Mens Right to Choose: Opting Out of Fatherhood With a Financial Abortion
Introduction
The desire to have a voice in the decision of whether or not a child is born, and whether an unwilling father can be forced to support the child is at the forefront of debate amongst African Americans. With an estimated 50-60% of the Black children in the U.S. residing in single parent homes , the issues surrounding the rights and obligations of both parents to their unborn offspring is an important one. Emotions run high on both sides of the “right to choose” argument.
Men Are Angry: Why Should Women Have All The Power and Control?
Some men feel they are powerless in cases of unwanted pregnancy, and that women have all the control. From their perspective, women have exclusive power to decide if there is going to be a baby or not, which means if he becomes a father that it’s all HER fault. Most of these men believe that if a man doesn’t want to become a father and the woman he impregnated decides to keep the child, she should be obligated to raise the baby with no financial assistance from either him or the government.
On the other side of the fence are men that point to the power that women have to abort their child, even in the face of his stated desire to keep and raise his child.
Men and women who support financial abortions believe that there should be equality in the birthing process. They feel that a father should have an opportunity equal to that of a mother to choose to walk away from any obligations or responsibilities to a child that the father does not want, in spite of the decision the mother might make to keep the baby anyway.
Yvette Carnell Says: In Our Society Women Have the Right to Choose and Men Do Not
In spite of Ms. Carnell’s proclamations to the contrary, the reality is that men have a great deal of power and as many if not more choices than women do. Men have the choice of sleeping with a woman or not, and the choice of using a condom or not. Therefore, men have the ultimate and exclusive right to choose.
In her recent article, Ms. Carnell also stated: “I’ve always believed that the divvying up of reproductive rights, and by that I mean men having none, is the main reason that some men feel no responsibility toward their kids. In their minds, the mother chose – on her own, usually without or against his input – to have the child so she bears the sole responsibility of caring for it.”
This statement is curious to me. There has yet to be a child born on the planet (even those produced in a laboratory environment), created without spermatozoa from a male and a fertile ovum from a female. With that fact in mind, it is utterly impossible for a woman to “choose on her own, without or against his input… to have a child.”
Before a child can be conceived, some man somewhere chose to supply the requisite sperm to effect conception.
Though a man may feel resentment at being forced to take on the adult responsibilities of fathering a child after performing an adult sexual act for pleasure, I believe the two go hand in hand.
Don’t do the crime if you aren’t prepared to do the time.
Birds and the Bees 101: How Children Are Created
Perhaps we should have a short refresher course, addressing the sequence of biological events which create a child. Though I learned these facts at six years of age, it appears there are thousands of Black adults that don’t understand the basic science of human reproduction.
Men have testicles which produce sperm; that sperm is transported through the vas deferens tubes into the urethra of the penis. Sperm is mixed with seminal fluid, produced by the prostate gland. The urethra opens at the tip of the penis, and is the exit pathway through which the sperm and seminal fluid are jettisoned into the woman’s body. When a man is sexually excited for a long period of time, he will inevitably excrete sperm-laden seminal fluid even before he begins the sex act, orgasms and ejaculates.
Women have ovaries which produce millions of tiny ovum, or eggs. The ovaries are connected to a woman’s uterus via the fallopian tubes. The vagina is the entry way to the woman’s body and her uterus. Every month a woman releases one or more eggs from her ovaries, which travel down the fallopian tubes and lodge in the lining of the uterus. This process is called ovulation. Now, left alone, these unfertilized eggs wash out as part of a woman’s monthly menstrual cycle.
However, if a man has sex with a fertile, ovulating woman and her egg is fertilized by one of the millions of sperm excreted with every ejaculation a man has into her vagina, the woman may become pregnant. Once that sperm swims up into her uterus and hits pay dirt, the sperm donor is pretty much guaranteed to be looking into his child’s face nine months later. Unless the woman he impregnates has a miscarriage, the sex he so thoroughly enjoyed is going to make him somebody’s Daddy.
So when a guy says “I’m not ready to be a father!” or “I didn’t want a baby,” we must negate his assertions with a reality check by saying YES YOU DID! Why? Because even though your mouth is saying you didn’t want to be a father, sir, your behavior clearly shows otherwise. You did the one thing Mother Nature designed men and women do to create new life… which is having sex. You did what it takes for a child to get here, so obviously some part of you wanted to become a father.
Furthermore, when a man has sex with a woman, whether she is on birth control or not and whether he uses protection or not – once he ejaculates he transfers his sperm to her body. Since possession is 9/10ths of the law, that transference of property means that she now owns that sperm, and is free to do whatever she pleases with it. Any man that does not want to assume the risk and responsibility of the child that could be borne of the sex act should avoid transferring his sperm to a woman, as set out above.
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Deborrah
Veteran social researcher, relationship advice columnist, author and radio host. Author of hundreds of articles on American and black culture, gender issues, singles, dating and relationships. Author of "Sucka Free Love!" , "The 24 Types of Suckas to Avoid," "The Black Church - Where Women Pray and Men Pray," and "Why Vegan is the New Black" all available on Amazon.Com. Her unique voice and insightful commentary have delighted fans and riled haters for 20 years. Read her stuff on SurvivingDating.Com and AskHeartBeat.Com.
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My blog, my opinions, my views. You don’t have to like them. Changes nothing in my world, which means you’re irrelevant. Have a great day!
See response above. All Yalls FEELINGS don’t mean shit. It’s the law. Have a great day!
Welp, no matter what you feel, the men who made the laws on child support disagree. So there you have it. Its sad really that other men had to create laws to make trifling fools take care of their offspring.
@Trixie of course its on point.lol.you’re the child thazt wants to have no accountability.you can fuck up no matter how many times and still have uncle sam take care of you.or you can terminate the kid even if he wants it.
@joeclyde women are never at fault.they are children with no responsibilities. remember
Then the man owns you or any woman nothing for the resulting offspring if you choose to carry to term. Possession being 9/10ths of the law, the baby came from you is in your custody therefore is your responsibility fiscally and emotionally.
Care to discuss?
I very civilly disagree with the tenor of your article.
The overall statement you seem to be making is that, once sexual intercourse happens. that men have no choices but to agree to whatever decisions that a woman makes after such has begun.
Now, turn that statement around- wouldn’t it sound troublesome to you, if I were to insist that as a man, you as a woman have no choices but to agree to whatever I decided, once sexual intercourse has happened? Wouldn’t you be properly horrified if I said to you, that you could not claim that you had been raped, because once sexual intercourse occurred, I held the decision making power?
That is effectively what you seem to be saying- that men must accept whatever it is a woman decides to do, post-intercourse- and your statements that:
“Stop complaining that you have no power or control…No woman can have your baby without your consent and participation…This is all on you…So, if you don’t want to have a baby…the wise choice would be for you to not sleep with her…”
are *effectively* saying that women are bound by their bodies and their hormones, and that it is up to men to be in control of themselves because women are not capable- is that correct?
And yes, I’m being sarcastic here.
I understand that your audience is specifically for men here- I mean, I would hope you would make similar statements to women, about being in control of and taking responsibility for their own sexual and reproductive actions, if the audience were to include them- but your logic is flawed due to the fact that it is so uni-directionally aimed.
Men AND women are BOTH responsible for what happens, both post and PRE-intercourse. As a man, it is my responsibility to take control of what I do sexually.
If, using your logic, a woman becomes the owner of my sperm once I have ejaculated it out of my body (and at the moment, we won’t speak of any particular “where” it is to end up) because, as you put it:
“You apparently didn’t want it anymore; otherwise you would have kept it to yourself”
Then that means that I have no more obligation to that sperm, or whatever should result from the ejaculation of that sperm.
But then you show the flaws of your logic with the next statement:
“…under the law the responsibilities that come from that sperm are definitely going to be yours”
Mind you, I did say that I wasn’t speaking in that moment of the ‘where”, because if I ejaculate it into a condom, it SHOULD not end up inside of a woman, but according to the flaws in your logic, if she removes the sperm from that condom, and puts it into her body, then I am supposed to continue to be responsible for what happens to that sperm.
Yes, I am reaching. I admit to it.
But your logic and its flaws, all but dictate that I do so.
The overall point I’m making here is that NO, men do NOT have “100% of the power and control”. It is not “all on you [men].” Stop trying to lay blame for this issue solely in the laps of men. Accept that BOTH men AND women need to make better choices, stop thinking with what lays between their legs, and learn to actually take responsibility for their own actions and stop pushing other people to live up to their own unspoken expectations in life, and above all,
STOP this incredibly asinine, “feminist empowering” crap that tells women that they aren’t to blame for anything.
Encourage other people- BOTH MEN AND WOMEN- to actually grow up and be adults.
Thank you.