that right. If they choose to have a child even though they lack sufficient income to take care of it, that's bad for the kid and arguably, lame of the mother. But since I didn't have any say in the decision, why am I paying again? Because it's the moral thing to do, for the child's sake? Sure. But this time, I should have a say in the matter. If a woman can make a morally questionable decision to have a child in poverty, then I should be able to make a morally questionable decision to not support that child.



One final thought (and thanks for reading this far)...why do we as a society have so little faith in men that we mandate their child support, instead of counting on their own morality/fatherly instincts? Are we so sure they'll abandon their offspring that we have to make laws forcing them into paying for their children?



And why would a woman want to perpetuate the genes of a loser asshole who has to be forced by the law to take care of his own kid?

I could see why you would find this theory appealing, but you are missing an important side to it.

Men have a choice! Their choice is weather or not they should use a condom. So many men would rather stick it in without a condom. I think giving them the option of opting out of fatherhood after they do the deed would see a HUGE increase in men pushing the no condom issue. The majority of the types of men who father children and don't take care of them would see this as a sexual revolution of sorts. I don't know a woman out there who has not fought with a man over this issue. ("I can't feel anything. It is like wearing a raincoat. Boo f*ing hoo!")
I believe the only thing making the select few men who use condoms continue using them is the fear of a baby. If you remove that fear/responsibility, you get a lot of guys going hog wild.

It may not seem perfectly fair to men, but in reality, a lot of things between men and women are not perfectly fair. Women have babies, men don't, men can pee standing up, women can't. The rules have to a be a little different. Women get the right to choose if they want to have a baby or not. If they can deal with the moral/emotional/physical trauma of having an abortion or not.

Men get their right to choose as well, it is just before they have sex. Regardless if they think she is on the pill or whatever, he has the right to choose to put a condom on or not. He has the right to choose if he is going to have sex or not. Sex is a responsibility, I don't think men should have it made any easier than it already is for them.

In reality, if he did get a girl knocked up, and had to pay a little child support, so what!! I guarantee, paying a few hundred bucks a month is NOTHING compared to raising a child as a single mother.

It's as easy as slapping on a rubber. This reminds me of your proposal (so sensible that it's maddening it will likely never be a law) that the infecting party in an HIV situation be saddled with half the medical bills. What about taking responsibility for your actions?

Shouldn't a woman have to take responsibility too?

And some men do use condoms and they slip or break or leak. And some women will go to great lengths to get pregnant—like this woman who saved the spunk after oral sex and used it to knock herself up:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7024930/

"Phillips accuses Dr. Sharon Irons of a 'calculated, profound personal betrayal' after their affair six years ago, saying she secretly kept semen after they had oral sex, then used it to get pregnant.

He said he didn’t find out about the child for nearly two years, when Irons filed a paternity lawsuit. DNA tests confirmed Phillips was the father, the court papers state.

Phillips was ordered to pay about $800 a month in child support, said Irons’ attorney, Enrico Mirabelli."

The biggest problem with Tierney’s notion (and Dan’s endorsement of it) is that it is based on the idea that an unplanned pregnancy is a gender-neutral situation. Bottom line: it isn’t. It never will be. Until men are able to conceive and give birth, equality between the sexes can never be achieved with regard to reproduction.

There are a number of things that bother me about “Men’s Abortion Rights,” but the biggest beef I have is that this concept can and will be used by the Right to further impede reproductive rights in this country. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that “financial abortion” is a liberal idea.

There are consequences to all actions, particularly those related to the act of squishing your body parts against those of the opposite sex. Absolving responsibility for those consequences is unfair to all parties involved – particularly the child.

Okay, come on. That story was so out-of-this-world that it was like, an international "news of the weird" sensation for weeks. Using that example is completely disingenuous and does not speak to the truth of most unwanted pregnancies, where (usually) both parties are so hot and bothered that they decide to go ahead and risk it.

Since condoms leak or break, why should an honest, HIV infected partner be forced to pay for infecting someone else with HIV?

When I proposed HIV support payments, I said that the circumstances under which the infection took place should be taken into consideration. I was after willful, malicious infections—people spreading the disease without any regard for the health and safety of others. If someone was acting with all reasonable precaution, then they shouldn't be tapped. And, as I wrote when I suggested it, you wouldn't need to impose fines in the case of every infection for the program to help sober up the assholes who think passing along HIV is no biggie.

Hmmm. I'm not sure I like this argument. To play devil's advocate, you could use the same argument to claim that a woman shouldn't ba allowed to have an abortion without the agreement of the man who would be the father. Sure, it's her body and she has to carry the pregnancy and give birth, but doesn't he have the same rights as she in deciding the fate of his offspring? What if he wants the child and she doesn't? Why should she be the sole decision maker regarding abortion? If he is willing (desiring even) to raise the child on his own without her involvement or financial support, shouldn't he be allowed to revoke her right to terminate the pregnancy? It would be equal rights in both directions, after all, right?

I am, generally speaking, supportive of women's rights and am pro-choice. However, it is a complicated issue, often lacking in glib, bumper-sticker answers.

I think you are blending separate issues. The issue of abortion is legally a medical one; it is the woman's body, and pregnancy and birth are medical issues, and the pro-choice mantra has always been that this medical decision should be her's alone. Of course other issues come in to play--religious, cultural, emotional, peer pressure, how is the child going to be raised, etc.--but the legal issue comes down to a personal medical decision.

The financial support issue has more to do with the courts desire to favor the rights of the child over the rights of the non-custodial parent. The adults should be theoretically allowed to make their own decisions. But the child is in no position to make decisions, and so it is the court's responsibility to act in the child's best interest when the adults are not behaving responsibly. You bring up valid points regarding women who say they're on the pill and aren't, women who entrap men, etc. I don't deny that these types of cases come up. And yeah, it isn't always fair. But the court has to balance the unfairness to the father against the unfairness to the child, and in most cases they must come down in favor of the child, regardless of how much it might screw the father. It doesn't matter if the father was lied to or has been entrapped. Generally speaking, absolving him of any financial responsibility punishes the child. And unfortunately, if the court tries to punish a mother for lying to or entrapping the father (either through a fine or jail time), then it will usually indirectly punish the child too. So that isn't a good option either. The unfortunate consequence then, is that the father is the one that gets screwed.

No it isn't fair, but it is the least worst option.

you're crazy, dan. an abortion cancels the impending existence of a needy infant. a financial abortion would deny the needs of an existing infant. even adoptive maternity alters the body and life of a woman; absentee paternity stretches a guy's wallet. there is no comparison.

Let's see...

First of all, condoms don't guarantee a non-preganancy outcome to sex. Plenty of men have wrapped it up like a good boy, only to have it break or fall off, etc, or just not work for whatever mysterious reason.

Second, while it's true that men have the choice to use condoms, women also have the choice to REQUIRE their men to use condoms. Why is it strictly the guy who has to insist on condom use? You're afraid of an epidemic of rubber-less men. But if the ladies refuse to give it up without one, well...problem solved. The choice between sex with condoms and no sex at all is pretty much a no-brainer.

You're right, not everything is fair between men and women. But this is a pretty big deal...we're talking about offspring here. It's not just a question of finances. Some would say it's not fair that women get to exclusively decide about having the baby or not. Don't get me wrong: It's their bodies (with all the attendant horrors of the actual pregnancy), so naturally it follows that it's their decision. I'm just saying it sucks to not have any input at all about something as hugely important as the decision to reproduce. Still, the non-assholes among us are willing to suck it up and deal with it.

But now you're asking, on top of me not having any say about whether to have the kid or not, that I be LEGALLY MANDATED to help cover the kid's costs for 18 YEARS. You put it in terms of "a few hundred bucks" a month, but the actual numbers are decided on in different ways, and are often a percentage of income. It can be WAY more than that (and anyway, for some, a few hundred bucks IS a huge problem).

And yes, it is of course much harder raising a kid as a single mother than to pay child support. But that's not the equation we're talking about and nobody's arguing that point. The issue is this: How can you expect to have the right to decide (entirely by yourself) to have a child that the father doesn't want, and then also expect him to help you with it? Morally, yeah, he should, for the child's sake. But making it a law is adding insult to injury, and let's women off the hook for the decision they (and only they) made.

Which brings me to my last point: You say this would be a "sexual revolution" for men, implying that more guys would be out there knocking up women. But I think it might actually mean MORE condom use. Suddenly, women can't count on the guy's financial support, so she's even less inclined to take chances on becoming pregnant. Hence, she insists on guys using condoms. It may even result in less children being raised by single parents, since perhaps women will be more likely to put children up for adoption knowing they don't have the father's money to count on. That might all sound horribly sexist and presumptuous, but one could say the same thing about your contention that men need the threat of financial ruin to keep from going "hog wild."

And lastly, if the guy you're dating is such a jerk that he argues with you over condoms, dump him for Christ's sake!

You really can't believe that these women who trap men by keeping used condoms or saving BJ semen represent a majority in any way? This sort of freakish news can't be used as a basis for argument on this issue. The type of women who go to those lengths to entrap men are clearly the minority and should be dealt with on a case by case basis.

To counterpoint your "evil woman" story. I have a good friend who was dating a guy who was afraid he would loose her. He knew she had strong feelings about never wanting to have an abortion. In an attempt to keep her he poked holes in all of their condoms until she was pregnant. Now she has a teenage daughter and he has not tried to see or paid a dime for her since she was two. You are saying he should be given the right to opt out of paying?

Sure condoms break, but not nearly as often as the world would like you to believe. They are still 98% effective. I have been using condoms for 15 years. I've had a lot of sex and I can't say I have ever experienced having one break.

The one time I got pregnant was the one time I was stupid and didn't force him to put on a condom. He insisted he pull out and it would be fine. I have a child as a result. We broke up in my last weeks of pregnancy. I have never seen a dime in the last 12 years.
You see, even if men are "financially responsible" it doesn't mean the women will ever get money from them. It isn't really enforced unless the guy is wealthy. In fact out of all of the single mothers I know, I don't know one who has ever received a child support check.

You will never hear a women say: "I don't have any kids that I know of!" and think it is funny.

there are ethics and there is law. this is an issue where there are certainly ethical rights and wrongs (a woman who has the resources to raise a kid on her own shouldn't force a man to pay for a child he didn't want and whose conception he made an effort to prevent), but the law is another matter altogether. the law needs to protect the interests of society, and therefore the financial interests of the child. it's next to impossible to determine who wanted and who didn't want a baby. but it's easy to demonstrate the existence of a real live kid, and both parents should be legally bound to support it.

Ok, so some people think that a guy should just wrap his pecker. Which is a mighty fine idea, but this premise ignores one certain fact - people are idiots. Women will lie. Men want to feel a warm, wet place.

Financial abortions, I assume, wouldn't be something that can be waved willy nilly (like a dong) as child support is in this state. Here in our wonderful, progressive liberal state, men have virtually zero parental rights. Even if a woman is a convicted felon, more often than not she can retain custody.

So, the moral here is that people are dumb. The solution, I would argue (this is not an original idea) is parenting licenses. Take a test, fail it, you get steralized. Nothing difficult, some math, some reading, some logic, some common sense the basics. Oh, smokers, drug addicts and alcoholics all are immediately sterilized.

I second Matthew's post.

There seems to be this default assumption, at least among us sensitive liberals, that men are dangerous and irresponsible and need to be kept in check, and that women are victims of men. I'm sure we can all think of cases where the opposite was true, but when we think of unwanted pregnancies in generic terms, our first instinct is to blame the man. And we may be correct more often than not, but this part of our culture really brings me down.

Yes, there are women who trick men into getting them pregnant. Yes, there are women who have abortions against their partners risk. Yes, sometimes things are very, and truly, unfair for men.

But I think are two major points that make Tierney, and thus Dan, sound like whiny, pathetic males who are forgetting exactly why we fight to give WOMEN choice and why we have laws that require child support.

The first is that women, historically and currently have been/are faced with inequalities. We were given choice and child support because men can force us to have children/get pregnant, and because men can walk away. These are much needed protections. Society doesn't provide for women and children in any way that makes raising a child alone an easy option. Tierney and Savage, in their fight for 'equality' would open the door for more abuses against women. In their quest to see no man treated unjustly, no hardship for their sex, they are simply setting up more opportunities for women to bare the burden of unwanted pregnancies, or even caring for a wanted one.

Second, you make a decision, whether you realize it or not, everytime you have sex, man or woman. You can do things to ensure your safety, to protect yourself, to stop pregnancy. Condoms, yes. everytime. Come on men. And girls. OR, howabout talking about it ahead of time. I told my bf before we did it (yep, it was our first date) that I would consider having an abortion if I got pregnant. If he had a problem with that, he needed to seriously think about not sleeping with me. My friend, we'll call him Jabu, is the biggest male slut I've ever met. But he is always clear with the ladies pre-coitus, that he opposes abortion . If she isn't interested in raising a child, that is fine, he will. But he would prefer not to be part of an abortion.

Sure these conversations can kill a mood, but when you choose mood over best practive, anytime, you gave up a little bit of your right to bitch, moan and sue over the outcome.

The following is a public service announcement:

Dan writes:
Would a man’s decision to reject paternity have a coercive affect...?

It should be "coercive effect." A coercive affect would be somebody putting on airs like thug.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled reproductive rights discussion.

Everyone should have sex with the worst possible outcome in mind. Women, whether on the pill or not, should understand that there is always a chance she could get pregnant. Always. A man should understand that there is ALWAYS a chance a woman could get pregnant from sex. Period. Women have gotten pregnant on the pill before. Should they be punished for that? There's no such thing as "safe sex" because it involves too many risks and complications regardless of precautions taken. Condoms aren't 100% effective, the pill is not 100% effective. It might be a different story if further precautions are in place (vasectomy, historectomy, IUD, etc.), but even then women have gotten pregnant! The only way to guarantee no children is by not having sexual intercourse & by not getting any semen in or around the vagina.

If there are men out there shitty enough to take the risk of having sex and then wish to absolve themselves from any financial support to the child, there will be a lot of domestic violence-related deaths. But hopefully no man so shitty will get laid ever, so it shouldn't be a problem.


And "loose" does not mean "lose". (I couldn't resist.)

I'm extremely wary of this financial abortion idea. It doesn't sound like it would help the greater good and especially wouldn't help all those unwanted kids who, (to use a kid-like phrase), didn't ask to be born. It could potentially be a big tax burden when the guy choses not to participate in the costs involved in raising a kid, which is totally expensive.

I think the bottom line here is that straight people, not just teenagers, but everyone need to have good, solid information about how babies are made and how birth control methods work. There are so many adults who still have little idea or have a vague notion that it's the other person's responsibility.

I'm a shitty speller, what can I say?


No big deal...I'm a horrible grammarian, so we're even.

A woman I know got pregnant by a guy who told her he had a vasectomy and did not need to wear a condom. She hated condoms so she thought it was great. Several weeks later she had an abortion.


The experience was tramatic for her. He just walked away from it.


Should she have been able to sue the guy for the trauma of undergoing an abortion? If she had the child should she have been allowed to not only sue him for child support payments, but also pregnancy and birth fees? I'm not talking medical fees but the same kind of fees that she could charge if she were a surrogate mother. If she had the child and gave the child up for adoption should she have been able to sue him for the truama of giving up the child along with pregnancy and birth fees? Say he wanted to be a father. Should she have been able to deny him paternal rights until he paid her for the use of her body so he could have his own biological offspring? Should she then have been able to set the price based on how much she hated the experience of pregnancy and having a child?


Take another situation that is more common. A woman I know was dumped by her husband at 38 for a younger woman. The deal was when he graduated he would build up his business while she supported him. After that she would stay home and raise a child.


He has a family with the younger woman. She does not have children.


Should she have been able to sue him for artificial insemination fees and child support? If she did have a child when she married in her forties and had complications with the pregnancy or birth, should she be able to sue him for that?


He did take a huge chunk of her adult life and money so he could set himself up and breed with a younger more desirable female.


If I accidently get pregnant and want to give the child up for adoption the father can sue for custody and win, with no compensation to me for the use of my body. He can then charge me for child support.


Rightly so. The child is entitled to it.


When it comes to breeding life is unfair. Sometimes if we try to make things "fair" we risk creating worse injustices.


Count your blessing guys. You can breed without having to go through life with female reproductive organs.


You are so lucky, however your rights are limited, as they should be.

Strictly speaking, the notion of male "abortion rights" rests on a - in my opinion - indefensible switch of responsibilities.

Why does a father have to support his offspring? For the same two reasons a mother has to: 1. because the child exists (child support is a right of the child, not one of the mother), and 2. because he - as the mother - is responsible for the child's existence.

Two argue that, if the mother has the right to get rid of this responsibility - via an abortion - the father should have the same right, compares two things which are not comparable. In the case of an abortion, the first and foremost reason for child support disappears: the child's existence. That is not the case with the alledged "male abortion" right. So the latter can only be defended if one stipulates that, when the mother can have an abortion, and chooses not have one, she, and she allone, bears the responsibility for the child's existence. Only her decision to not have an abortion brings the kid into being.

To claim that the latter is true, one has to stipulate that carrying the baby and having an abortion are simply two options, two choices which are completely equivalent. But that's not true. Carrying the baby is the natural course of events, while an abortion is an intervention. Carrying the baby does not need a reason, does not have to be justified, at least not by the woman alone, because the potential father is equally responsible for the pregnancy. An abortion, on the other hand, performed on the request of the woman, has to be justified by her.

And even if whe share the most expansive pro-choice approach to abortion rights, the reason is not that the woman has a right not to be forced to support her child when it is born. The fact that the woman (and the man,too!) does not have to support a child in the case of an abortion, is soley the result of the abortion, but not the reason why she has the right to have one. The reason for the latter is that the woman has a right to have controll over her herself, the right not to be forced to carry the fetus in her own body. The man and potential father, on the other hand, has no comparable interest.

Therefore, the alledged "male abortion right" is not the logical counterpart of the female abortion right.

what are the woman's reproductive responsibilities? a woman can have a kid and decide she doesn't want it and give it up for adoption or take it to a hospital or police station (at least in my state) no questions asked. men are held up to a higher standard than women because we live in a patriarchy that views men as more responsible and better equipped to handle stressful situations. women should be insulted. this tells me that women don't want equality, but options. they want the option to be a stay at home mom or a career woman. men don't have a choice. the role of the man is etched in stone and hasn't changed while the role of the woman has. how many women want to be with a man who wants to be a stay at home dad? how many women want to be with a man who makes less money than them? 1 out of 4 marriages end in divorce when the woman makes more money than the man. maybe women would have to be more responsible about whom they let ejaculate in them if there was the possiblity that the man could give up his paternal rights. and saying that all a man has to do is put on a rubber is ridiculous. all a woman has to do is take a pill, use a diaphram, get an iud, use a female condom, use the birth control patch, or take the morning after pill. the majority of women who get abortions do so so their lifestyle doesn't have to change. men don't have that option. a woman can decide for a man when he is ready to be a father and the man has no say. a man can't force a woman to be a mother, so a woman shouldn't be able to force a man to be a father. that's what equality is, but most women don't want equality, they want options without penalties, and so do men.

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