Simply put, I am absolutely, totally pro-choice. I don't care what your personal ethical take is on abortion. Neither you nor anyone else has the right to tell a woman what she can and can't do with her body, especially when enforcing your will over her body requires nine months of involuntary pregnancy followed by the climactically traumatic and painful experience of an unwanted childbirth. However, I have some key thoughts on men's reproductive rights, which seem to have slipped into oblivion somewhere along the way and I think this is a terrible disgrace for individual rights.
I won't waste too much time describing my views on abortion. It's really simple. No one has the right to force a woman to undergo nine months of increasingly difficult pregnancy. No one has the right to force a woman to experience the physically torturous event of childbirth. To force that kind of pain and fatigue on another person is akin to torture, plain and simple. No one has the right to force a woman to go through the well-established emotional bond that occurs during childbirth with an unwanted baby. If your response to abortion is adoption then you are so naive that you hardly deserve my time. First of all, forcing the option of adoption on a woman doesn't solve any of the problems I just stated, pregnancy, childbirth, and emotional trauma. More importantly, adoption just doesn't work. There are so many children waiting for foster families that adding to that group only increases the number of children without families. To put it plainly, this amounts to increasing the number of children in the world who are quite simple unwanted. Besides, how does a solution which involves dumping your problem on someone else really count as a solution at all?
Enough about abortion, I want to discuss something much more complicated, men's reproductive rights. That is something of an empty statement actually. The phrase "men's reproductive rights" is essentially an oxymoron. There is no such thing as men's reproductive rights. When a woman becomes pregnant, the man involved instantly becomes that woman's slave for all intent and purposes. She holds his future, his fate, his very life in her hands and can mold the rest of his life however she sees fit. It is as if she holds the strings and the man is a marionette and she can toy with him however she pleases. She can get an abortion, she can have a child and absolve the man of responsibility (for which I don't believe there is any legal support), or she can force the man to accept financial responsibility. She can't actually force the man to marry her, but from a financial point of view, this point is irrelevant.
I seem to be leaning toward something of a contradiction. I adamantly believe a woman should have sole decision-making power over her own body, yet I believe a man should have power over his own reproduction. How can these two issues be resolved? I have thought this through in considerable detail and I believe I have solved the problem. The solution is not one that will be adopted by our society in the near future. Nevertheless, it is a solution in principle, if not in practice.
In the case of a pregnancy, there are four possible scenarios: both parents want the child, neither parent wants the child, the man wants the child and the woman doesn't, or the woman wants the child and the man doesn't. Of these four scenarios, two of them are immediately moot. If both parents are in agreement, whether for or against having the child, there is no dilemma and therefore no issue to be resolved. That's easy enough. Of the remaining two scenarios, one of those is also quite clearly moot. If the man wants to keep the child and the woman doesn't, then I say tough luck for the man. He will just have to sow his oats elsewhere. He has absolutely no right to force the woman to undergo pregnancy and childbirth just so he can have a child.
Of course, it is the fourth scenario that concerns me so greatly. What is my solution to this problem? Let me begin by reiterating my belief that the woman must maintain full power over her own body. In an ideal relationship, the man and the woman would come to a mutual agreement even if they don't feel exactly the same way about the situation. It would be my hope that no woman would have a man's child without his permission. This demonstrates a horrible lack of respect for the man on the woman's part, to run off with his seed, as it were, and go reproduce this man's lineage without his permission. Nevertheless, if a woman chooses to do this, I believe it is a matter of decency and respect, not of law, and the woman's right to do as she eventually chooses must be starkly defended.
However, I believe the man's right to refuse financial responsibility must be protected. Here's how this would work. The man would sign an official document stating that he gives no authorization and accepts no responsibility for this child. Obviously, the only way this can be considered fair to the woman is if there is a statute of limitations on this document. It must be signed by the man and the woman must be made aware of this fact early enough in the pregnancy that the woman can still reserve the option of getting an abortion. This wouldn't be a document that is signed by both the man and the woman because the woman could of course refuse to sign it. No, this document would solely involve the man.
Lest you accuse me of trying to defend all men's' right to abandon women with the financial burden of having a child, bare in mind that actually having the child is the woman's choice. She can always opt to get an abortion and therefore be as free of the financial burden as the man.
This perfectly solves the problem. No one is stuck with financial responsibility for a child unless they choose to accept that responsibility for themselves. The bottom line is that no one else can force such a tremendous financial toll on another person. The man can't force it on the woman (because she can get an abortion) and the woman can't force it on the man (because he can refuse to authorize the pregnancy). As I stated before, this must all be done early enough that the woman can still choose to get an abortion. If the man decided at 32 weeks that he didn't want a child, too bad, he's stuck with it at that point.
There is only one problem with my proposed solution. This "document" which I have described could motivate a woman to conceal her pregnancy from the man until it is too late for him to sign the document because it is too late for her to get a safe abortion. Let me first respond to this by harshly denouncing the ethical pillar of any woman who would purposefully deceive a man about the pregnancy of his own child. For a woman to do such a thing demonstrates such immaturity, such a lack of fundamental respect and decency, that a woman who does this basically shows through her actions that she directly lacks the responsibility and maturity to have a child of her own in the first place. Nevertheless, there are almost certainly many women would do such a despicable thing and protection for men must be designed for this possible situation.
Basically, what is needed is another document that proves that the man has been notified of the pregnancy early on. This could very easily be incorporated into the first document of course. This would involve the man signing this second document stating that he is aware of the pregnancy at a particular number of weeks into the pregnancy. By signing this document, he is acknowledging his awareness of the pregnancy, and therefore acknowledging his ability to make early decisions about the pregnancy with enough time for the woman to act on the basis of his decision. If a woman could not produce a document (presumably stored with the state in addition to a personal copy in order to prevent plagiarism) proving that she had notified the man (because she had deliberately deceived the man) then she would forfeit the right to force the man to accept financial responsibility (of course he could still choose to do so if he wanted).
Babies and legal documents. Maybe you're thinking I'm taking all the love out of having a child. Well guess what. Marriage is a legal document. It even involves a "license" of sorts, and marriage is the original "true love", is it not? Buying a house with a person is a legal document even though it seems like a perfectly natural extension of an otherwise love-based, pure and natural relationship. Why shouldn't the one thing that requires more sense of responsibility, more financial cost, more dedication of time and attention, having a child, require a fairly simple document that does no more than acknowledge that a man has been made fully aware of a pregnancy and the options that are available to him, thus protecting him from deception, trickery, and ultimately as I stated before, a form of forced slavery?
I would really like to hear what people think of this. Feedback is not only welcome, but desired and appreciated. Keith Wiley, kwiley@cs.unm.edu