As much as conservatives want to bash Matt Dubay as a selfish, bad father, the 25 year old who refuses to pay child support for a child that the mother "should have" aborted, I find his argument a logical extension of pro-choice logic. Liberals who want to attack him don’t realize that it is their myopic concern for women’s rights, to the exclusion of a father’s and child’s rights, that has caused this problem.
Today, the Boston Globe has a good article on this entitled The Obligation of Unwanted Fatherhood.
A 25-year-old computer programmer in Michigan, Dubay wants to know why it is only women who have "reproductive rights." He is upset about having to pay child support for a baby he never wanted. Not only did his former girlfriend know he didn’t want children, says Dubay, she had told him she was infertile. When she got pregnant nonetheless, he asked her to get an abortion or place the baby for adoption. She decided instead to keep her child and secured a court order requiring him to pay $500 a month in support.
Not fair, Dubay complains. His ex-girlfriend chose to become a mother. It was her choice not to have an abortion, her choice to carry the baby to term, her choice not to have the child adopted. She even had the option, under the "baby safe haven" laws most states have enacted, to simply leave her newborn at a hospital or police station. Roe v. Wade gives her and all women the right – the constitutional right! – to avoid parenthood and its responsibilities. Dubay argues that he should have the same right, and has filed a federal lawsuit that his supporters are calling "Roe v. Wade for men." Drafted by the National Center for Men, it contends that as a matter of equal rights, men who don’t want a child should be permitted, early in pregnancy, to get "a financial abortion" releasing them from any future responsibility to the baby.
He is exactly right. Men can’t be held responsible if they have no rights. If they want an abortion, and the woman wants to keep the kid, then she is responsible for the kid. On the contrary, what if he wants the kid? Can he force her to have it? Do we err towards life, or do we give the woman the final say because it is "her body." And if we give her that right, does she shoulder the responsibility for the decision if she differs from the father? Yes. You have to link the responsibility with the rights.
But the reason this intractable situation exists is because the problem is not the pregnancy, it’s the fact that we have taken sex outside of the marriage covenant. We should not be having sex outside of wedlock. Pregnancy, and by extension, sex, is intended to exist within the stability and love of a marriage commitment. To try to solve the problem AFTER having sex is trying to put the genie back into the bottle – it can’t really be done without SUFFERING, because sin brings suffering. Either the baby is killed, or the mother has to bear the burden alone, or give up the child.
Secondly, we want to be able to sow without reaping the consequences. We want the privilege of sex without the responsibility of it. But in the real world, that situation does NOT exist. Dubay is not trying to shirk his responsibility any more than a woman who gets an abortion – they were both irresponsible when they had sex out of wedlock, and he is just trying to get the same right to irresponsibility that women already have.
The Boston Globe article summarizes the problem well
For men, legal choices end with the decision to have sex. If conception takes place, he can be forced to accept the abortion of a baby he wants – or to spend at least the next 18 years turning over a chunk of his income to support a child he didn’t want.
All true. But it is also true that predatory males have done enormous damage to American society, and the last thing our culture needs is one more way for men to escape accountability for the children they father. Dubay wants more than the freedom to be sexually reckless – he wants that freedom to be constitutionally guaranteed. Truly he is a child of his time, passionate on the subject of rights and eager to duck responsibility.
I have had a hard time figuring out where liberals stand on the Dubay issue, maybe a reader can chime in with some links. Conservatives rightly condemn him, but also, he is just following the lead of the pro-choice crowd and their logic. I’ll be interested to see what kind of logical gymnastics liberals will have to perform to condemn Dubay.
Ah,
Sex has consequences. Everybody has to know this! And once they know it, they can be scared into not having it! And once people don't have sex, the world will be better!
Utter nonsense.
People should be scared of doing things that are dangerous – promiscuity increases your chances of sexual disease, as does sex without "protection." Would you "scare" teens into using condoms to protect themselves because there are consequences? Of course you would.
The argument I make is not against sex, but sex out of wedlock. Your response is utter nonsense because it misrepresents my point, and ignores the reality of the real world. Everyone should be aware of the consequences of their action. Funny thing, one of the likely consequences of sex is pregnancy! I think teens should be sobered by this, rather than have their conscienes assuaged by the evil option of killing their progeny.
You make the point Seeker: sex without protection. Sex without protection is insane, and very, very dangerous. Yet many evangelicals argue that children should never learn about sex, particularly safe sex, because learning about it encourages it. If only children learned about sex on their wedding night, the world would be perfect!
What's absurd here is that we live in a world with technogical developments that help to make safe sex possible. Testing, for example, and condoms, and contraception. Yet there is a large segment of our population opposed to anybody getting any sort of knowledge about this. Why? Because if they know, they'd then have sex.
Your position is fair, and nuanced. You argued for this ABC stuff. I can get behind that. But a lot of people argue for A only. And that's where any decent human being has to get off the bus.
Abstinene only is not a realistic way to teach. I think we need to aim for that as a realistic goal, but we need to educate people who don't want to take the high road.
Just like with smoking, we need a social stigma for those who practice unsafe sex, and even for pre-marital or extramarital sex. Sex within marriage should be the reasonable ideal that we expect people to aim for.
We can't make that law, but we can certainly forge our public policy around this starting position.
Okay, see, this is where I get off the bus. Why stigmatize people who are responsible in their sexuality? If two people want to do it all day long, and they're responsible about it, so what? Sex isn't a bad thing, even sex before marriage.
Sex isn't a bad thing, I agree. I never said it was.
Sex outside of marriage is a bad thing. People should wait.
Do you at least agree we should stigmatize unsafe sex?
Sam, the first half of your opening line is an accurate portrayal of the conservative position. Yes, sex has consequences that everyone should know about and accept. The rest of it? Straw with which to construct men.
The whole point of the pro-abortion-rights movement has been an attempt to dissociate sex from consequences in any context. I argue that dissociation is a bad thing. In the proper context, all of those consequences are good things!
So much for the 14th Ammendment huh. Basically men are second class citizens. Why am I not suprised? It seems as though foolish people have allowed feminism to wreak it's havoc and this is the end result. Have fun!