NY man fights for "right" to be a deadbeat dad

Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein at 6:05 AM on March 9, 2006.

Steve Gilliard points to a news item about a 25-year-old man who's going to court under the banner of "men's rights" to argue for the right to cut off his unwanted daughter because abortion rights negate child support obligations.

NEW YORK - Contending that women have more options than they do in the event of an unintended pregnancy, men's rights activists are mounting a long shot legal campaign aimed at giving them the chance to opt out of financial responsibility for raising a child.

The National Center for Men has prepared a lawsuit — nicknamed Roe v. Wade for Men — to be filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Michigan on behalf of a 25-year-old computer programmer ordered to pay child support for his ex-girlfriend's daughter. The suit addresses the issue of male reproductive rights, contending that lack of such rights violates the U.S. Constitution's equal protection clause.

The gist of the argument: If a pregnant woman can choose among abortion, adoption or raising a child, a man involved in an unintended pregnancy should have the choice of declining the financial responsibilities of fatherhood. The activists involved hope to spark discussion even if they lose. [Yahoo]

Yes. let's discuss the sophistry of this nuisance suit. A dad says he shouldn't have to pay child support because his ex-girlfriend could have aborted his daughter, but didn't. Basically, he's saying that acknowledging women's inalienable right to control their own bodies must be counterbalanced by some kind of countervailing threat of destitution in order to make the whole setup "fair." What all this has to do with the equal protection clause is beyond me--if the deadbeat were the custodial parent, the mother of his child would presumably have to pay child support. That's what we call equal protection.

[NewsBlog]

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Lindsay Beyerstein a New York writer blogging at Majikthise.