Is It Good For the Goose Too?

"Should Men Have the Right to a "Financial Abortion"? A Biological Father Cries Sex Discrimination When Forced to Pay Child Support for an Unwanted Baby" (Link)

Excerpt:

Many men are quite angry about how little control they currently exercise over their reproductive lives. When a man decides to have consensual sexual intercourse with a woman, he risks unwanted fatherhood: If the woman conceives, it is she, and she alone, who decides whether to terminate her pregnancy. And that is true even if the woman falsely claimed that she was using birth control, that she had been told by a doctor that she could not conceive, or that if she did conceive, she intended to get an abortion.

In short, the argument goes, a woman has the ability forcibly to place her unwitting partner or ex-partner in a position he never wanted to occupy - that of a father - with all of the financial and emotional baggage that the status carries.

Should Men Have the Ability to Force Abortion? An Unpopular View

Some fathers' rights advocates feel so strongly about this reproductive inequity that they maintain that if either a man or a woman wants to terminate a pregnancy, against the wishes of the other partner, he or she should be able to do so. According to the New York Times magazine, Michael Newdow, for example, railed against "the imbalance in reproductive rights - women can choose to end a pregnancy but men can't…." Newdow then cut himself off, in order, he said, not to "alienate" the interviewer.

(As readers may recall, Newdow is the man who unsuccessfully sued to stop his biological daughter's school from having the children recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Possibly confirming Newdow's sense of how little control he exercises as a father, the Supreme Court denied Newdow standing to pursue the lawsuit, because of his status as the noncustodial parent, coupled with the Court's deference to California domestic law).

The "angry" men have a point. No? Should the law empower one sex partner (the woman) to impose parenthood on the unwilling father of her child? If women have total control over their reproductive freedom (as Roe and Casey mandates), should they not also have total responsibility for supporting the children they choose to bring into the world?

Hmmm. What are your thoughts? Should men and women have equal reproductive autonomy rights?