What are your thoughts on "a man's right to choose"?

[SemiCharmedQuark]

Some would argue that if a man doesn't want to support a baby, he has the right ot just "walk away". I call bullshit. Why? Because there is a huge difference between choosing to walk away and choosing between two major medical procedures.

This "right for men to choose" goes hand in hand with the belief that abortion is just another form of birth control. Like the "welfare queen" lie, this is just used to vilify the opposite side. Far and away most women do not go "tra la la la la" down to the women's clinic. And if she decides to have the baby, she faces the very real possibility of complications.

There are biological differences. Pregnancy comes with hormonal and other biological changes. How can that be the same as just saying you don't want to be a parent?

[ismnotwasm]

1. My standard lecture for men

That shuts them up quick: Don't ever have sex with any woman you don't want to have your baby. They don't like that idea, for some reason.
Men aren't stupid. Every time they ejaculate into a vagina, or even leak sperm close to a vagina, the possibility of pregnancy exsists. If they want to choose, they can choose not to explore that possiblity. After that decision is made, they lose their choice. The woman then gets to make her choice.
I realize this is simplistic, but sometimes the simple is the best understood.

[Chalco]

5. Brilliant. Just brilliant.

Your stunningly simple assessment of the situation should be, in my opinion, a mantra for the pro-choice side of the pro-choice/pro-life debate. Perfect. I'm going to write it down and carry it in my wallet.

Thanks.

[bloom]

2. Having grown up under the system

whereby men have been encouraged to "sow their wild oats" while women have been encouraged to be the responsible one....

Just like watching "The Odyssey" last night - where Odysseus is having one affair after another and yet it is such a big deal whether his wife "stayed true" to him for 20 years while he was gone....

I really don't have any sympathy. And I don't think it would be a good idea to do anything that would allow men to be any more irresponsible than some already feel encouraged to be.

[LeftyMom]

3. Children have the right to financial stability

whether thier fathers (or thier mothers, my mother "walked away" when I was four and I was raised by my Dad) wanted them or not.

[WildClarySage]

4. The right to choose is primarily the right to bodily integrity,

and only secondarily the right to control reproduction. If a man has a right to choose to reproduce, that right is secondary to a woman's right to decide if she wants to carry a fetus or not.

[geniph]

6. When a man can carry the fetus to term

in his own body, then he has the right to decide what's done with that fetus. Until such time, no one else has the right to hold a woman's body hostage to an unwanted pregnancy. No one else is in that woman's shoes. No one else can make that decision.