Respect a Man’s Choice, Too

By Jeffery M. Leving & Glenn Sacks

In Kai Ma’s recent AlterNet column “The Difference Between a Womb and a Wallet” (7/26/06) she applauds a U.S. District Court judge’s quick, contemptuous dismissal of Matt Dubay’s “Roe v. Wade for Men” lawsuit. Dubay sought to wipe out the child support payments he is obligated to make to an ex-girlfriend who, he says, used a fallacious claim of infertility to deceive him into getting her pregnant.

In opposing “Choice for Men,” Ma asserts that a “woman’s decision to terminate a pregnancy is not the equivalent of a man’s choice to financially opt out of fatherhood.” She cites the pain and discomfort of pregnancy, and the way motherhood “may limit our mobility or careers.”   These problems are very real; however, so are the problems created when men are saddled with child support obligations.

According to an estimate in Men’s Health magazine, 100,000 men each year are jailed for alleged nonpayment of child support. Federal Office of Child Support Enforcement data reveal that 70% of those behind on payments earn poverty level wages. The “Most Wanted Deadbeat Dad” lists put out by most states are used both for police actions and to hunt and shame “deadbeats” through newspaper ads and publicity campaigns. These lists are largely comprised of uneducated African-American and Latino men with occupation descriptions like “laborer,” “maintenance man” and “roofer.”

Ma dismisses the burden of child support as being “a few hundred dollars a month.” However, in California, AlterNet’s home state, a noncustodial father of two earning a modest $3,800 a month in net income pays $1,300 a month in child support. The money–almost $300,000 over 18 years–is tax-free to the custodial mother. One can reasonably debate whether this sum is appropriate or excessive. One cannot reasonably dismiss it as being insignificant.

Ma portrays children as a mother’s albatross, forgetting that parenting is also the greatest joy a person can experience in life. Yes, in single mother homes the mother bears the burden of most of the childrearing, but the mothers also experience the lion’s share of the joys and benefits of having children. Noncustodial fathers are not so fortunate—they’re usually permitted only a few days a month to spend with their kids. Once mom finds a new man, they’re often pushed out entirely in favor of the child’s “new dad.”

Ma condemns men who “lie, deceive, break their promises, or pull a 180…who agree to marry but don’t,” and laments that “millions of women” have been “trapped into single motherhood for life with, often, next to no recourse.” Yet according to a randomized study of 46,000 divorce cases published in the American Law and Economics Review, two‑thirds of all divorces involving couples with children are initiated by mothers, not fathers, and in only 6% of cases did the women claim to be divorcing cruel or abusive husbands.

The out-of-wedlock birth rate in the United States hovers around 33%–given the wide variety of contraceptive and reproductive choices women enjoy, this can hardly be blamed primarily on men. Yes, in some of these cases the mother and father shared a relationship which the mother (and the father) may have expected would become a marriage. Yet these relationships fail for many reasons besides male perfidy. These include: youth; economic pressure and the lack of living wage jobs (how many couples fight over money?); and the mothers’ post-partum depression and mood-swings. It’s doubtful that many men really wake up in the morning and say to themselves “my child loves me and needs me, my girlfriend loves me and needs me—I’m outta here.”

Ma says men “shouldn’t be able to choose to abandon that child in the lurch.” Yet 1.5 million American women legally walk away from motherhood every year through adoption, abortion or abandonment. In over 40 states mothers can completely opt out of motherhood by returning unwanted babies to the hospital shortly after birth. If men like Dubay are deadbeats and deserters, what are these women?

Whenever a child is born outside of the context of a loving, two-parent family, there are no good solutions. Ma overstates her case, but she is correct that “Choice for Men” is a flawed solution. However, the current regime, which provides women with a variety of choices and men with none, is also flawed.

Dubay’s conduct is not particularly admirable, and he’s certainly not a candidate for father of the year; however, he does have a point. Over the past four decades women’s advocates have successfully made the case that it is wrong to force a pregnancy on an unwilling mother. Despite the backlash against Dubay, hopefully his lawsuit will result in a greater societal awareness that it is also wrong to force a pregnancy on an unwilling father.

Jeffery M. Leving is the Chairman of the Illinois Council on Responsible Fatherhood. He is the author of the book Fathers’ Rights: Hard-hitting and Fair Advice for Every Father Involved in a Custody Dispute. His website is www.dadsrights.com.

Glenn Sacks’ columns on men’s and fathers’ issues have appeared in dozens of America’s largest newspapers. Glenn can be reached via his website at www.GlennSacks.com or via email at Glenn@GlennSacks.com.

ABORTION: When Fathers Can’t Protect Their Children

By Jeffery M. Leving

In reading President Bush’s recent message to the anti-abortion rally about protecting “the lives of innocent children waiting to be born,” I was struck by the lack of mention of the father’s complete inability to protect his own unborn child. In fact, no one seems to acknowledge a father’s rights to have a say in whether his child gets to live.

It’s been 30 years since the Supreme Court made its decision in Roe vs. Wade. Despite the passage of that time, the issue remains a fiercely contested debate, with each camp remaining adamant in it attempt to out shout the other. Yet in these three decades, one voice continues to be unheard — that of the fathers of unborn children.

As a family law attorney, I work daily with anguished fathers who have little or no say in the lives of their children. The agony of these men becomes unimaginable when the child is not yet born and they have no way of protecting the life they helped to create.

With the anniversary of such a significant ruling upon us, a new Congress and debates raging in legislatures across the country, activities on both sides see now as the time that will make or break Roe. But now is also a chance to balance the rights of the father with those of the mother, putting the focus on the child, and creating the most equitable law possible.

Depriving fathers of a meaningful voice will not solve the problem for anyone. This course would only deny fathers equal protection and due process. Moreover, many children will be far beyond the protective reach of their fathers who want to be included in such a pivotal decision.

Under the Supreme Court rulings made over the course of these three decades, fathers were denied any voice in the issue, whether they were married to the mother or not.

The government has turned the issue of reproductive rights back to the states, and we, as concerned Americans in every state, should use this ruling as the basis to create the fairest and most realistic law possible. To do this, every voice must be heard, even that of fathers.

Jeffery M. Leving is co-author of the Illinois Joint Custody Law and President Emeritus of the Fatherhood Educational Institute (FEI). A family law attorney, he is author of the book “Fathers’ Rights” and currently serves on the Congressional Task Force on Fathers, Families & Public Policy. Leving is the founder of dadsrights.com

A Man’s Right To Choose-Alito & Men’s Reproductive Rights

By Joe Englert

President Bush’s appointment of conservative judge Sam Alito to the Supreme Court has prompted outrage from the Left and praise on the Right.

During the months leading up to his confirmation, much of the opposition focused on one controversial case – Planned Parenthood v. Casey. In this case, Alito was the sole dissenter on the Third Circuit, which struck a Pennsylvania law that required women seeking abortions to consult their husbands. He argued that many of the potential reasons for an abortion, such as “economic constraints, future plans, or the husbands’ previously expressed opposition . . . may be obviated by discussion prior to abortion.” The case went on to the Supreme Court, which upheld the lower court’s decision 6 to 3.

Liberals highlighted this decision to demonstrate how far Alito is “out of the mainstream” and how his appointment to the Supreme Court could lead to Roe v. Wade being overturned.

But Alito’s opinion in Casey is really less about limiting abortions than about fairness and equal protection under the law. The public debate over the Casey opinion has brought to light a question that for too long has been pushed aside and ignored: what control do men have over the fate of their unborn children?

The answer, unfortunately, is that they have none.

Legalized abortion is commonly understood to promote equality between the sexes by giving women the same freedom to enjoy sex without consequences that men supposedly enjoy. However, in reality, when sex results in conception, the rights of men and woman in determining their reproductive fates are far from equal.

If a woman does not want to be a mother she can terminate a pregnancy, with or without the father’s consent. But if she wants to have the child, the father is still on the hook for as much as 21 years of child support. The father has no legal right to prevent the abortion of his unborn child nor can he “terminate” his parental responsibilities (at least financially). Unlike women, men do not have the luxury of deciding whether or not they are ready to be parents after conception.

Some argue that this apparent inequality stems from the biological fact that a woman must bear the child for nine months and endure the rigors of child birth. As the pro-choice mantra goes: a woman’s body, a woman’s choice. However, fundamentally, the child is a product of both a man’s and a woman’s genetic material and is in that sense a part of both parties’ bodies. While certainly women have the sole biological responsibility of bearing the child, is this fact enough to completely eliminate men from the equation?

Imagine a hypothetical situation – one that some day could become a reality – in which reproductive technology will have advanced to the point where a fetus can be removed from the womb early in the pregnancy and incubated until it becomes viable. Would men then be allowed to seek custody of the unborn child if the woman would seek an abortion? Would the mother be liable for child support afterward? In this scenario how many feminists would agree that a woman’s child should be brought into the world without her consent and then she should also have to pay child support?

But many people will argue that these examples of mothers terminating a pregnancy against the fathers wishes are so rare as if to be statistically irrelevant and therefore should not be used to justify policy that would in any way restrict a woman’s access to an abortion. Unfortunately, there is not much reliable data on the subject. However, one study conducted by Drexel University sociologist Arthur Shostak and journalist Gary McLouth (based on a survey of 1,000 men in abortion-clinic waiting rooms and some in-depth interviews) this situation may be more common than many people expect. While most men in the survey reported that ending the pregnancy was a mutual decision, 5 percent said they didn’t want the abortion and nearly half of the single and divorced men said that they had suggested getting married and having the baby. As for the roughly 50 percent of men who don’t show up at the clinics, various estimates cited by Shostak and McLouth suggest that a significant percentage oppose the abortion or are too upset about it to come along. As many as one in six men are never told about the pregnancy or the abortion.

And yet in the eyes of the law, there appears to be no set of circumstances, however unusual or extreme, that can excuse the biological father of his responsibility for child support.

For example, last year an Illinois Appellate Court decided a case in which a Chicago family physician alleged that his former girlfriend had secretly kept his semen after the two had had oral sex, and then impregnated herself with it. The court stated that if the doctor’s story is true, his former girlfriend “deceitfully engaged in sexual acts, which no reasonable person would expect could result in pregnancy.” Nevertheles, the court ruled the doctor was responsible for the child anyway, stating that “when plaintiff ‘delivered’ his sperm, it was a gift…There was no agreement that the original deposit would be returned upon request.”

Right now in Washington, liberals and conservatives are gearing up for the Alito confirmation battle, which they believe will determine the future of reproductive rights in America. Many people on both sides of the aisle believe the outcome will make or break Roe. But now is also the chance to balance the rights of the father with those of the mother, putting the focus on the child, and creating the most equitable law possible.

Depriving fathers of a meaningful voice in abortion decisions (especially between man and wife) denies men equal protection and due process, leaving many children beyond the protective reach of their fathers who want to be included in such a pivotal decision.

Under the Supreme Court rulings made over the course of the last three decades, fathers have been denied a voice in the issue, whether they were married to the mother or not.

The fact that Alito’s dissent on Casey has been held up by critics as “radical” demonstrates that men lack reproductive rights in America and that reform in this area will not come easy. The Pennsylvania law only required the wife to inform her husband of her decision prior to getting an abortion and did not require him to consent to that decision. And the truth is that the statute contained many protections for women, which Alito cited and supported. Section 3209 of the law specifically stated that a woman’s obligation to inform her husband did not apply if she had reason to believe it was likely to result in the infliction of bodily injury.

The ongoing debate over Alito’s appointment will continue to be defined by the limiting or expanding of a woman’s right to choose. But this is also a perfect time to consider whether a man has a right to choose whether or not the child he helped create should be brought into the world.