{"id":14,"date":"2002-08-13T00:02:37","date_gmt":"2002-08-13T08:02:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2002\/08\/13\/more-on-choice-for-men\/"},"modified":"2016-07-23T10:52:54","modified_gmt":"2016-07-23T17:52:54","slug":"more-on-choice-for-men","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=14","title":{"rendered":"More on "Choice for Men""},"content":{"rendered":"

I shamelessly promoted my critique of “choice for men”<\/a> on mensactivism.org<\/a>, and got a very nice reply from “Larry”<\/a> (as well as some less nice replies from my faithful anonymous cyber-stalker).<\/p>\n

I had pointed out that the inequalities of “choice” – women can have abortions, but men cannot – are biological, not legal. Larry agrees with that as far as it goes, but claims that I “left out one legal reality:” – the fact that mothers, Larry says, already have the right to (in my phrase) “cut and run.” “In my state, Michigan, a woman now has 30 days from the birth of a child to drop it off at any hospital, church or police station, no questions asked. I may be wrong, but my understanding is that both adoption and legal abandonment relieve the mother of any further financial obligation.”<\/p>\n

Larry is referring to Michigan’s “Safe Delivery of Newborns” law<\/a>, but I’m betting he’s never read it. Contrary to Larry’s talk about “a woman” and “the mother,” the Safe Delivery act is scrupulously gender-neutral. Under the law, either<\/em> parent can drop off a newborn within the first 3 days (not 30) of the infant’s birth. The parent then has 28 days for a change of heart before a publicly-announced custody hearing. During those 28 days, either<\/em> biological parent can claim custody of the child with a simple DNA test; additionally, the child placement agency must use that time to search for the “parent who did not surrender the newborn.”<\/p>\n

So what happens when a mother wants to give up the child under Michigan’s law, but the father takes custody instead? Then the father has every right to sue for child support – just as my earlier essay said. By exempting fathers but not mothers from child support, “choice for men” would actually create<\/em> legal inequality where it didn’t exist before.<\/p>\n

Larry claims that “the law works one way for men and another way for women” – but his only example of a discriminatory law, Michigan’s Safe Delivery law, is gender-neutral. He says “mothers often do have the right to sign away a child’s future right to support, both before and after birth” – but that’s not true. My guess is that Larry is thinking of adoption laws, but an adopted child hasn’t had their right to support signed away; the identity of the parents changes, but the right to parental support does not. And legally mothers and fathers have an equal right to give up children for adoption. (In practice, sometimes mothers give children up for adoption without informing the father – but that’s only because it’s not biologically possible for a father to have a child without the mother’s knowledge. The inequality is in biology, not the law. And the proposed “choice for men” law won’t change that in the slightest.)<\/p>\n

Although Larry isn’t intentionally lying, his argument is deceptive. Larry believes that “choice for men” is about fairness and will give fathers equal rights. But the law doesn’t allow mothers to tell fathers “I give you all<\/em> responsibilities and obligations of raising our child, and you don’t even have the right to sue me for child support!” “Choice for men,” as described by Sacks and Thompson’s article<\/a>, would create that right for men and men alone<\/em>. How is creating a new legal right for men alone “equality?” How can depriving a child of the right to parental support be fairness?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I shamelessly promoted my critique of “choice for men” on mensactivism.org, and got a very nice reply from “Larry” (as well as some less nice replies from my faithful anonymous cyber-stalker). I had pointed out that the inequalities of “choice” … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[95,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anti-feminists-and-their-pals","category-choice-for-men"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22078,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions\/22078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}