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.