“Father’s rights”?
In a case of “sensitive 90s kind of guy” trying to pretend to assert manhood in a feminist way, Dalton Conley tries to argue (or at least question) whether a father should have any rights over the nascent life he implanted in a woman’s womb.
It amuses me that the entire argument, from the gender-feminist left, the pussy-whipped men, and the right-wing “God fearin’” men, boils down to what rights a “father” has over a child. And the argument always falls back on “child support” in some fashion, such as “when all men pay child support, then maybe we’ll give them a say”.
Entangled with this whole mess is the abortion “discussion”. There are those that argue that women can abort a fetus with no input from the man, and he should just deal with it. There are those that argue a man ought to be able to get an injunction preventing the woman from having an abortion. I’ve heard people argue that a man should be able to force a woman to get an abortion (!). There are even those who argue that he should be able to walk away scot free.
Nobody ever makes the argument that they shouldn’t have engaged in the horizontal bone-dance in the first place.
See, there used to be a reason why sex before marriage was frowned upon. The whole POINT of marriage, before the gender-feminists decided that it was oppressive, was to create an environment in which children were actually sought. And the whole argument about “unwanted” children was rare. Certainly, restrictions on contraception (surgical or otherwise) would leave that possibility open. But it was post “women’s liberation” that the problem came to the fore.
With the liberation of sex from the institution of marriage came the need for contraception. After all, the swinging single shouldn’t have to risk sex actually performing its purpose, right? And what if contraception failed? Then there was this whole pesky pregnancy thing in the way, and who wants to marry THAT loser just because you’re carrying his kid? The solution to that was abortion.
Now, since men just expect women to put out, and marriage is now a sham that anyone can get out of with little or no reason, men want to have their cake and eat it too. Tough shit fellas. You had the chance to nip this in the bud back in the 60s. But all those willing young women were too much for ya, eh? Maybe if you’d have kept it in your pants we wouldn’t be having this argument over abortion.
To my mind, there is a very simple solution to the whole issue of unwanted children, father’s rights, and abortion. Don’t have sex with anyone you wouldn’t be willing to make a baby with.
But I guess that’s too much to ask, isn’t it?