Men & Pregnancy

by Amber Maccione

When two people decide to have sex and a baby is conceived, our world immediately focuses on the woman. Just look at our laws. The woman has all the rights. She can abort the baby without the man's consent. She can also have the baby and force the man through family law to pay child support even if he didn't want the child. There is something wrong with this picture. If it takes two to tango and two to conceive a baby, then it should take the same two to decide what they will do about their pregnancy. I think just as there are laws to protect a woman, there should also be laws to protect a man.

Let's say Mary and Joe had relations and it ended up in a pregnancy. Mary calls up Joe and says, "I'm pregnant. I don't want the child. So I will be going to the clinic to fix the issue." Joe replies that he is not for this. He wants to keep the child. Mary goes to the clinic anyway and aborts the baby.

Is this fair to Joe? He did participate in the acts to get pregnant so shouldn't he legally have a say? What about his rights as a father?

Susan and Allen have been dating for awhile, but Allen has never wanted children. Susan is late and decides to take a pregnancy test. The test is positive. Susan informs Allen that they are pregnant. Allen quickly reminds her that he does not want children and that they need to either abort the baby or give the baby up for adoption. Susan decides that she is going to keep the baby because it has always been her dream to be a mom. Because of this, Allen and Susan break up. After Susan has the child, she takes Allen to court for child support. The judge orders Allen to have to pay $250 a month for a child that Allen did not want.

Is this fair? If Susan had not wanted the baby, the law allows for her to do two things: abortion or adoption. Is it fair that Allen has to pay for a child he did not want? What laws protect him? If Allen had been the woman, he would have had options. But because he is the man, he is stuck footing the bill.

I think that there should be laws in place that require both the man and woman to sign legal documents when a pregnancy occurs. Every time someone has sex with another person of the opposite sex, there are chances that that encounter could result in a pregnancy. Men should have rights too since it took a part of them to make the child. Their wants should be considered 50/50 alongside the wants of the woman.

Let's take a re-look at Mary an Joe. In this situation, Mary should be required to carry the baby full term. Joe's health insurance should cover all of Mary's pregnancy since he is the one who wants the child, not Mary. Once the child is born, Mary should have to sign paperwork that releases her from child support and any other responsibility to that child. Joe would be sole parent and Mary would lose all rights.

In the scenario involving Susan and Allen, Allen should have been allowed to sign paperwork that released him from the pregnancy at the beginning of Susan's pregnancy. This way there was documentation that he did not want to be a father and Susan was choosing on her own to take sole responsibility of the child herself.

The answer here is having legal documentation that courts will recognize so that both parties have a say in whether they want to be parents. There needs to be laws in place to protect men from becoming fathers when they do not want to or feel they are not ready to. There needs to be laws in place to protect men who want to be fathers from their partner taking that away from them when they did contribute 50% to the pregnancy.

In the business world, I believe you have to have 51% stock in a company to have the upper hand of control within that company. With a pregnancy, each person has 50% giving both the man and woman equal responsibility and say in the decision to become or not become parents.

I think it is time that our country begins to fight for men's rights.

This article is not about abortion being right or wrong. The author is pro-life, but wanted to shed light on the fact that pregnancy is very one sided when it comes to the rights of someone being a parent or not being a parent.

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