"Male Abortion"

Or rather, male adoption? There don't seem to be any really good names for it.

Anyway, what "it" is, is men's right to essentially put their children up for adoption, ceding both their parental rights and responsibilities as parents. Women already have this right, and in addition, they have the right to get an abortion.

This is a very touchy issue in the gender debate, although personally, the issue seems fairly clear-cut. The whole issue gets very complicated because of the different ways in which men and women reproduce. Both partners have to have sex, but most contraceptive methods are only available to women, and women are the ones who have to shoulder the responsibility of carrying a fetus inside them for nine months.

Because it's women who suffer the physical consequences of pregnancy, the case for unilateral power being given to women over abortion seems the most strong to me. Of course, in any healthy relationship, serious life-altering issues like these would be discussed with the other partner, but ultimately (and most importantly, legally) abortion would be the woman's choice.

This does, however, put men in a tough spot, especially since at the moment most contraceptive methods are also up to women, and women alone - the only three reliable option for men being condoms, vasectomies, and abstinence, none of which are particularly wonderful options for many men.

Luckily, there's a third option, and one that women already enjoy: carry the child to term, and then put it up for adoption. Especially since men can't force a woman to carry a child to term, it would seem obvious that men ought to have the right to put our children up for adoption, too. That's not the case in most Western countries. On the contrary, men are required by law to provide child support and usually have a lot of social pressure to participate in their child's life, even though they may never have been ready to be fathers, don't want the children - or even aren't actually the biological father, but simply were in a romantic relationship when the pregnancy first occurred and weren't able to prove conclusively that it wasn't theirs.

Usually, the argument for this is that it's not the child's fault and so should still have the opportunities that come with the extra income. This, first of all, seems to fly right in the face of the position that women are capable of making their reproductive choices by themselves - if they're not capable of telling when they're able to financially provide for a child, should women still have the right to decide whether or not to make one? Or, if women are capable of telling when they're able to take care of a child, why do they then need financial support from the father? Secondly, there are already lots of programs available for children from low-income families in the USA, like the SCHIP program for health insurance, FAFSA for college aid, and so on. Now, if these programs aren't getting the job done, then maybe they need to be strengthened, or new programs need to be created.

In any case, however, it seems unfair to hold a single man responsible for something that was basically beyond his control - we don't expect women choose between celibacy and motherhood, so how can we fairly expect men to do the same? And if it wasn't that particular man's fault (and let's say it's not the woman's, either), then that's something that society in general should deal with. Putting all of that responsibility on a single man's shoulders, and one who doesn't want it, and couldn't do anything to stop it, seems pretty unfair, especially when we aren't holding women to the same kinds of standards.