It's a Man's, Man's, Man's Responsibility

Wendy McElroy on the brewing-up of a gender war whose flames I've been fanning myself for a long time - the matching of reproductive rights and reproductive responsibilities.

According to PC feminism, the woman alone has the right of choice in carrying a pregnancy to term while the man bears legal responsibility for child support. Yet, in paying child support, he has no guarantee of joint custody or even visitation rights.

The idea of responsibilities without rights is taken to such absurd lengths that even men who do not father children are held responsible for them. Consider the case of Morgan Wise, as chronicled by journalist Cathy Young. Blood tests proved that only one of "his" four children were actually his, yet the court ordered Wise to continue all child support payments and prohibited him from contact with the children. His role in that family is now the biological equivalent of an ATM machine. Wise's case is unfortunately hardly unique.

And, so, gender warfare becomes a political reality -- not because it exists naturally, but because it has been created. The legal system now assigns rights to women and responsibilities to men.