Kaiser Daily Women's Health Policy Report Summarizes Opinion Pieces About Lawsuit Claiming Violation Of Reproductive Rights For Men

Main Category: Men's health
Article Date: 17 Mar 2006 - 12:00 PDT

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Several newspapers recently published opinion pieces about a lawsuit filed in federal court on Thursday that claims a Michigan child-support law is unconstitutional because it violates reproductive rights established in Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court case that effectively barred state abortion bans. The suit -- filed by the National Center for Men on behalf of Saginaw, Mich., resident Matt Dubay -- claims that a lack of reproductive rights for men violates the equal protection clause of the Constitution. Dubay was recently ordered to pay child support for his eight-month-old daughter under the Michigan Paternity Act. Dubay says he dated a woman who told him she was using contraception and had physical conditions that prevented her from becoming pregnant. However, the woman told him she was pregnant soon after they stopped dating. Summaries appear below.

Opinion Pieces

• Jenice Armstrong, Philadelphia Daily News: Dubay is attempting "to use the legal system to somehow maneuver his way out of his parental responsibilities," but he "would have been much better off had he instead taken the time to maneuver himself into a condom," Daily News columnist Armstrong writes in an opinion piece. Dubay "left the responsibility for preventing a pregnancy solely up to his partner, a woman he hadn't even known that long," Armstrong writes, adding that the "real victim in all this" is Dubay's eight-month-old daughter (Armstrong, Philadelphia Daily News, 3/14).
  


• Mona Charen, Washington Times: "The sexual carnival we've encouraged in this country" since Roe has "planted the idea that men and women have some sort of constitutional right to enjoy sex without consequences," nationally syndicated columnist Charen writes in a Times opinion piece. Dubay and abortion-rights advocates have both claimed "reproductive rights," but "if you engage in sex you have an automatic obligation to any child that may result" (Charen, Washington Times, 3/13).
  


• DeWayne Wickham, USA Today: "While women and men should be protected equally from being forced to have sex, once they voluntarily commit the act, the scales of justice do -- and should -- tilt in a woman's favor," USA Today columnist Wickham writes in an opinion piece. The reasons women have the "controlling interests" in pregnancy and childbirth and that they bear the "physical burden" and "are almost always left with the job of child rearing if the relationship that produced the offspring dissolves," according to Wickham. "While Dubay could have used a male contraceptive, he didn't," Wickham writes, concluding, "Now, Michigan is pressing him to help support the child he fathered. That's not only a good law, it is as it should be" (Wickham, USA Today, 3/14).

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