If you’ve been into any of the op-ed pieces I’ve written here, then you’re not going to be surprised at my support of the lawsuit being launched by men’s rights advocates to give men the right to refuse to support babies fathered without their consent. This is a long overdue action in the courts, even though it has little chance of winning. It has little chance of winning not because the lawsuit is without merit, or because the lawsuit is not truly about equal rights, but because it is swimming upstream in a society and a justice system that has been brainwashed into a silent prejudice that considers men disposable. It also stands little chance of winning because it is swimming upstream against a welfare society mentality. Courts have ruled against men in this matter because the premise is that if the man doesn’t support the child, society will have to. It’s not surprising but is hypocritical that women’s movements have not fought such rulings since they imply that women are not capable of supporting their children without a man’s help.
Women have fought hard for the right to have control what happens to their bodies. I support that right. I would also be hypocritical, as many women’s groups are, not to support the right for men to not have control of their bodies. Yet, our current approaches to child support not only dictate to men what they have to do with their bodies but with their minds and emotions as well. Men are still the unrecognized slaves of the 21st century. And are likely to remain so.
If man trusts his partner when she tells him there is no way she can get pregnant and then she does, he forfeits all rights to his life for the next 18 years. He has no say in whether the pregnancy is carried to term (and that is a woman’s right) but then is forced to pay for it, even though he had no say in it. In any other legal matter, this would never be allowed. Moreover, not only does he not have any choice, but courts can and do set child support amounts not at what the man can afford to pay but what the courts think he can. This can often have the chilling effect of trapping a man in a job or lifestyle he would not otherwise choose. At the same time he is driven to live in his indentured lifestyle, he will have no say in how the child is raised and may have little or no say in how much contact he has with the child. You can believe the courts are more fair than that, but those of us who have been there can testify it’s just not true. There is no other field of law where inequality is so often practiced and reinforced than in family law. Its whole premise is to protect women and children. But what is a noble premise becomes extremism when it is allowed to trample Constitutional rights, and that is exactly what has been happening in this country for far too long.
No one is asking to let men get off “scott-free” (which in itself shows the punishment visited on men by immature feminists) but they are asking that men get treated fairly when it comes to matters of pregnancy and family. The fact that they don’t encourages women to act irresponsibly and to extort a victim mentality that is all too prevalent. The argument isn’t that men or women aren’t both responsible when it comes to sex and pregnancy but that women have a multitude of choices in these matters when men have few or none, and that simply isn’t equitable. Otherwise, “equality” is just a buzzword used when a sympathetic party wants to abuse the system by getting it to take care of them; and that’s truly not helping anyone at all.