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US Men’s Group Launches Suit to Call Feminist Bluff

by Hilary White

SAGINAW, March 10, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A US Men’s group is calling the feminist bluff with regard to “reproductive choice”. They say that if women have the “right” to abort any pregnancy without a man’s consent, the same right should exist for men who want to opt out of fatherhood.

Calling their campaign, “Roe vs. Wade for Men,” the National Center For Men will file suit in United States district court in Michigan saying that the law is unfairly slanted towards women without due regard for the “right to reproductive choice” for men.

Turning the abortion rhetoric on its head, the group says, “Women can now have sexual intimacy without sacrificing reproductive choice. Women now have the freedom and security to enjoy lovemaking without the fear of forced procreation.”

“Women now have control of their lives after an unplanned conception. But men are routinely forced to give up control, forced to be financially responsible for choices only women are permitted to make, forced to relinquish reproductive choice as the price of intimacy.”

The National Center for Men fully expects to lose the suit in the heavily feminist-biased courts but is pursuing the matter as a means of opening a public debate about the double standard.

But conservative women’s organizations are not laughing. Concerned Women for America called the suit “deplorable.” CWA said in a press release, that “(the) proposition is an outrage to responsible women and men and to those who know the importance of family and father-child relationships.”

“This is merely an attempt for these men to avoid their responsibilities if their 'girlfriends' shoulder their own duties and refuse to have an abortion,” said Dr. Janice Crouse, CWA’s Senior Fellow of the Beverly LaHaye Institute.

But the courts are not interested in upholding the integrity of family life or relationships between parents and children. The campaign serves to illustrate the contradiction of an abortion-happy feminist movement and their supporters in courts favouring a “progressive” attitude towards “women’s rights” while continuing to hold men to a previous standard.

The National Center for Men says they will ask the courts to apply the principles of Roe v. Wade to allow men to “make family planning decisions after sex,” in exactly the same way women can. They argue that “at a time of reproductive freedom for women, fatherhood must be more than a matter of DNA: A man must choose to be a father in the same way that a woman chooses to be a mother.”

This argument also perfectly matches the logic of the academic branch of the abortion movement, the field of secular Bioethics. Dr. Peter Singer, the leading light of the Bioethics world argues that parenthood cannot be merely a biological matter. He has proposed that parents should be given the opportunity – up to 30 days after birth – to decide if a newborn is a person or if infanticide is a better choice for them.

''There's such a spectrum of choice that women have -- it's her body, her pregnancy, and she has the ultimate right to make decisions," said Mel Feit, director of the men's center. ''I'm trying to find a way for a man also to have some say over decisions that affect his life profoundly."

In Ontario and most jurisdictions in North America, family law on the one hand endorses abortion on demand, and on the other, routinely enforces ruinous child and spousal support payments without consideration of a father’s actual ability to pay or his visitation or custody rights.

Matt Dubay of Saginaw, Michigan, in whose name the suit is being launched, told the Boston Globe, “What I expect to hear [from the court] is that the way things are is not really fair, but that's the way it is. Just to create awareness would be enough, to at least get a debate started.”

Read National Center for Men media release:
http://www.nationalcenterformen.org/page7.shtml

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