This cartoon is perfect. Go read the whole thing.

Via Noli Irritare Leones, I learn of Michigan’s “Coercive Abortion Prevention Act.” What the CAPA would do is make it a crime to “commit, attempt to commit, or conspire to commit physical harm to the pregnant female” in order to force her to have an abortion; or to commit “repeated or continuing harassment of the pregnant female that would cause her to reasonably feel terrorized, frightened, intimidated, threatened, or harassed” to compel her to seek an abortion. As well as providing criminal and misdemeanor penalties, CAPA also makes it possible for women to sue coercers in civil court.

Three comments on CAPA:

1) CAPA’s sponsors don’t oppose coercion when pro-lifers do it.

The law itself seems benign, at least on the surface. What makes it twisted, is that the Michigan pro-lifers who pushed CAPA through the legislature, actively worked to defeat an amendment to this law, which would have left CAPA intact but also have applied the same rules and penalties to people who coerce women not to have an abortion. In other words, pro-lifers explicitly opposed making it illegal to “commit, attempt to commit, or conspire to commit physical harm to the pregnant female” if the intent is to coerce her into giving birth.

(Pro-lifers might respond that there’s no need for such a law, since such things are already illegal. But if that’s their view, then how can they claim CAPA is needed at all?)

Of course, this is not surprising, since being pro-life by definition means being in favor of forcing pregnant women to give birth unwillingly.

Of course, I don’t believe anti-abortion Congressfolks in Michigan consciously favor violence against women seeking abortion. So why were they so dead set against outlawing coercion? Because they want to protect anti-abortion activists. In particular, I think they didn’t want to make it possible for women to sue so-called Crisis Pregnancy Centers for using fright and intimidation to compel women not to have abortions.

Pro-choice groups in more liberal states should propose “Coercion Prevention Acts” of their own — acts which would make it illegal for women to be “terrorized, frightened, intimidated, threatened, or harassed” to compel her to make any reproductive decision (not just about abortion or not-abortion, but also sterilization and not-sterilization). If the laws are passed, then good.

And when “pro-life” leaders oppose such laws - as I’m sure they would - then at least the foulness of their views would be forced a bit more into the open.

2) Where are the MRAs?

I’m surprised Men’s Rights Advocates aren’t screaming opposition to CAPA. Under CAPA, it can be “coercion” if someone living with the pregnant woman - say, the father of the fetus - says he’ll move out, if the pregnant woman bears a child. From the text of the law:

A person who has actual knowledge that a female individual is pregnant shall not do any of the following with the intent to compel a pregnant female to seek an abortion:

[…]

(b) file or attempt to file for a divorce from the pregnant female.

(c) withdraw or attempt to withdraw financial support from the pregnant female that had previously been supplied or offered to the pregnant female.

(d) change or attempt to change an existing housing or cohabitation arrangement with the pregnant female.

In the most extreme case - an 18 or older, unwilling father moving out (or just saying he will move out) from his “cohabitation arrangement with the pregnant female” if she’s 17 or under - a man could be thrown in jail for a year and fined $5000.

Being legally forced to continue cohabitation is much more intrusive than being forced to pay child support. Yet I haven’t seen “Choice For Men” advocates saying a word against this law. My guess is that they’re just not aware of it.

The above-quoted bit of the law goes too far. This section of the law tries to provide a legislative solution to the fact that some people are assholes, but assholishness isn’t a problem the Michigan legislature is capable of solving. Also, it’s unconstitutional as all get-out.

3) CAPA doesn’t address the most common reason women are forced to have unwanted abortions.

It’s terrible when any woman is coerced to have an abortion — or to give birth — by an abuser. But also terrible, and far more common, is when women feel forced to have abortions because of their economic circumstances. It’s ironic, therefore, that anti-abortion legislators, despite their supposed opposition to coerced abortion, nonetheless oppose any but the most grudging and measly programs to assist poor single mothers.

Even if we limit the scope of our cocern to abused pregnant women, CAPA fails to address the most pressing needs. To quote Michigan NOW:

The vast majority of battered women who feel “coerced” to consider or have an abortion are forced to consider this option not because of threats from the batterer but because child custody laws do not adequately protect battered women and their children or because current social policies do not allow battered women to feel they have the resources necessary to provide for their child such as employment, employment training, safe child care, and housing and health care.

(Hey, shouldn’t Michigan NOW be called “MOW?” That would be cool, because it would be the same upsidedown as it is right side up.)

* * * Please Note * * *
Comments on this post are reserved for feminists, pro-feminists, and feminist allies. Others may leave comments at the crosspost at Creative Destruction.

Via Red State Feminist, a pdf file of the court’s ruling can be found here. The court ruled “that the plaintiff’s claim is frivolous, unreasonable, and without foundation.”

Here’s a bit of the ruling:
Read the rest of this entry »

In the comments to another thread, “Ed” - whose views are typical of many Men’s Rights Activists (MRAs), although I don’t know if Ed himself identifies as an MRA - writes:

It’s true that some women have “tricked” men into fatherhood and child support - for example, the 1997 case of State of Louisiana v. Frisard, in which a woman gave oral sex to a man wearing a condom, and then secretly used the sperm in the condom to get pregnant. (The courts decided that Mr. Frisard was liable for child support, a result I find appalling). (For more information about Frisard and some similar cases, see this article).

But even acknowledging that such cases happen, that still doesn’t support the idea that child support payments significantly motivate women to “trick” men into involuntary fatherhood. In the Frisard case, it appears the woman was motivated by a desire for motherhood, and so would probably have acted the same way even if no child support laws exist.

Do women seek pregnancy in order to get the financial benefits of child support, as David suggests?

And who has the most incentive to prevent pregnancy, women or men?

I’d say women do. Women, after all, face the risks and physical burdens of pregnancy, and (if they wind up collecting child support) face not only the financial expense but the enormous workload of raising a child - a workload that will make much more difficult, and possibly entirely derail, any other plans the woman had for her life. The workload, unlike the expense, is not split with another adult. On the other hand, for those women who want to be mothers, that could be an incentive in favor of getting pregnant.

Next to all that, the benefit of receiving child support is so minor that I wouldn’t expect it to have a significant effect on women’s incentives.

Many MRAs - and Ed, if I’ve understood him correctly - believe that child support laws give women a strong incentive to get pregnant and thus “trap” men into financially supporting them. Furthermore, many MRAs seem to believe that there is very little men can do to prevent pregnancy (hence the frequent claim made by MRAs supporting “choice for men” that all reproductive decisions are made by women).

This is a conflict, between what many MRAs believe and what many feminists believe. Is there any way we can settle this conflict empirically?

I believe there is.

Not all states have the same child support laws. In some states, the child support laws are relatively weak; noncustodial parents don’t pay much, and can relatively easily get away with defaulting on child support payments - or can depend on never being identified as the father at all. Other states have higher child support awards, laws that aggressively establish paternity, and collection techniques that make defaulting unlikely (such as garnishing child support from paychecks).

If the MRAs are correct, then states with strong child support laws will have higher rates of single motherhood, due to more women - tempted by the prospect of well-enforced child support awards - choosing to trick men into getting them pregnant.

If I’m correct, however, then states with weak child support laws will have higher rates of single motherhood, because while women’s incentives aren’t changed much by child support laws, a significant number of men are less motivated to avoid pregnancy if they think they can get off the hook.

So what do studies comparing how weak and strong child support laws effect single motherhood find? It’s men, not women, who have their incentives changed by child support laws. The stronger child support laws are, the lower the rate of single motherhood.

Robert Plotnick, of the University of Washington, published a study in 2005 which included a brief review of the literature.

Plotnick’s 2005 study (which is described, and available for download, here) replicated the earlier studies’ findings.

What does this mean?

It could mean, as I believe, that women already have such strong incentives to avoid pregnancy, that child support awards (which are, typically, not all that generous) don’t significantly alter the equation for most women.

However, it is also possible that Ed is correct, and that child support laws do strongly increase women’s incentive to get pregnant. However, this is only possible if we assume that men’s incentives to avoid pregnancy are even more strongly increased - so that even though women are trying harder to entrapt men into paying child support, men are nonetheless successful in preventing pregnancy, despite women’s increased efforts. So the MRA belief that women are motivated by child support payments into trapping men, ironically can only be rescued by giving up the MRA belief that men are not able to prevent pregnancy from happening.

The empirical evidence is clear: the net effect of child support laws isn’t that women get pregnant more often to collect on child support. Rather, the stronger child support laws are, the more men work at avoiding pregnancy.

By the way, if you have a link you’d like other “Alas” readers to see, or just something you’d like to say that isn’t on-topic in one of the other threads, please feel free to post it in these “link farm” posts.

What do people think of these big “link farm” posts? Do you like them? Would you like them better if I split each one up into a whole bunch of one-item posts instead?

Anyway, here’s some stuff I’ve read today and really liked. Note that the stuff in quote marks is written by the people I’m linking to, not by me.

Quite a while ago, regarding the “Choice for Men” debate, Cathy Young asked me:

Yes, but the comparison is misleading; it implies that the disparity is caused by hypocrisy in the feminist position, when the disparity is actually caused by differences in male and female anatomy. (No pro-choicer would deny men the right to abortion, if men were physically capable of pregnancy.)

When pro-lifers say women’s chance to decide about parenthood is before pregnancy happens, what they really mean is, “I want to deny you one of your medically viable options.” There’s no reason, except for pro-life laws, that women can’t get an abortion after pregnancy begins.

In contrast, when I say men’s chance to decide about parenthood is before pregnancy happens, that’s a statement of biological fact. It’s not an argument in favor of denying men viable medical options; it’s an observation that men physically lack those options.

Although the statements look similar on the surface, the substantive difference between the two positions is enormous, and can’t fairly be overlooked.

Time for another link farm…

Cathy Young at The Y Files defends Alito’s argument that the government can require married women to inform their husbands before they can have an abortion:

The more I hear men’s rights activists fulminating about the unfairness of child support, the more I wonder how typical my situation is, and whether there are any general lessons to be drawn about expectations of men and women when it comes to child-raising.

My relationship with the father of my child ran into difficulties before my pregnancy was even confirmed. Initially, we hoped to live together, but it quickly became clear that there were too many barriers, both logistical and emotional, for this to be a viable possibility, at least for a few years. I did some research into the rights and obligations of a non-custodial parent and found that although I would be entitled to a certain level of support as a custodial parent, I wasn’t legally obliged to demand it.

I had no desire to take him for every penny I could get: he was someone I cared deeply about but couldn’t live with. Since bearing and raising a child would affect my ability to work, and since I hoped he would want to see his child well cared-for, I envisaged a compromise whereby he made voluntary support payments and was in other ways an active father.

I reckoned without his stubbornness and commitment to traditional family structures. He informed me that it would be better for the child if he was in no way involved, since this would free me up to find a stepfather I could live with and build an approximation of a traditional family. That I have emotional problems that would make the search for a stepfather the worst possible fate I could inflict on myself or the child did not enter into his thinking: the child needed two parents who lived together, and since we couldn’t provide that, he didn’t want to be involved.

Later, he tried to soften that approach by saying that we lived too far apart to make visitation practical. If I lived closer to him, he suggested, it would be far easier to work something out. When I finally ended the relationship, he said that he’d hoped we would be able to find a solution, although I’m not sure what that solution should have been. I can only assume it would have involved my seeing the light and moving halfway across the country to live close to someone who had proved himself incapable of respecting anything about me that he didn’t agree with.

When I look back over the uglier arguments, I’m struck by how often he tried to put both blame and responsibility on me for the fact that he’d fathered a child without being ready for fatherhood. My explanation that I hoped to get pregnant was rendered meaningless by my statement that I’m committed to a woman’s right to choose. That I told him I wasn’t using any birth control wasn’t enough: I should also have told him the date of my last menstrual period. He believes that a child needs a father figure on the spot, therefore I had to enter another relationship despite my own understanding of myself.

I’ve also been told by family members that I’m not being fair to him and should have done more to make the relationship work. I don’t know what more I could have done without sacrificing my self-esteem and my plans for the future on the altar of his personal convenience, but I suspect that is a sacrifice I was expected to make. Not for him, of course, but for the child. It would be equally reasonable to expect him to move halfway across the country to be closer to me, but no-one is demanding that. Because I have no job to leave? Because I’m a woman? Because all my reasons for not wanting to move have been sifted through the mesh of rationality and found wanting?

The bottom line is that we both made a choice when we engaged in unprotected sex, and that choice has consequences for both of us. I go through the discomforts and dangers of pregnancy and childbirth and have the joyful but heavy responsibility of a child at the end of it. He has to pay a percentage of his income to support the child.

And yet he’s the one who feels treated unfairly.

[This post reproduces a comment written by La Luba, left here on a previous thread. –Amp]

As a practical matter, most women are not going to choose either abortion or adoption, even if they know or suspect that they will receive no child support. My decision to carry my child to term and raise her was unrelated to financial concerns. Look. I’m a working class woman. I already have very little control over most financial concerns. Beyond being a saver, not a spender, I do the best I can with what little I have. Every time I see one of those articles about how much it costs to raise a child, I kick back and laugh. I already know I won’t be bankrolling my girl’s “Harvard education”. If she goes there (or a similar school) it will be on scholarship. I already know I won’t be buying her a car when she turns sixteen; she’ll be walking, biking, or riding the bus like I did at her age.

In other words, I already knew that in the event of birth control failure, I would be a mother, because the alternatives were unthinkable to me. And like my parents, and their parents, and so forth…..I would just do it. Period. There are more women who will follow this route than the others, statistically.

The “choice 4 men” crowd seems to think that no one ever has a conversation before having sex. The biodad of my daughter knew long before any sexual activity was taking place that in the event of birth control failure I would be raising a child, not obtaining an abortion or seeking adoption. He also knew I was using birth control, because he could watch me putting it in! He also had the option of using a condom, which he chose not to do. He never felt at the time that I had somehow “duped” him into fatherhood; but after I ended the relationship because of his newfound meth habit and refusal to enter rehab, he tells all and sundry that he was “duped” into fatherhood (this, despite no effort to obtain child support). Go figure. Many of the divorced women I know were told the same thing by their exes after two, three or more children that were produced in the context of a married relationship. “You just had those kids to get child support!!” None of those women were stay-at-home moms. The “duped” claim seems to be standard operating procedure at the end of a relationship, completely unrelated to actual circumstance.

I don’t see how a “contract” could be enforced. The conversations most people have before sex are not usually witnessed by anyone, and frankly most of the men who are inclined to abandon a pregnant woman and/or any child are not going to admit that beforehand. They’d never get laid, and they know that. Many women who really thought they would consider abortion or adoption find that they really can’t after pregnancy. Breach of contract? No. The bonding process starts before birth, and this process varies amongst women. It’s partly a physical process. Just like pregnancy takes place inside a woman’s body, the bonding process does too.

I still think the safest assumption is that sex between unsterilized men and women can result in pregnancy, even if birth control is being used properly. And that if a child is born, unless both parents agree to give that child up for adoption, both parents should contribute to that child’s well being. Choice 4 Men simply wants the right to strong-arm women into having abortions (or adoptions), either by a presigned contract or by financial fear. Kinda reminds me of Playboy championing abortion rights; hint: they aren’t doing it because they believe in feminism. Hell, “Choice 4 Men” isn’t even advocating responsibility for paying for an abortion.

Hugo is going to be appearing on Glenn Sacks’ show again, this time to debate “choice for men.” I was rereading my old posts on the subject (if you’re curious, they are here, here, here and here), and I came across this post I wrote in the comments, which I thought was worth “promoting” to its own post.

Question: Is it really accurate to say that both parties have the opportunity to unilaterally prevent reproduction?

Making this statement, I am making some assumptions. First, that “you can chose not to have sex” doesn’t count as control, simply because we don’t accept that argument when referring to anti-choice positions (ie “if she doesn’t want to have a baby, she shouldn’t have had sex”).

The thing is, this argument assumes that the exact same standard should apply to both men and women; put another way, it assumes we should treat women and men the same. 99% of the time, I’d agree with that. But here’s the thing: when it comes to bearing children, men and women are NOT at all the same. Treating them as if they are doesn’t make sense.

To see what I mean, consider this question: Is it discrimination that men’s room provide urinals (letting men get in and out faster, leading to shorter lines) while women’s rooms don’t? Shouldn’t we treat men and women the same and provide them both with urinals?

Men and women are physically different. That means that we pee differently, which would make it foolish to treat men and women the same when it comes to bathroom fixtures. And it means that we have different roles in childbirth, which makes it foolish to act as if men and women are similarly situated when it comes to childbirth.

Both men and women should have every reproductive choice biologically possible. For men and women both, that means they should have the choice not to fuck, if they don’t want to. For men and women both, that means they should have access to every kind of birth control. And for women, that should mean access to abortion.

Cutting either men or women off from their biologically possible options is wrong, in my view. But “abortion” just isn’t one of men’s biologically possible options.

To say “well, if an argument’s valid for women, then it should be valid for men as well” is true most of the time - but it’s not true in a discussion of abortion, because men can’t have abortions. Men and women are not, when it comes to this issue, identically situated; and it’s illogical to act as if they are.

UPDATE: Be sure to check out this related post by Lorenzo at Unimpressed.net.

My goodness, this "choice for men" debate just doesn’t end, does it?

Avedon Carol writes:
Women should certainly have a unilateral right to decide whether to carry to term, but I can see no good argument for also allowing us the unilateral right to impose a decision made solely by the woman on a man who, at that point, becomes an innocent bystander. You can’t claim that his responsibility for having sex is any greater than hers unless it’s either rape or you really think women are too stupid to live (and never initiate sex). They both did it, and if you argue that the resulting pregnancy is his responsibility for the next 18 years just because he happened to have sex with her, you’re going to have to work pretty hard to explain why she didn’t take on the same responsibility when she chose to engage in the same sex act.

Avedon is one of my favorite bloggers, but she’s mistaken about this.

Avedon claims that after sex a man "becomes an innocent bystander," and therefore he has no responsibility for what happens. This is "hot potato" morality; instead of splitting responsibility between all decision-makers, the last person to make a decision gets 100% of the responsibility.

To see why hot potato morality doesn’t work, consider the meat industry. Bob’s meat plant sells Jane’s meat shop unsafe meat - even though Bob knows it’s unsafe. Jane’s meat shop then sells the meat, even though Jane also knows it’s unsafe. Then, several consumers eat the meat and go blind. According to Avedon’s hot potato morality, only Jane is responsible for that outcome, and those blinded folks may sue Jane but not Bob. After all, the decision to sell the meat to consumers was "made solely by Jane"; once the meat had passed out of Bob’s hands, Bob "becomes an innocent bystander."

But that’s ridiculous - Bob made a choice, why shouldn’t he have any responsibility for it? Both Bob and Jane are legally and morally responsible for the choices they knowingly made; that Jane’s decision came later doesn’t let Bob off the hook. We don’t ask "did Bob choose first or second," because that’s not relevant. Instead, we as "did Bob make a choice? Should he have known the possible consequences of his choice?" If the answer to both those questions is "yes," then Bob shares responsibility for what happens.

Furthermore, hot potato morality creates what economists call a "moral hazard," which means that when people aren’t held responsible for the risks they take, they’ll take dangerous risks. Hot potato morality encourages Bob to sell tainted meat, because Bob would know that he can’t be held responsible for the consequences.

So what happens if Bob and Jane are lovers? Similar logic applies. Although Jane makes her final decision later than Bob does, both of them freely choose. The only difference is that the final choice comes later for women than for men. I admit that’s not absolutely fair, but as Avedon herself wrote, "Yes. So? Look, that’s just a fact of biology." The bottom line is that as long as Bob wasn’t raped - as long as he freely chose to risk becoming a father - then Bob bears some of the responsibility for his child.

Furthermore, Avedon’s proposal creates a "moral hazard" for fathers. Since men won’t be held responsible for their choices, men will have less motive to reduce the risk of pregnancy. The result would be increased single motherhood, increased poverty, and increased social problems. This isn’t speculation on my part - statistically, states with weaker child support laws have higher rates of single motherhood. If mandatory child support were eliminated, as Avedon suggests, then presumably the increase in single motherhood would be even larger.

Finally, any discussion of what’s fair has to consider all parties - not just the father. I agree, it’s unfair that Bob can be forced to pay child support for a child he didn’t want (it almost happened to me once, and I still get chills thinking about it). But it’s also unfair to Jane that, even with child support payments, she’s probably paying most of the cost of child-rearing - and definitely doing all the work. And finally, it’s unfair for the child that she or he doesn’t have two loving, voluntary parents.

Well, life is unfair. Deal with it. But Avedon’s solution doesn’t relieve unfairness, it just transfers it. Rather than all three parties sharing the burden equally, the father is relieved of all unfairness while the child’s and mother’s burdens are increased. How is that fair?

Update: After I wrote and posted the above, I come across Ginger Stampley’s blog, where she says pretty much the same thing, but she says it better. Here’s a sample:

Once the woman has declined to exercise her right to terminate a pregnancy–and the fact that it terminates parental responsibility in the future is a byproduct of that right–the question stops being about the rights of the parents, and becomes about their responsibilities, and the rights of the child they’re (both) bringing into the world. The child’s rights include the right to care from both its parents, male and female. […]

I’ve heard a number of friends complain bitterly about women who got pregnant and forced the man involved to support the kid, normally complete with tales of how the mother is terrible to the kid and how the father is the only one who really loves the kid. I have yet to figure out how the life of the kids in question would be better if the men who love them had been legally permitted to ditch them because their mothers were lousy human beings.

Further update: Avedon replied to Ginger, but seems to be missing the point. According to Avedon, “If responsibility doesn’t include taking the father’s willingness to parent into account, it’s a meaningless concept.”

Say what?

Avedon has a really unique idea of what “responsibility” means. If I drove my car over my neighbor’s mailbox, my “willingness” to perform repairs doesn’t change the fact that I’m responsible for the damage. If I break a contract with Al, Al’s ability to sue me for damages isn’t dependant on how “willing” I am to pay those damages.

It comes down to two simple questions: did I freely make my choice, and should I have been aware of the possible consequences of that choice? That - not how willing I am to pry open my wallet - is what determines responsibility.

Avedon wrote:
A child neither has nor needs the “right” to a father who has no desire to be part of that child’s life, who may be seething with so much resentment (even hatred) of the mother that their every encounter is poisonous, and who may project that resentment onto the child and even demonstrate it in very visible and very hurtful ways.

If the father doesn’t want to have contact with the kid, no one should (or can) force him to; but he should still be required to pay child support, because the consequences of poverty for children are at least as bad as everything Avedon just described. (And if he does want to see and love the child, then so much the better for everyone!)

Avedon correctly points out that being a biological father won’t magically make someone into a great father. But - especially considering the problems of child poverty, something that may be a more pressing issue in the U.S. than the U.K. - an unwilling father may be better than no father at all.

Richard Bennett posted a response to me, but I’m putting off replying until I can borrow a copy of a book he cites. Meanwhile, Tony at the Rant Factory (whose permalink isn’t working, so you may have to scroll down to find it) has been responding to an unwilling Meryl Yourish, arguing that “real choice” includes the right of men to decide whether or not women have abortions.

Bizarrely, Tony cites the Supreme Court to support his position. He emphasizes Skinner v. Oklahoma (which he mistakenly calls a state supreme court decision) to argue that “procreation is a basic human right available to women AND men.” But Skinner, which established that the government can’t punish criminals by sterilizing them (or, at least, that it’s unconstitutional to do so if sterilization is applied unevenly), doesn’t say that anyone is required to give up their rights to facilitate other people’s reproduction. Tony is arguing that he has a constitutional right to force his wife to bear children, and that proposition is not supported by Skinner.

If you’re having trouble seeing why Skinner doesn’t help Tony’s argument, think of the First Amendment. I have a First Amendment right to free speech, but not a First Amendment right to make Tony publish my opinions. In fact, Tony has a free speech right to not publish me, if he doesn’t want to (see Miami Herald v. Tornillo).

Just as my right to free speech doesn’t force Tony to publish my speech, Tony’s right to reproduce doesn’t force his wife to bear his child. On the contrary, Mrs. Tony has a constitutional right not to reproduce, if she doesn’t want to (see Eisenstadt v. Baird - “If the right of privacy means anything, it is the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child.”).

If we’re going to look at Supreme Court cases, let’s look at relevant ones. Skinner isn’t the relevant legal precedent; Planned Parenthood v. Danforth is. In this case, the court addressed Tony’s question - should husbands have a legal right to prevent a wife’s abortion? - directly. “The obvious fact is that when the wife and the husband disagree on this decision, the view of only one of the two marriage partners can prevail. Inasmuch as it is the woman who physically bears the child and who is the more directly and immediately affected by the pregnancy, as between the two, the balance weighs in her favor.” (Notice this is just what Meryl Yourish said - “my body, my choice”).

* * *

So all of Tony’s constitutional and Supreme Court arguments can be thrown out. What about Tony’s other arguments? They all boil down to this:

All Rights have responsibilities. If you want the sole decision-making power in all cases, you need to take the sole responsibility in all cases. Your body, your decision? That’s incomplete; how about Your Body, Your Decision, Your Problem. If men have no reproductive control and no procreative rights, they should have no responsibilities for the result of procreation, whether it’s an abortion or a baby. Personally, I don’t want to live in a society where the man’s responsibility defaults to non-existence.

Tony is attacking a collection of straw men. Women don’t have the sole power in all decisions; women cannot legally rape men to get sperm, for instance. Women have sole power to make the abortion decision, but women and men share the power to decide on reproduction. Tony’s claim that “men have no reproductive control and no procreative rights” is blatantly false; men decide to have sex (or not), to wear a triple layer of condoms (or not), to have a vasectomy (or not), to refuse to have sex unless she uses a diaphragm and spermacide (or not), and so on. It’s true that only the woman can decide to have an abortion; but it’s equally true that only the man can decide to provide sperm. Each sex has the ability to unilaterally prevent reproduction.

Since women don’t have sole reproductive choice, there’s no reason, under Tony’s argument, for women to bear sole responsibility. (I’ve previously addressed arguments similar to Tony’s here and here).

(Cliché watch: This isn’t important to my argument, but the claim that “all rights have responsibilities” ain’t true. A one-year-old infant has some legal rights, but no legal responsibilities. Even for adults, there are some rights so fundamental that no behavior, no matter how irresponsible or antisocial, can take them away. Even Charles Manson has a right not to be dipped in boiling oil by police.)

Several days ago I posted an essay about “Choice for Men.” Turns out I’m not the only blogger stuck on Men’s Rights. A bit of a four-way debate is going on between Diane E, Richard Bennett, Win Fitzpatrick, and Meryl Yourish. Mr. Fitzpatrick has already posted a good reply to Diane E.’s most recent contribution, but I have a few thoughts to add.

Diane E writes:
If you believe that the woman should have 100% of the life and death power over the fetus, then you cannot believe that the man has 50% of the responsibility of the free choice she has made.

Why on earth can’t I believe that? The process as a whole requires two decision-makers (ignoring, for the purposes of this discussion, the possibility of rape); why should the end result be only one person’s responsibility? In Diane’s argument, responsibility is like a game of “hot potato”; whoever is the last one to make a decision gets saddled with 100% of the responsibility. But we don’t use “hot potato” logic to allocate responsibility in any other area of life, so why should child-rearing be the exception?

For example, imagine that I and my partner purchased a house together. Although we initiated the process together, an inconveniently timed bat-signal called me away and the transaction was all-but-closed in my absence, requiring only my final signature on the papers to be completed. Once the papers are in my hands, a curious situation has been created - the others, having signed the papers, are locked in to their decision. But I could still close the purchase (by signing the papers) or cancel it utterly (by ripping them up). I have 100% of the life and death power over this house purchase. If Diane’s logic held true, then once I made the sole decision to sign the papers, my partner would be morally justified in saddling me with 100% of the house payments.

So what makes a house different from a baby? One difference Diane E. might focus on is legalities; the law requires my partner, having signed an agreement to pay half, to actually pay half. But the same thing applies to a baby: the law requires a non-custodial parent to provide support for his (or her) children. It’s not as if the possibility of sex leading to childbirth is a secret that men don’t know going in.

(There is, of course, one enormous difference - the baby is a person, not a thing, and therefore has some rights. I’ve discussed the importance of this in my previous essay.).

Diane E:
Laws that make unmarried “dads” responsible for their kids obscures the differences between marriage and shacking up, a difference which I believe to be crucial to the maintenance of society. Why get married if the state forces Daddy to pay without marriage? You see, I really believe that women have brains and understand the consequences of their actions, actually, more than men do. Especially with regard to sex and reproduction.

So in Diane E.’s theory, child support payments reduce the incentive for women to marry before having children.. Why get married if you can get child support without a ring? (Diane doesn’t appear to be a romantic!)

Diane has apparently forgotten that women aren’t the only ones whose incentives are altered by child support laws; what about men? Well, the stronger and better-enforced child support laws are, the greater men’s incentive to avoid becoming unmarried fathers. In fact, child support laws probably have a larger impact on men’s incentives than women’s. Without child support laws, a man could potentially pay none of the costs of child-rearing, giving him very little reason to avoid single fatherhood. However, with child support laws in place, a single mother will still pay most child-rearing costs (plus the work involved), and so with or without child support she still has a strong incentive to avoid single motherhood. Given those incentives, we’d expect well-enforced child support laws to reduce single parenthood, not increase it.

Unsurprisingly, that’s what the data shows. According to a study by Chien-Chung Huang (Social Service Review, June 2002, p 275-301), data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth shows that states with strong child support enforcement have lower non-marital birthrates, even after controlling for differences in income, religion, schooling, family structures, etc. “Improved child-support enforcement reduces nonmarital births by 9.9 percent and increases marital births by 7.2 percent. The estimated proportional improvement in nonmarital birthrates for women age 20 or older, white women, and African-American women is 17.4, 3.8, and 13.4 percent, respectively. The increase in marital birthrates for these groups is 7.4, 6.9, and 3.8 percent, respectively.” (This is a much larger measured effect on the unmarried/married birthrate than welfare has, by the way).

Diane E. seems to say that her primary goal is preserving the traditional, married family. If that’s really the case, she ought to reverse her position and support strong, well-enforced child support laws.

Richard Bennett and I actually agree on some things, which might cause anyone who regularly reads both our blogs to die of shock (fortunately, I doubt such a reader exists). Political discourse has focused too much on the so-called “deadbeat dad”; in fact, when non-custodial parents (of either sex; there are nonpaying moms, too) don’t pay up, it’s often because they are legitimately too poor to pay, or because a needlessly complicated state bureaucracy has made paying child support difficult. But just when it seemed there’d be nothing to fight over, Richard wrote this:

The amount due is calculated according to a rigid formula that yields numbers way too high; it’s hard to get the number changed when employment circumstances change, and the payer has no guarantee that it’s actually spent on the child.

Ideally, the noncustodial parent should be paying half or more of the costs of raising a child. (After all, the noncustodial parent, not having to raise the kid(s), has more time to devote to a career). There’s certainly no reason for him or her (but let’s face it, usually him) to pay less than half; the custodial parent is already doing nearly all of the work, so it’s unfair to have her (or him, etc) pick up most of the costs as well.

But that’s exactly what typically happens. According to the U.S. Census (warning - it’s an acrobat file), the average child support award due a custodial parent in 1997 was $4200, or $350 per month. However, even the most optimistic estimates suggest that only 80% of that actually gets paid - so the real average figure may be $3360 a year or lower. In comparison, an average middle-income family spends $8,500 a year taking care of an infant - and the expense goes up as the child grows older. (See “Expenditures on Children by Families” in Family Economics and Nutrition Review vol 12 1999 p. 56-74). So in the best-case scenario - full payment, only one infant - slightly under half of the custodial parent’s direct expenses will be covered by child support.

Of course, in real life, it’s not always the best-case scenario. What if a middle-income couple had three children? In that case, child support payments - if paid in full - will only cover one-quarter of expenses. (see “Do child support awards cover the cost of raising children?,” in Family Economics & Nutrition Review, v11 1998 p29-40).

So it’s hard for me to buy that noncustodial parents are paying too much - if anything, they’re not paying enough.

Richard wants to streamline the process for adjusting child support levels as the non-custodial parents’ income changes, and I agree. However, non-custodial parents should actually be losing a higher percentage of income (although a lower real amount) to child support as their income drops; otherwise, non-custodial parents could lose the incentive to pursue a higher income.

As for making sure “it’s actually spent on the child” - since less than half the expense of parenting is covered by an average child support award, obviously the money is spent on the child. Noncustodial parents don’t have any right to monitor or control the custodial parent’s budgeting, and the sooner they quit trying the better.

Finally, Richard claims that a book, He Works/She Works, shows that fathers and mothers spend equal time with their children. However, He Works/She Works isn’t peer-reviewed, and it shows; it does not have a representative sample; all the parents studied were from the same liberal Northeastern city, and two-thirds of them have a college education or higher. Furthermore, the methods used are poorly described. As the reviewer in Journal of Marriage & the Family wrote, “With limited or no information on the methodology of these studies, it is difficult to judge the validity of the generalizations.”

Overwhelmingly, peer-reviewed studies show that women on average do more of both the housework and the child care - even when both members of the couple work. For just a handful of dozens of examples, see American Sociological Review v59 p327-347; American Sociological Review v59 p 348-364; Social Science Research v25 p260-280; Journal of Family Issues v12 p158-180; Journal of Family Issues v11 p115-135; Journal of Marriage and Family v64 p743-755; Journal of Marriage and the Family v63 p1099-1112, Family Relations v50 p143-153, Journal of Marriage and Family v63 1134-1145, Social Forces v79 p191-229, etc, etc..

Maybe - maybe - Richard is able to come up with an argument for believing that the vast majority of research should be ignored. (If he does, I hope it’s better than a single reference to a non-peer-reviewed book). But it’s ridiculous (and condescending) of him to imply that anyone who disagrees with him is “not well-informed on… patterns of childcare among the American middle class,” when Richard’s own views contradict what nearly any informed scholar would say.

I shamelessly promoted my critique of “choice for men” on mensactivism.org, and got a very nice reply from “Larry” (as well as some less nice replies from my faithful anonymous cyber-stalker).

I had pointed out that the inequalities of “choice” - women can have abortions, but men cannot - are biological, not legal. Larry agrees with that as far as it goes, but claims that I “left out one legal reality:” - the fact that mothers, Larry says, already have the right to (in my phrase) “cut and run.” “In my state, Michigan, a woman now has 30 days from the birth of a child to drop it off at any hospital, church or police station, no questions asked. I may be wrong, but my understanding is that both adoption and legal abandonment relieve the mother of any further financial obligation.”

Larry is referring to Michigan’s “Safe Delivery of Newborns” law, but I’m betting he’s never read it. Contrary to Larry’s talk about “a woman” and “the mother,” the Safe Delivery act is scrupulously gender-neutral. Under the law, either parent can drop off a newborn within the first 3 days (not 30) of the infant’s birth. The parent then has 28 days for a change of heart before a publicly-announced custody hearing. During those 28 days, either biological parent can claim custody of the child with a simple DNA test; additionally, the child placement agency must use that time to search for the “parent who did not surrender the newborn.”

So what happens when a mother wants to give up the child under Michigan’s law, but the father takes custody instead? Then the father has every right to sue for child support - just as my earlier essay said. By exempting fathers but not mothers from child support, “choice for men” would actually create legal inequality where it didn’t exist before.

Larry claims that “the law works one way for men and another way for women” - but his only example of a discriminatory law, Michigan’s Safe Delivery law, is gender-neutral. He says “mothers often do have the right to sign away a child’s future right to support, both before and after birth” - but that’s not true. My guess is that Larry is thinking of adoption laws, but an adopted child hasn’t had their right to support signed away; the identity of the parents changes, but the right to parental support does not. And legally mothers and fathers have an equal right to give up children for adoption. (In practice, sometimes mothers give children up for adoption without informing the father - but that’s only because it’s not biologically possible for a father to have a child without the mother’s knowledge. The inequality is in biology, not the law. And the proposed “choice for men” law won’t change that in the slightest.)

Although Larry isn’t intentionally lying, his argument is deceptive. Larry believes that “choice for men” is about fairness and will give fathers equal rights. But the law doesn’t allow mothers to tell fathers “I give you all responsibilities and obligations of raising our child, and you don’t even have the right to sue me for child support!” “Choice for men,” as described by Sacks and Thompson’s article, would create that right for men and men alone. How is creating a new legal right for men alone “equality?” How can depriving a child of the right to parental support be fairness?

An essential point that not everyone has yet absorbed: Sometimes there is no fair solution.

Case in point: This week in Newsday, Glenn Sacks and Dianna Thompson argue that life is unfair for fathers. Well, I agree; life is unfair for fathers. It’s not as unfair as Sacks and Thompson think it is - for instance when they claim “when a woman wants a child and a man does not, the woman can have the child anyway…” Of course, this isn’t strictly true - a man could insist on using birth control. Or get a vasectomy. Or even refuse to have sex with women. Sacks and Thompson are so eager to show that men are pure victims that they refuse to acknowledge any of the choices men do have.

What bothers Sacks and Thompson is that women have one choice men don’t - women can choose to have an abortion. This is unfair (although Sacks and Thompson don’t acknowledge the many ways in which this unfairness benefits men), but it’s an unfairness inherent in biology, not in law. So the question becomes, what can be done to remedy this unfairness? Well, according to Sacks and Thompson, the solution is giving unmarried men the right to walk away from all their parenting obligations. In other words, unmarried men shouldn’t pay child support unless they want to.

But their logic is shaky. According to Sacks and Thompson, “On average, every day 17 [U.S. workers] die - 16 of them male. Couldn’t men who work long hours or do hazardous jobs - and who suffer the concomitant physical ailments and injuries - argue that their bodies are on the line, too? Where is their choice?”

Well, unless they’re independently wealthy, they have no choice but to work. But although the news doesn’t seem to have reached Sacks and Thompson, nearly everyone in the US has to work. It’s not as if unmarried fathers are forced to work while childless or married men (or women for that matter) spend their days drinking brandy by the fire. Sacks and Thompson say that for unmarried fathers to need to work is a injustice, because it violates “my body, my choice” - but since when is it such a horrible violation of bodily integrity to have a job? And if it is a violation of bodily integrity for unmarried fathers, then why isn’t it a violation for all other workers, as well?

Sacks and Thompson are right that occupational injuries are too frequent - and too sex-biased - but workplace injuries aren’t caused by paying child support. It’s not as if 100% of mine shaft workers are unmarried men with children; nor is a mine worker magically safer on the job if he has no children. No feminist objects to protecting workers - but Sacks and Thompson seem to believe that workplace deaths are caused by inadequate father’s rights. The real problem is inadequate workplace safety - and the real solutions have nothing to do with eliminating child support payments for unmarried fathers.

Finally, although “16 deaths a day” sounds impressive, is this really a figure that tells us about the average working man’s life? Of the approximately 73 million American men who worked in 2000, 5,467 - which is to say, less than one-hundredth of one percent - died on the job. It’s tragic that they died, of course - but we can acknowledge that tragedy without pretending that men typically face such dangers in order to pay child support.

* * *

What all that really indicates, of course, is that Sacks and Thompson bend over backwards to perceive men as victims. So they say that men have absolutely no choice - ignoring that men aren’t being forced to have sex against their will. So when unmarried men get jobs, that’s a violation of “my body, my choice” equivalent to being forced to bear a child against one’s will - even though the rest of us have to get jobs too. So when one out of every 13,433 male workers dies, that becomes an example of typical male experience. Logical consistency takes a back seat as men-as-victims settles in behind the wheel.

But just because Sacks and Thompson are male-victimology junkies, that doesn’t show that they’re wrong about the larger issue - shouldn’t men get a choice equal to women’s? Contrary to Sacks and Thompson’s view of men as victims first and foremost, men have plenty of choices until pregnancy happens. But once a pregnancy has begun, Sacks and Thompson are right - in our legal system, for the first two trimesters of pregnancy, women have a choice and men don’t. And that, they say, is unfair.

Well, I agree. It is unfair. But their solution would actually make things worse, not better.

Any genuine discussion of “fairness” has to consider what’s best for all the parties involved - but Sacks and Thompson never consider anyone’s rights but the father’s. What about the other parties?

For instance, they propose giving fathers a right to cut and run - but they don’t propose giving mothers the same right. So let’s say I have a one-night stand and learn, eight months later, that the woman is pregnant with our child. Under Sacks and Thompson’s proposal, I - as the man - would have the right to sign away all my obligations to the child. But what if I want to keep the child, which the mother wants to give it up for adoption? Well, under the laws of most states, I’d automatically get custody - and the mother would be obligated to pay me child support (although Sacks and Thompson seemingly think only men ever pay child support, the truth is noncustodial parents of both sexes pay). So men get to cut and run, but women don’t. How is that fair?

My guess is that Sacks and Thompson would concede this point, and be willing to modify their proposal to give women and men equal rights to flee their obligations. But there’s still an important party whose rights haven’t been considered: what’s fair to the child?

There is an undeniable harm to noncustodial parents of forcing them to pay child support - they have to give up money that they’d otherwise spend as they want. But there’s also an undeniable harm of saying parents have no legal obligation to support their children. Child poverty is already a bigger problem in the US than in other wealthy nations; releasing noncustodial parents from the obligation to support their kids would make this worse.

Any honest appraisal of “choice for men” has to weigh both these elements. Which is the worse harm - the harm to noncustodial parents of having to pay child support, or the harm to children if child poverty is increased? “None of the above” isn’t on the menu; as a society, we have to choose one harm or the other to live with.

The moderate loss of financial freedom to noncustodial parents is obviously the lesser harm, and thus the harm we should choose. That is unfair; but increased child poverty is even more unfair. We can only choose which unfairness is easier for our society to live with.

Children have an unambiguous right to the material support of two parents. Under Sacks and Thompson’s theory, parents have the ability to sign away their children’s rights before the child is ever born - but that’s not the way the law works. Once the child is to be born, it has rights, regardless of what it’s parents signed before it was born. A parent can’t sign away a future child’s right to support, for the same reason that a parent can’t sign a contract selling his future child’s liver. The future child’s rights aren’t the parent’s to sign away.

There is no chance that “choice for men” will ever become law. It’s “fairer” only in the most facile analysis - an analysis that has eyes only for the rights of the father, ignoring mother and child entirely.

Is our current system unfair to noncustodial fathers? Yes, of course it is. It’s also unfair to custodial mothers that they have to do virtually all of the work and pay most of the expenses (child support payments typically cover less than half the child’s costs). And it’s terribly unfair that some children grow up without two parents who love each other and want to be together. Life is unfair.

But Sacks and Thompson’s solution doesn’t relieve unfairness, it just transfers it. Rather than all three parties sharing the burden equally, the father is relieved of all unfairness while the costs to mother and child are increased. How is that fair?

Update: I’ve taken the liberty of correcting a significant typo. The number of male workplace fatalities in 2000 was 5,467, but when I originally posted this blog entry I accidentally typed 3,467.