Musings About Reproductive Rights

Abortion is a touchy subject - both sides feel very strongly about their arguments, the pro-choicers about being forced into parenthood, and the pro-lifers about killing the fetus. But I have a question - has anyone actually considered men's reproductive rights?

I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm totally pro-choice... but if we give women the right to choose, we have to give men the right to choose or it's not legally equal. If women get to opt out of being pregnant for 9 months, I'd say it's definitely unfair to force men to pay child support for eighteen years.

An example: Some case in Kansas (Hermesmann v. Seyer) in which this sixteen-year-old girl started having sex with the twelve-year-old boy she babysat for, having the baby when she was seventeen and he was thirteen. The district court, and then the Supreme Court of Kansas, ruled that the thirteen-year-old had to pay child support because "the issue of [his] consent was irrelevent." A thirteen-year-old girl would not even be legally required to give birth to a baby conceived in statutory rape, let alone pay anything. The case refers to the girl's "wrongdoing" in quotes - try getting off that easy if you're an older teen male who impregnated a barely teenaged girl. He'd be really lucky not to go to jail.

I just find it odd that no one, including men, has brought this up. Everyone's all up in arms about women's rights and equality and all, but where is the equality for men in the fight for reproduction rights? Shouldn't men get to decide, too, if they want to be parents? If a man wants a baby and a woman doesn't, all he can do is try to convince her to keep it. If he doesn't want it and she does, he can either try to talk her out of it or leave her, and then he still has to pay for the kid. How is that fair? A woman only has to be pregnant for 9 months, but child support must be paid for all 18 years. A man gets no choice in the matter. Where are the pro-choicers for THIS issue?

Now, this is not to say that men shouldn't have to support their children, because sometimes the mother can't. But why not, say, just for the first ten years? Or if the mother doesn't have a good job, or isn't able to leave the kid anywhere? Or if he leaves after the kid is born, he has to pay, but if the mother has advance notice, he doesn't? Why is it required for the man to pay all 18 years? There should be criteria OTHER than "Is he the biological father?" on the child-support application.

And I know a lot of women would be outraged at the idea, but seriously, if you're going to go on about equal rights, they've got to be equal for everyone. If you get pregnant and your man says, "Honey, I don't want to be a father yet, can't you give it up?" and you say, "Screw you, it's my body," and then he leaves you, he shouldn't be required to pay for it. He made a choice before the baby was born, just like an abortion or adoption, and therefore he should legally be free of all responsibilities vis-a-vis this baby. However, just like abortion, there should be limitations: It can't be a form of birth-control for men (i.e. if he's done this __ times, he's cut off); in the circumstances of rape or incest, if the baby is born and the man is identified, he is required to pay child support; as mentioned above, if the woman cannot take care of the kid by herself, he must pay at least the first 5 years, maybe more depending on the circumstances. I think that would work out in pretty much everyone's favor.

What do you guys think?