Letters to the Editor
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To Thekiti
Please don't mistake me. I absolutely sympathise with poor, single mothers. I have and will continue to advocate for them. Although I do stand by my statement that when you've grown up in a culture where everyone you know is a high school drop-out, single motherhood is the norm, and you'll never have a chance at education or a decent career, single motherhood isn't all that bad of an option - but only when compared to your other available options. That's beside the point though.
In answer to your question, the reason I seem more sympathetic to men is because we're talking about situations where the man in question desperately didn't want to become a father. The mother ultimately made the choice to have the child instead of having an abortion or giving the child up for adoption. And being a single parent when you're poor and have no resources or support is crappy enough. But being in that situation when you also didn't choose it is even worse. Men's lives can be hijacked by a woman's choice to keep her child. Even if they plead on their hands and knees, crying because they're so desperate not to become a father. Or attempt suicide. (And yes I've known men that have done all these things to no avail).
Now someone might point out, correctly, that not all poor women can afford an abortion. And I agree that we need a system where abortion is available to EVERY woman that needs one. But still, I think in the large majority of cases, when a woman bears a child, it's because she made that choice. Women that are dead set on not becoming mothers can usually find some way to scrape together the few hundred dollars they need for an abortion. The man who is in the same desperate situation can do nothing. Once the mother makes her choice, the next two decades of his life will never fully be his again.
Last, many posters here argue that the man did have a choice - he had the choice not to have sex. Well, I think that's a crock. The woman had the same choice. Yet we allow her to change her mind and get an abortion. Furthermore, we allow her to opt out of parenthood by giving the child up for adoption - explain that double standard!! Adoption has nothing to do with a woman's body. The child is already born. Yet she can walk away from the whole thing, and men can't do the same. I find this to be a terrible inequity, and I'll say it again: I'm flabbergasted at how little Salon's supposedly liberal readers care about this blatant inequality in the law. Becoming a parent is the biggest life changing event that can ever occur in someone's life. Yet most of the women here seem to care less when the government imposes that decision on a man. I'm disappointed at how stingy these women are in sharing the freedoms they cherish so deeply for themselves.
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Man's right to chosoe
Hmm. So Farhad Manjoo can't see any sensible way to allow men some say over their own parental rights and duties. Well, there is such a way, it's fairly obvious and it's one that many men have advocated for several years. Men should be given a period of time, such as 30 days, to file a form with the appropriate state agency (e.g. Dept. of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics, etc.) opting in or out of his rights and duties. Such a decision would forever bind him. If he opts in, he has all parental rights and duties and if he opts out, he has none. This would in no way infringe upon the woman's right to abort the fetus or not as she chooses. And of course any woman can discuss with the father whether or not to have the child, but each would be aware that he/she has complete autonomy about their own decision.
What's the problem with that?
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sympathetic woman
You are my new hero, and have renewed some of my faith in the opposite sex. Maybe men really have reached a place where we are now the underprivalaged gender seeking the occasional liberal advocate from the empowered to stick up for them, and give them a voice.
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This is so stupid
The right to abortion is, in its simplest form, the right to decide whether or not you want to be pregnant. Got that? Not whether you want to have a baby, raise a baby, or give a baby up for adoption after you have it. Those concerns may be key determinants in why you don't want to be pregnant, but they're irrelevant to the central question of a woman's personal bodily integrity, which is ultimately her right and her responsibility. So, yeah, since men have no say in the choice they should not have to support it financially. Congratulations, guys - you don't have to pay fetus support.
But this whole argument about whether a man should be allowed to disavow responsibility for a born child simply because he never wanted it in the first place is ridiculous. Of course he's responsible. So is she. The kid's there and it needs to be taken care of, whether it was wanted by both parents or not. If an unwilling father can walk away from his responsibilities when a child is one day old, what's to stop him from walking away when the kid's five? Or ten? Or fifteen? His word? Please.
What is so sad and reprehensible about this whole argument is the all-too-apparent willingness on the part of so many men to screw over a little kid - their little kid - out of spite over not being able to dictate whether or not their girlfriend should remain pregnant. Maybe she did lie. So what? These guys may indeed relish the idea of the scheming ex girlfriend struggling with single parenthood in a coldwater flat above a diner somewhere, but, in the end, it's the child who suffers.
If Dalton Conley thinks that's an okay state of affairs, then it sounds to me like his ex made a smart choice. For more reasons than she may have thought.