In the future, men's abortions
MUNRO, NEIL
In the Future, Men's Abortions by Neil Munro It may seem obvious now, but as we review the events of the past year—from January 1, 2002, to December 31, 2002—it's worth remembering that just a few...
...This new Fatherhood-NOW Alliance then spent seven days drafting a constitutional amendment to supplant the Nichols decision...
...But even if the Fatherhood-NOW amendment is eventually approved by Congress and by two-thirds of the state legislatures, the men's movement is building a second line of defense against paternal responsibility: genetic-property rights...
...To satisfy pro-lifers, the amendment would bar non-emergency abortions in the second and third trimesters and provide generous financial incentives for women to choose adoption over abortion...
...The nuptials were announced on September 17, when the U.S...
...We're off to Georgetown to spend the child-support payments," laughed ex-baseball player Steve Gar-vey, president of Planned Fatherhood and a prominent spokesperson for the Men's Coalition...
...Chief Justice W.J...
...By getting her pregnant, I've given her a biological option...
...A judge in New Jersey last week certified a man's $30,000 lawsuit against his pregnant ex-girlfriend, which claims she defrauded him of his genetic material...
...Two days after the court decision, a grab-bag of outraged feminists announced they wanted an alliance with the shocked pro-life community to reverse the court's decision...
...The amendment would impose strict regulation of the abortion industry and establish extensive informed-consent laws...
...Initially, she had decided to vote against men's abortion rights, but switched after the four dissenting judges proposed a radical new legal theory...
...To deter later reinterpretation by the Supreme Court, the 1,000-word amendment makes extensive use of strictly defined mathematical symbols, is written in capital letters, and contains no words longer than three syllables...
...The court cited as precedent its rulings in three long-standing decisions—the 1996 VMI decision, which barred almost any form of gender discrimination, and the Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey decisions, which gave women the right to physical abortion...
...If the decision to bear or abort the child is a woman's alone, so the decision to support that child is the man's alone," concluded the 5-to-4 majority opinion...
...Women have the freedom to choose, but they don't have the freedom to make us pay for their choice...
...To satisfy the pro-choice camp, the amendment would force fathers to pay child support and would fund generous child-related welfare programs...
...The Nichols v. Moore decision allows every man to legally abort any duties to his unborn children...
...The $30,000 payment is fair, the plaintiff said, because it matches the cost of adopting a child or of buying two rounds of treatment at a fertility clinic...
...In the Future, Men's Abortions by Neil Munro It may seem obvious now, but as we review the events of the past year—from January 1, 2002, to December 31, 2002—it's worth remembering that just a few years ago nobody could imagine how success would force the feminist movement into a shotgun marriage with the pro-life movement...
...The men's movement has greeted its victory with delight...
...Clinton also voted with Gins-burg for the Nichols decision, writing in a concurring opinion that the court should "leave these most intimate and private decisions to the father, his doctor, his accountant, and his spiritual adviser...
...The liberal dissenters, led by Justice Catherine MacKinnon, proposed the existence of previously undetected "black holes" in the Constitution that redirect away from men the Constitution's "penumbras and emanations" used in Roe v. Wade to justify women's abortion rights...
...If she chooses to exercise the option by giving birth, she should pay the market price," he said in a press release...
...Supreme Court ruled that Stanley Nichols of Modesto, Calif., had an unlimited right to abortion—the abortion of his paternal responsibilities for his out-of-wedlock child...
...In response, the men's movement has also entered into a marriage of convenience with radical feminists via an ad hoc coalition called Sexual Autonomy for Everyone...
...If men don't have to pay for child support, they certainly won't buy our products," grumbled one executive from Trojan, Inc., as he handed over $1 million in advertising funds...
...If we don't restrict the court and its retinue of lawyers, they'll shrink political debate into disputes over money and transform ethics into attorney-advised self-interest," said a press release by the pro-life wing of the Fatherhood-NOW Alliance...
...Nichols's lawyers estimated that those responsibilities would have cost Nichols $1 million over the next 18 years...
...The dirigiste university feminists of the coalition champion the Nichols decision because it helps to "sever the dangerous link between all our children and the testosterone-poisoned, phallocentric, hetero-sexist patriarchy...
...The deciding vote for men's abortion rights was cast by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who had spent her career fighting for women's abortion rights and strict sexual equality before joining the court...
...The proposed amendment has already won much-needed financial support from the condom industry...
...They've had initial success...
...The father's abortion of responsibility has to be completed before the child's head emerges from the mother, the court ruled...
...It was also good news for lawyers, scores of whom started men's abortion clinics, including one in San Diego, Calif., that has begun a nationwide class-action suit to reclaim child-support funds paid out years earlier...
...Neil Munro is a reporter for Washington Technology...
...The eventual result of this constitutional battle is still unclear...
Vol. 2 • December 1996 • No. 13
