Men Deserve Birth Rights

It can protect your bank account, too.

I'm not a father, but I feel the pain of so many of them who try and do the right thing.  Men have very few rights when it comes to a child's birth.  Some would go as far as to say that they don't have any rights whatsoever. It's sad in a few cases and unfair in a lot of them.

Here are the options that a woman has after she finds out that she's pregnant:

1. She can have the baby.
2. She can abort the baby.
3. She can put the baby up for adoption.
4. She can just leave the baby at a fire station or church.
5. She can tell a man the child is his (even if it isn't) and collect support (if not challenged in court by a certain period of time).

Here are the options that a man has when he finds he got someone pregnant:

1. They can attempt to adopt the baby if she puts it up for adoption.
2. They can opt not to pay child support and risk jail time.

Of course, I'm not an expert so I may have missed something, but that's basically it.  Everything pretty much depends on what the mother decides.  He may want to marry her and be there for the child, but if she wants to abort then he can't stop her.  He may not want to have anything to do with the child at all, but if she wants him to pay child support then he will or go to jail.

Men are at the mercy of women in all matters involving a child's birth.  Even men who aren't even the fathers.  #5 on my list for women alluded to that.  Case in point: let's say that a man and woman are married and she gets pregnant in an affair.  DNA proves that he's not the father, but he could still be forced to pay child support because they're married.  

If a woman tells a man he's the father of a child and he finds out three years later that he isn't, then he's still on the hook for 15 more years if she chooses to stick it to him.  Although he may not have thought he had a reason to petition the courts he still has to "beat the clock" to possibly get out of support.  If not, he could wind up paying for another man's child if she refuses to remove him from the birth certificate.

Do you think that it would work if men had the option to waive their rights to a child without the threat of forced child support?  Would that make women think twice about unprotected sex?

I know that it sounds unfair to the women, but we've already gone over what's unfair to the men and the list is lengthy.  Besides, women are normally the ones carry the child and who wind up being responsible for the child.  So, shouldn't they be the ones who should think twice about birth control since they go through so much?  I know that sounds like the words of a chauvinist, but I think if you looked at that with an unbiased eye that you would at least consider where I'm coming from on it.

Or what about the default for custody disputes being joint custody?  Isn't that what is best for the child anyway?  Why does it always seem that it has to be one parent or the other in these cases?  Why can't it always default to 50/50 custody?

What do you think?  Shouldn't men have some sort of say so in regards to the birth of a child?