If we expect men to father, rather than simply be wallets, then we need to treat them as fathers from the very beginning. And if we wish to treat women as fully functional adults, responsible for the consequences of their own decisions, then we need to treat them as such. As it stands now in most jurisdictions, fathers are not even entitled to know that they ARE fathers. Generally, it is only when we want them to serve as wallets that they are entitled to notice that they are parents.
Women's advocates want to ignore that, once a woman is pregnant, it is not just HER body that is impacted by her decisions, but another incipient person. Whether that incipient person has a soul, as some religious zealots would contend, or has rights, as some ideologues argue, is immaterial to the undeniable fact that a zygote is a developing human being and the parties responsible for its creation have responsibilities toward that entity. The female obviously has greater responsibilities during gestation and the nurturing immediately after birth, but she knew this when conception occurred. If she was not willing to accept that then she should not have consented to sex.
Please note, before the inevitable "gotchas!" drop, that all of my remarks have applied to consensual sex.
The principle is quite simple, though: If we really want fathers to father, then let them father from the very beginning. |