Don’t Even Think…

Courtesy of Instapundit I found this piece on The Huffington Post.

Dalton Conley wrote a piece in the NY Times saying that the problem with Samuel Alito’s ruling on Spousal Consent. He wrote:

His only problem was not going far enough, relying only on the marriage contract to legitimate men’s claims to a role in the reproductive decision-making process.

Bear with me here. About a decade ago, my girlfriend became pregnant. It wasn’t planned, but it wasn’t exactly unplanned either, in that we obviously knew how biology worked. I desperately wanted to keep the baby, but she wasn’t ready, and there were some minor medical concerns about the fetus, so she decided to terminate the pregnancy against my wishes. What right did I have to stop her? As it turned out, none. It was, indeed, a woman’s right to choose.

Not surprisingly, we broke up. And my desire for fatherhood was eventually fulfilled by two wonderful children. But every so often I think back to the fateful decision, and frustration boils up…

Mr. Conley is clearly pro-choice, support Roe v. Wade in general. He just believes that as the child is half the man’s than if the man wants the child, then the Child should be allowed to live. He takes his position based on an experience he went through. Liberal bloggers have angrily attacked him as “a wanker”. With a lot of left wing anger and invective thrown his way he went ahead and posted an explanation of his “heresy” against left wing orthodoxy of the wonderful nature of abortion.

He states:

If the purpose of abortion is to avoid unwanted children then the child wanted by his father is not, in fact, “unwanted.” This must be weighed in tandem with the obvious physical, emotional and other risks and costs associated with the pregnancy itself. To the extent that abortion takes place to end an unwanted pregnancy (not prevent a birth), then it seems to fall entirely in a woman’s domain. However, the complicating factor is the view of the fetus as having two responsible parties with rights over it. Is a better solution a negotiated settlement where the man provides a nest egg to guarantee the support of the child (agrees to have wages docked, etc.) and also compensates the woman for her pregnancy costs (in terms of health risks, lost wages, and so on minus the risks attendant to an abortion)? Non-binding arbitration might also present a potential solution. And of course, as an alternative I think it is entirely logical to say that fatherhood should be entirely voluntary — absent any rights or responsibilities until entered to through written contract. (One view of insemination sees it as a gift contract, a donation of sperm over which the man has no further claims; however, this flies in the face of the financial responsibility of the father for what the woman does with that gift.) Along these lines, perhaps there should be a pre-sex contract that partners can sign to firm up their reproductive rights and/or responsibilities (downloadable in PDF format for those moments of passion — might take less time than fumbling with a condom).

Now, his response is quite tortured, not to mention long at 2,170 words. It was somewhat meandering as he wanted to prove he was a good leftist:

And many progressives (including myself) think it absurd that only a pair of individuals who have the opposite sex organs should be able to enter the social and economic contract of a marriage with all the rights (and responsibilities) attendant to that contract…

Rather, the notion is that we should act to preserve life that is wanted by at least one of the progenitors. (My life-preserving bias also causes me to support mandatory organ donations post-death [and in some cases, perhaps even pre-death] as well as be vehemently anti-death penalty.)

As with my op-ed on reparations for slavery or the elimination of personhood for corporations (in exchange for the elimination of the dividend tax),

Conley says, “I’m a good liberal, guys. Lets dialogue, lets talk. Lets go beyond the usual claptrap and move towards something more reasonable.” He also made the point in the original article that Americans in general are open to this argument. What with 64% supporting spousal consent.

They had none of it, one commenter even dropped the f-bomb. In frustration with the non-response, Conley added this post-script responding to the commenters at the bottom of his article:

I can accept that it is “your” body but will someone please then just engage the argument that fatherhood should then be voluntary? Or make it explicit that in this case, rights and responsibilities are decoupled, it is not fair, and men should get over it. But in that case, are other forms of gender inequality–such as a $1 to .76 cents wage ratio okay too? Should women just “get over it too and accept that life isn’t fair?…I should have framed my argument as: “let’s reexamine the debate over fatherhood given it’s (only) a woman’s right to choose” rather than “let’s reexamine the abortion debate, given fathers’ responsibilities…”

Conley could have framed this anyway he wanted, but there was no way they were going to have a reasoned dialogue at the Huffington Post with anyone who suggests there needs to be any re-examination of how abortion is run or any rights for men in the process of deciding what will happen to his child.

Others Talking about it:

Real Choice Blog
Greg Prince
Reasoned Audacity

Abortion