THE ETERNAL TUG O' WAR OVER THE WOMB (TOO BAD IT'S ATTACHED TO A HUMAN BEING!)

I am not sure I will have a chance to write a real blog post today, so I thought I would share this back and forth between me and Darren from this thread.  For those familiar with the feminist blogosphere, I think these issues have been treated far more thoroughly and intelligently than I could hope to do here.  (Grrr...I cannot seem to find Lauren's brilliant post at Feministe.)

But here's the back and forth so far (edited slightly for clarity):

DARREN mentions a thread on his blog here on the man's right to choose and then goes on to say: Happy Feminist, I'm concerned about equality before *the law*. Right now you get what you *his* loss. Again, not a penalty, but a choice.  Neither wants the child? Vacuum it out --superiority before the law. Justice tilts the scales in favor of the women. Like Anonymous/Dan said [on Darren's thread], if the woman wants to have a child and the man doesn't, he should be able to dissociate himself physically, emotionally, and financially from the child. For the woman that's not a *penalty*, that's a *choice* that she accepts. Both have had a choice in this situation.  If the man wants the child and the woman doesn't, Anonymous Dan posits that the woman can abort the child but must pay financial restitution to the man for t out.

The second a feminist (or anyone else for that matter) wants to hide behind "the best interest of the child" I wonder why the child has to actually be born before they make that argument. And why that argument only works to a woman's advantage.

You want equality? I offer it to you here.

HF responds:

It sounds to me like you're proposing special rights for men. As citizens of this country , men and women have the right to control our own reproductive systems. That is, you have the right to decide whether to have sex and whether to use a condom, just as a woman has the right to decide whether to have sex or use the contraceptive methods available to her. Because you are a man, you are not burdened by pregnancy.

Women are burdened by pregnancy. It is through the hard, risky and draining work performed by the woman's body that a baby is created from the fertilized egg. Your demand to be consulted if she chooses not to undergo that burden would be a special right for men, above and beyond the bodily autonomy that we all enjoy. You are demanding that she either give her body for nine months to the service of creating this baby or, in the alternative, that she pay you off for your "loss." Your loss would apparently be that she did not put her body and potentially her health (pregnancy and birth being a rather risky processes) at the service of the result you would want to see. Either way, under your proposed scenario, the woman is under your control because she had sex with you and has to "pay" in some way either by abiding by your wish that she undergo the pregnancy or by giving you restitution. I fail to see how this can in any way be considered "equality."

While the fact that you yourself cannot create a baby and give birth is indeed also lack of equality, that is a biological reality, not something feminists or the law did to you. Trust me, if we could have you men undertake pregnancy instead, we would.

Your question about child support is a completely separate issue from the question of whether a woman can be forced to undergo the physical burdens of pregnancy and childbirth-- and frankly I don't really see the connection to the issue of whether a woman has the right to choose an abortion on her own, unless you are somehow proposing that you should have the right to choose to force her to abort? The sad fact is that the child has the right to have its physical and other basic needs met once it is born. If I understand the law correctly, the woman may not necessarily have the right to waive the child's right to support if it turns out she herself cannot support the child.

Unfortunately, basic biology burdens both men and women unequally. It isn't the law that favors women in being able to control whether a child results after conception -- it's biology. To give a man the right to control or get restitution for that decision would be to give the man special rights over the woman's body. Sorry, but them's the breaks.

*****

More HF:  Actually re-reading your comment, Darren, it is actually amazing how you could possibly view your proposed scenario as "equality" in any way, shape or form. Suppose a man and woman engage in mutually consensual act and conceive :

-- Man wants baby and woman wants to abort: She has to pay resitution to him.

-- Man doesn't want baby and does: She has to pay all child support.

Either way, you want the woman to "pay" while the man either gets restitution for his "loss" or gets to wash his hands of all responsibility. Sounds nice.

NOTE:  I don't mean to belittle the very real emotion a man may feel about a pregnancy he helped to cause.  I use the term "loss" in quotation marks because I don't think it is a loss that can be compensated in market terms.  That doesn't mean a man might not feel a sense of emotional loss.  Ideally, of course, I would hope the kind of scenarios raised here would  be rare-- that people would practice responsible contraception, that the contraception would work, and that in the event a pregnancy did occur, the parties could work out any conflict in a mutually acceptable way.  Cumbayah!

UPDATE:   I should point that in the post Darren's talking about, Anonymous/Dan tries to resolve the inequity I point out here, by proposing that the woman would have to pay the man if she chooses to abort against his will, but the man would have to pay the woman if she carries the child that she doesn't want.  Somehow, this doesn't make it "equal" in my book -- either way the woman would always have some sort of burden in this scenario, while the man could walk away from an unwanted child. 

The sad fact is that biologically, we are woefully unequal in terms of reproduction.  And while I know it is frustrating for a lot of men that they are not the primary decisionmaker regarding the fetus during pregnancy, there is not presently any way to fix that without unjustly burdening the woman. 

I have started to consider the futuristic (but I suppose potentially real possibility) that we could create wombs that exist separate from the mother and which would allow the mother to wash her hands of the fetus while the father could choose to take the zygote/embryo/fetus and raise it as a single father.  I am going to ponder that for a while.  Meanwhile, color me cynical, but somehow I can't picture too many men lining up for single fatherhood right out of the gate.   

Comments

[Michelle]

Have you heard about South Dakota yet? They're pushing thru legistion for state-enforced pregnancy.

AKA an all-out abortion ban. Which just makes the reality official, I suppose.

Next up: separate fountains for coloureds.

[Michelle]

What exactly would a man be getting "compensated" for here? One sperm? Because that's all he put in (no pun intended). That clump of cells that is the fetus was made entirely from the woman's body. Does /she/ get compensation for all the resources /she's/ devoted up to the point of abortion?

As initial investments go, it's a pretty small loss if a man loses a few sperm in the effort to get a baby by having someone else do all the work. Wow. My heart bleeds.

[The Happy Feminist]

Amanda at Pandagon has often spoken of a factor I had never thought of before: the subconscious (or maybe even overt) assumption that the baby is the man's product. As soon as the man does his bit, voila, we have HIS creation that must be preserved! In reality, of course, we don't have much of anything until the woman's body engages in the intensive labor of taking the fertilized egg and turning it into a baby. Amanda talks a lot about the idea that anti-choicers simply ignore the fact that the man's contribution is so minimal-- sure it's 50% his DNA but look at what's required of the woman to turn that clump of DNA into a BABY.

My first response upon exposure to this idea (that anti-choicers value the man's contribution to creating the child more than the woman's) was, "Naaaah. That can't be." But then the more I hear anti-choicers talk, the more it rings true . . .

Anyway I think it's helpful to constantly point out the WORK and BURDEN and RISK that pregnancy really is and that it is the woman's role in reproduction that really creates the baby from the basic materials contributed by both sexes. (Not that I don't think men matter -- they're certainly very decorative. Especially Will.)

[Sara]

One of my very first blog posts was on this subject. My gist was that unexpected children are an inherent risk to living, and that men simply cannot decide for women whether or not they are to carry a child to term. Accidents happen, and you have to pay for them even if they're not your fault. It seems like some men feel entitled to consequence-free sex in a way that no woman can; every woman knows that when she has sex, there is the possibility that something will go wrong and she'll become unexpectedly pregnant, no matter the precautions taken. It's an immediate, physical risk - she will either have to have a child or an abortion, and neither is a walk in the park. A woman can't just walk away from an accidental pregnancy, and if we're going to be fair about this, I don't see why a man should feel morally justified in doing so.

[The Happy Feminist]

That's a really well-balanced post, Sara. Maybe the best solution is to go triple on the birth control:

condom plus pill plus IUD! (or whatever other options suit your fancy!)

[nik]

I don't think most C4Mers are all that bad.

The interesting case is this one: (1) the woman doesn't want the child, (2) the woman doesn't want (or doesn't get) an abortion, (3) the man wants the child. Most C4Mers I've spoken to have no problem with the woman unilaterally disavowing parental rights in this situation. I think that's perfectly consistent (and equal).

The only other position that can be held in this situation is that the only way a woman can avoid paying child support is by undergoing unwanted surgery, or that the child should be adopted against the father's wishes. I don't really like C4M, but neither of the other options make me very happy either.

[TangoMan]

Sara,

every woman knows that when she has sex, there is the possibility that something will go wrong and she'll become unexpectedly pregnant, no matter the precautions taken.

How much do you think that this awareness influences other aspects of personality. Here we have an intellectual awareness haivng influence over all sorts of sex-related decisions. Do you think that such a consequence-heavy awareness slips over into other decision realms, and perhaps causes an over-emphasis on consequence related issues which men parse through a different filter?

[will]

"A woman can't just walk away from an accidental pregnancy, and if we're going to be fair about this, I don't see why a man should feel morally justified in doing so."

"It seems like some men feel entitled to consequence-free sex in a way that no woman can"

Ok. I'll bite. Let's agree that both the man and the woman are not morally justified in walking away.

What does that mean?

[Michelle]

Do you think that such a consequence-heavy awareness slips over into other decision realms, and perhaps causes an over-emphasis on consequence related issues which men parse through a different filter?

What kind of leading question are you asking here? Sounds like you're trying to suggest that women are inclined to be "too" responsible. Whatever that means. If it weren't for your loaded wording ("over-emphasis"), one would think you were suggesting /men/ were inclined to be irresponsible. Yet that's not the meaning that comes across at all. Interesting.

[Darren]

Then we disagree.

You're looking only at the abortion issue. I'm looking at the entire legal issue surrounding the birth of a child.

I still don't see how you can say what we have now is "fair", how both sexes are equal before the law. You want guys to practice "safe sex"? Women can too! That arguement doesn't fly with me.