The Right to Support But Not to Life?

“I am definitely pro-choice and sympathetic to you views, but letting a man get away without supporting the child is unfair to the child.” (J.R.)

Your argument cannot be sustained if you’re really pro-choice, as you claim to be. Abortion is legal during gestation because a fetus has no intrinsic worth that negates the mother’s right to choose. A future event, the birth of a child, in no way allows another individual or the state to interfere with her reproductive choice via the argument that abortion is unfair to the (future) child. To claim that a (future) child imposes an obligation on the father is to fall victim to the absurd notion that the fetus is entitled to financial support (on the father’s part, through court-ordered paternity judgment) but not to life itself (the mother’s continued pregnancy).

There exists a legal requirement for one parent to seek the welfare of the fetus, the party who is burdened with this sole responsibility with no corresponding, approximate right of refusal. There exists no similar legal requirement for the other parent to continue the welfare of the fetus, the parent who holds the sole right to determine the being and future of the fetus.

There exists no legal requirement to seek the fetus’s welfare for the one party possessing reproductive choice that by a minimum standard of logic and jurisprudence must exist in order to establish the legal requirement of the father, who currently has no measure of reproductive right of refusal during the gestation period.

In other words, there is no primary legal requirement on the part of the expectant mother to seek and continue the fetus’s welfare that would logically give rise to the legal requirement for the expectant father. If the expectant father’s current legal condition cannot accurately be called reproductive slavery then the term holds absolutely no meaning for an intelligent person.

The fetus has a right to support but not to life.

Again, your position cannot be sustained from a pro-choice stance. Yours is the pro-life argument.

"If, as Roe v. Wade instructs, a fetus lacks constitutional protection to assure it an opportunity to be born, we see no basis for according it constitutional protection to assure it enhanced prospects of good health after birth," (Lewis v Grinker,
US Second Circuit Court, 2001)


If “fairness" to the (future) child entered the picture in any way then abortion would certainly be severely restricted. The absurd claim that any legal standard exists for a prospective father (obligation to support the fetus) in the absence of a non-existent primary, logical standard for the mother (the obligation to secure life which requires corresponding paternal support) completely fails intellectually as well as morally. The primary standard for the prospective mother must exist contemporaneously with any secondary standard for the father. The fetus’s right to life by necessity must be guaranteed in order to secure any secondary “enhanced prospects”; but because the right to life does not exist for the fetus no other “rights” can logically follow and the US Second Circuit Court has it exactly right in this respect. All who argue otherwise are arguing the pro-life position.

Reproductive rights, as they pertain to abortion and the right to refuse responsibility for a (future) child, and the issue of child support are two separate and distinct matters. Those who try to conflate the two have failed to grasp the essential findings of Roe.

Thank You, Matt Dubay

The following was first published April 20, 2002, on the now-defunct New York Times' Reproductive Rights interactive forum. (All Footnote 67 sections, to date, were written and published prior to 2006, some dating to the early 1990's.) This past week a courageous young man, Matt Dubay of Saginaw, MI., filed a lawsuit seeking to have courts recognize his constitutional right to choose. Mr. Dubay has come under attack from various groups and individuals on the grounds that "a real man" would never avoid responsibility for his child. Ironically, many of those who smear Matt Dubay for his courage to stand up for a constitutional principle on behalf of all men are the same ones who declare that "real men" would never stand by and allow the courts to dismantle or deny women their right to choose. The hypocrisy of hegemonists is boundless; and any man stupid enough to relinquish his constitutional right merely because of specious attacks on his vanity can hardly be considered a "real man". Thank you, Matt Dubay, and may many others with your courage flood the courts with similar lawsuits!

The quickest path for achieving "equal protection" would be a class action suit in order to bring the issue of men's constitutional right of reproductive choice to the immediate attention of the courts as well as to the forefront of public consciousness. While most of America recognize Jane Roe as the party who lent her pseudonym to the landmark case most people do not know that the ruling came too late to allow her a legal abortion.

A similar lawsuit seeking to free men from unwanted responsibility for a (future) child may lead the way in like fashion. Roe was not ruled moot after Norma McCorvey gave birth because the case had gained class action status. Progressive rights activists seeking to abolish unconstitutional denial of men’s "equal protection" and "due process" protections should focus on an identical legal strategy for class action status, as McCorvey’s situation representing women as a class mirrors that of men both individually and collectively.

The stark truth of reality cannot be avoided --- granting prospective fathers the approximate reproductive freedom that women currently enjoy would not infringe upon a woman’s "right to choose"; to argue that it does is a de facto argument that a non-viable fetus possesses an intrinsic worth independent of the mother’s consideration and one which merits protection by the state. If courts rule that a non-viable fetus possesses intrinsic worth deserving of protection they must also direct the state to value that intrinsic worth over and above a woman’s independent, subjective determination of its worth to her in order to satisfy the constitutional requirement of "equal protection" safeguards.

A woman has the right to make her medical decisions; it does not follow that her medical decisions must bind a husband or partner to years of involuntary servitude. Forcing an individual to accept responsibility for parenthood against her or his will cannot be moral in one situation and immoral in the other, nor should it be legal in one case but not the other.