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• Wednesday, December 7, 2005 01:14 PM

  Biology is inherently unfair.

  For a man, the experience of wanting a child and anticipating the birth of a child is an emotional experience. I don't want to diminish that. I have no doubt that many if not most men love and want their children, and grieve when their wanted and anticipated children are not born.

  For women, it's a physical and emotional experience, with potential risks to health and life. Those risks should not be taken unwillingly. A man should not be able to force a woman to bear those risks if she does not want to. A man cannot truly understand what it is like to grow a child under your heart, in your body, with you every minute of every day. It's just not an experience a man can have. A man also cannot understand the terror of the prospect of being forced to bear a child one does not want. Paying with your blodo and flesh is not the same as paying with money. Men understand what it's like to pay money to support a child they didn't want, but it's not the same. Child support never killed anyone. Childbirth still occasionally does.

  For what it's worth, I'm a feminist and I wholeheartedly believe that if a man does not want a child a woman is bearing, at birth his parental ties should be severed and he should owe nothing towards the child's upbringing. The choice was the mother's, and she should bear the consequences along with the child. That's as fair as I can imagine it getting.

  —Moontiger Read Moontiger's other letters
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