Matt Dubay of Saginaw, Michigan filed the suit last week — Roe v. Wade for Men — seeking to escape $500 monthly support payments for a daughter he fathered out of wedlock. His ex-girlfriend knew he didn’t want a child and incorrectly assured him that she couldn’t get pregnant. She sought child support and won in state court. His lawyers are now taking the case to federal court on constitutional grounds.
The gist of the lawsuit: a man should have an opportunity to opt out of fatherhood, just as the mother has the opportunity to opt out of motherhood. Men, the lawsuit says, should be able to tell pregnant girlfriends to get an abortion and, if the girlfriend declines, then the men shouldn’t be liable for child support payments.
I like it.
The entire abortion industry is based on the contraceptive mentality. The underlying rationale that drives abortion is quite simple: sex is for enjoyment, so why should women be saddled with the effects after the enjoyment is over? They set out to have fun, after all, not a baby. Put aside all the cacophony surrounding Roe. Abortion comes down to this: preserving sexual activity.
Well, if sex is about enjoyment and any effort by government to limit that enjoyment is a violation of the Constitution, why can’t men have that enjoyment without repercussions, too? As with women, forced parenthood hinders a man’s attempts at intimacy, which is a violation of the penumbra right of privacy created by the Warren Court.
The feminists are opposing Roe v. Wade for Men. I suspect one of their primary objections will be that allowing a man to pressure a woman to undergo an abortion is an invasion of her uterus. It’s the familiar “It’s My Body” mantra.
But it’d really be a fairly radical shift in position. Among the choice folks, abortion has always been portrayed as the easy and far less-invasive solution to an unwanted pregnancy. Pro-abortion writer Michael Kinsley, for instance, wrote last year in The Washington Post that he and other pro-choicers “believe that forcing a woman to go through an unwanted pregnancy and childbirth is the most extreme unjustified government intrusion on personal freedom short of sanctioning murder.”
The plaintiff in Roe v. Wade for Men correctly avers that Roe treats men differently than women, giving rise to a potential violation of the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment to the constitution.
If a court finds a compelling reason, however, it can uphold what would otherwise be a violation of the equal protection clause or other civil right. Commentators believe the federal court will follow state court rulings in this area and find that society has a compelling reason in making sure the child receives support. Otherwise, the burden is more likely to fall on the rest of us. Fair enough. Given our paternalistic governmental system, they’re right.
But if that’s the case, doesn’t the government have a compelling reason to force unwed women to get an abortion, especially those who don’t know who the father is? For that matter, might the government have a compelling interest in outlawing fornication and adultery altogether, since those are the activities that produce the bastard children to begin with?
Perhaps more important, if the saving of $6,000 a year (the amount Dubay is being forced to pay) is a compelling enough reason to allow a violation of the equal protection clause, can’t the state legitimately claim that preventing the death of a fetus is a legitimate enough reason to violate the penumbra right of privacy?
Of course it can, but no one wants to admit it.
Because when it comes to abortion jurisprudence, it’s not about logic, or the constitution, or anything like that.
It’s about sex, which is inherently illogical, and power, which brooks no logic. Although abortion is first and foremost about sex, for its primary advocates today it’s about power. Feminist leaders have concluded that babies are the things that kill aspirations and careers, that tie women down, that suck away money and energy.
And now, the feminists want it preserved at all costs, even though the mounting evidence shows that abortion is bad for women and society, even though Roe by its own terms allows very few abortions since babies are now viable outside the womb after a short time, even though video technology is showing us that those womb dwellers are babies.
If Roe v. Wade for Men succeeds, we’ll have more abortions. That’d be horrible. But I like the lawsuit’s logic, just as I like the polygamists who have pointed out that, if homosexual marriage is a civil right, then polygamous marriage is, too.
I hope both causes fail, but their arguments show the ridiculous shortcomings of the other side. And for that, I applaud.
© Copyright 2006 Catholic Exchange
Eric Scheske is an attorney, the Editor of The Daily Eudemon, a Contributing Editor of Godspy, and the former editor of Gilbert Magazine.
