the seahorse is the only male animal that gets knocked up
Dear Em & Lo,
The way I see it, there is simply no such concept as male reproductive rights. If your girl gets pregnant and wants to keep the baby, congratulations, you’re a dad! Pay up, sucker. If you want to keep it but she wants to abort it, tough luck — there goes your progeny. The only thing a dude can do is rubber up and screen for sexual partners with similar values.
We get it, the baby’s growing in the woman’s body, and ownership is 9/10ths of the law. But come on, now. There’s got to be some kind of reasonable compromise. I don’t have an easy answer to this, and I doubt anyone else will either. Men will continue to get a raw deal here. But could you open the topic to discussion?
— Cat Amongst the Pigeons
Consider it done! What do you think, do we need male reproductive rights? And if so, what would they be? Let the debate begin (no throwing things, please) in the comments section below.
Why not wait till you’re married? Don’t even
get pregnant or get anybody pregnant until
you are ready to be a mom or dad. Learn how
to be a loving, responsible mate first, then
have all the children you can afford fin-
ancially and emotionally. Doesn’t this sound
better than having all of these problems?
Yes, men do need rights!! The idea that a woman can choose to get pregnant without telling the male that she was not taking birth control. Or the she pin pricked the condom so the sperm would get her pregnant! She thinks “he will love me” and some men are trapped into a relationship that hey don’t want and a life time of slavery.
When there is no prior agreement,then yes,males should have the right to say your decision your money!!
Man’s reproductive right=vasectomy. Period.
I’m sorry, did I actually read someone say a man should be able to opt out of taking care of a child if he doesn’t want to have it but that the woman carries it to term and that he can come back in the childs life he he so chooses later?
Yes, I did read that, Spes said it and its the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.
Basically, men can have sex all day. If they get a girl pregnant they can point to a stomach and say ‘abort that.’ If she chooses not to (for whatever reason she may have to not want to abort her child) the man can walk away from the situation with no legal or financial responsibility but if he wants to throw a football around in 10 years, he has that right? What planet do you live on???? I assume you will be paying back child support if you decide to be a part of this kids life sometime in the future, or can you opt out of that indefinitely?
You complain about women trapping you and not using birth control and not conforming to your wishes to abort or not abort a child and sometimes that’s true. There are a lot of shady women out there. Its also true that condoms don’t always work, birth control gives headaches whatever. If you don’t want to run the risk of not getting a girl knocked up or getting knocked up–don’t have sex! How about that option? As far as I know sex isn’t necessary for survival. Man can’t be tricked into having sex. Its a conscious decision to put your dick somewhere. Stop being weak and putting your dick in places it will get in trouble. Period. The unwanted pregnancy issue would stop altogether if men kept their dick in their pants until they found a woman who shared their same values (to either not want a baby and practice safe sex on both ends or to want a baby both parents plan to raise).
If you are stupid and weak and have been tricked into sex either through use of a spell or potion or large amounts of alcohol or however that happens to men, yes, you are kinda option less in my opinion. Men’s reproductive rights don’t dictate or usurp womens reproductive rights. You can’t tell her to abort because you don’t want it (you shouldn’t have taken your dick out of your pants if you didn’t want it) and you also can’t forgo the responsibility of taking your dick out of your pants if she decides to keep it. Undeniably men get the short end of the stick decision wise in this instance but as I mentioned before: Dick in pants=problem solved.
I’ve always known that I’m in a minority on this issue, but I’m going to voice it anyway.
I absolutely believe that if a mother doesn’t want the child and the father does, that she should carry the child to term and he raises the child. Is that “imposing” on the woman’s body? Perhaps. But they were equal partners in the situation knowing full well how a pregnancy works. They deserve to be equal partners in making the decision.
I am pro-choice, which in my mind says the man deserves a choice too. I think the fact that we as a society say “it’s a woman’s body, it’s her choice” helps to perpetuate irresponsible fathers who *don’t* participate in the decision and child-rearing. We send a message that the woman is dominant and the man is helpless. How can we do that and then be surprised that some men take the low-maintenance route.
I know my opinions are controversial. And I am a woman. I am a woman who also had an unplanned pregnancy where I didn’t know who the father was. I told both potential men and involved them both in the final decision of the child’s fate. Was it *ultimately* my choice? Yes. But the child was only half mine and the men deserved input on their own child’s future.
Period.
If I had wanted an abortion and one of them wanted to keep the child, I would have carried it for them. It’s not surrogacy. And it’s not “unfair” or “imposing rights on/over my body”. It’s dealing with the consequences of your actions. Women are equally as responsible as men in these situations and we know it. Taking away a man’s right to decide his child’s future is vile to me.
Oh, don’t forget, next thing that happens is our tax dollars pays for it when the stupid woman who planned it doesn’t get child support so she goes on food stamps and welfare.
Yes, men should definitely have a say in whether or not to have kids! I know too many women who have gotten pregnant on purpose. Why should men not have a say? If you don’t want to have a kid, why should you be forced to have one? We don’t force women to have kids. But yet, somebody gets pregnant in hopes it might help seal the deal, and the man just gets screwed and forced to pay for the kid whether he wanted it or not. Women can have an abortion but the man’s stuck for life. Oh, yeah, p.s, I’m a woman.
Spes is absolutely right. Guys need to take those precautions. My girlfriend is on the pill, and we still take every precaution we can. Sex without condoms is an experience to be described only as “glorious,” but intelligent people are willing to sacrifice a little free reign for a big boost in safety.
Pregnancy tests are important for people more sexually active than myself, and I’m glad you mentioned them. Would anyone happen to know (Em and Lo included), how much a pregnancy test costs?
First I have to agree with, johnny. I was more than a bit offended when I read that same line. I already gave my two cents about the issue of bringing a child into a poverty stricken, or shitty situation under the ’38 and wanting a baby’ thread. M, I suggest you read it.
I also somewhat agree with what Frank has to say. It’s not right for a woman to trick a guy into getting her pregnant–shamefully there’s obviously enough women who have committed such an injustice that it is an issue. However, there are paternity tests that can help solve the issue of ‘It’s not mine’. In the end it simply means that just as women must protect themselves from men who falsely claim sterility, men must protect themselves from women who falsely claim to be on the pill. Though, lets not forget that the pill isn’t 100%, so that backup form of birth control that I already mentioned, should be in place anyway.
And let’s face it folks, if you’re having sex with someone who you don’t know well enough to know whether or not they can be trusted, shouldn’t you be using a condom anyway? If they’re apt to lie about birth control, do you really think they’d not lie about a STD?
M wrote [ironically]:
“…only the white upper middle class are entitled to keeping their unplanned pregnancies”
I said “shitty circumstances”, M. That includes eing the dependent white child of a manipulative, attention crazy, decidedly upper-class Alaskan governor with a dumbass for a baby-daddy… or putting your eight rich white children through the trauma of reality TV exposure… etc…
I didn’t bring race or class into it. YOU did. YOU suggested that non-whites and non-upper class people have shitty lives.
You show me one bit of textual evidence that I’m a racist. Don’t put words in my mouth, especially when you’re pulling them out of your ass.
Finish your college freshman year and try again, you smarmy brat.
Frank, I couldn’t agree with you more.
I can’t say I agree with M’s comment. To say that men shouldn’t be given any protection from, “manipulative-bitchy-selfish-golddigging women out there who trick men into having unsafe sex” simply because there aren’t a lot of them isn’t a good argument. There’s a minority of men who will assault women for wearing revealing clothing, but that doesn’t mean we should tell women, “You’re asking for it” if they choose to don a miniskirt. Granted, the two groups are different in the social damage they cause, but to simply make the argument that there aren’t a lot of them is unfair. It suggests that we as individuals are responsible for everyone else’s actions. It’s an argument so basically unsound it’s aggravating.
What you’re suggesting to men is abstinence education at its most basic, and most unsuccessful, level. If you want to promote that kind of legal protection for men, I hope you have a great vibrator (provided by sponsors of this great website, of course), because if the moment we stumble across someone trying to get pregnant, it’s the man’s fault for having a sex drive and being around someone who would take advantage of that, then the smart thing for men to do would be to buy a good lube (again, provided by the sponsors of this great site) and stay home .
Men know there is a risk. Men also know that sometimes we’re played for chumps. If a woman takes advantage of a man and tricks him into impregnating her against his will, how is that not something completely wrong and worth defending his case? Should he be punished for having a sex drive? From my reading of your comment, the answer seems to be, “yes.”
It is a slippery slope, to be sure. Men can be quick to freak out at the word “pregnant.” I’ve dealt with it, and when it isn’t time to start a family, it’s not fun. A man, in my opinion, should have 0 legal power when it comes to deciding whether or not a woman has a child or not. That’s not my territory. I can give my opinion, explain why I think what I think, financially support an option of my choosing (whether it be to keep the baby or no), but I can’t make that decision.
However, if either she compromises the safety of sex, or she agrees to have and raise the baby without my involvement, is it fair that down the road that I’m still responsible for her decision to get pregnant in the first situation, or that at any moment she decides to change her mind in the second, I’m still as liable?
I think that something as simple as a legal document stating that the man does not have to worry about the pregnancy, if that is the agreed consensus between the man and the woman, would be a step forward.
I don’t want to tread upon your rights with the baby inside you, and the assault on women’s rights is a travesty chosen by rich men who don’t know a thing about being pregnant. However, I think men deserve some legal protection.
“Abandoning a kid is a shitty thing for a father to do. But so is selfishly having a kid in bad circumstances”
Because as we all know Johnny, only the white upper middle class are entitled to keeping their unplanned pregnancies, and NOT wanting extract a fetus from your uterus is selfish. Its comments like that that make it hard for me to wave the pro-choice flag so vehemently sometimes.
Yes it must really suck sometimes that men “don’t have a say” but that’s just how pregnancy works. Sure there are manipulative-bitchy-selfish-golddigging women out there who trick men into having unsafe sex, but they are NOT the majority.
If you want consequence free sex by all means, go wack off. Just stay away from MY rights.
Wonderful topic, Em & Lo!
But one thing that I haven’t seen brought up is the concept of reproductive fraud by a woman. This is when a man is tricked by a woman into becoming a father by entering a sexual situation with the expectation that assurances against conception are in place or by nefarious post-coital activity.
The way that this can happen is by:
1) Sabotaging the use of birth control (i.e. putting holes in the condom).
2) Deliberate deception (woman telling the man that she’s on the pill or using a form of birth control).
3) Misappropriation of sperm despite the male’s wishes to the contrary (i.e. robbing the condom, etc…).
4) A woman deliberately and falsely legally naming a man as the father of her child.
Currently, American, British, and Canadian law has no provision for protecting or even recognizing the fact that men are being victimized in this manner. The dockets are filled with cases where this has happened to men, but the courts are not interested in justice, but in simply having a resolution for the case on the books.
Before I continue, men can also commit reproductive fraud (claiming that they have a vasectomy or are otherwise sterile), but they are the only ones held legally liable for it.
Nawny, you nailed it right on the head in all your points. My “detailing of the situation” was not intended to state that men should have the CHOICE of determining carrying the babies to term and keeping them but rather that women should be more conscientious of their sexual partners and their own ability to carry the responsibilities involved in parenthood. (I know, a tall order for most young girls/women) Because, as my story elaborates, there is so much fallout that affects everyone outside the situation for years to come. It isn’t just about “Reproductive Rights” it’s about RESPONSIBLE reproduction and parenthood. The CHOICE these women make can effect so many others and not necessarily in positive ways. It would be a much more fair world, in my view, if there were more options for men, birthcontrol-wise and father’s rights, as well.