WOMEN'S CHOICE AND FATHERHOOD: TWO CONCEPTS THAT CANNOT CO-EXIST
by Michael Peters
People nowadays blithely toss off the term 'woman's choice' as if it
were a badge of modernity. It has a grand, progressive and, of
course, liberated sound to it in this, our triumphant age of consumer
availabilities. It flows with our cornucopia of selections between
silver mini-vans and red convertibles, emeralds and zirconiums,
suburban townhouses and downtown condominiums, filet mignons and Rock
lobsters.
Whatever choice you want, it is unquestioningly accepted that you
have an inalienable right to get it. Hasn't our society, propelled by
its marketing engine, reached such an advanced level that we can, and
indeed hold as a right, everyone's desire to make and find fulfilled,
the choices that are "right for them"? Don't we define a "fulfilled"
person as one who has been able to gratify his choices? Choice is so
sacred to us that one of the principal legal underpinnings of our
capitalism is that for every product and service on the market there
must be at least two separate companies offering their choices to the
buyer.
Consequently, whenever the subject of abortion comes up, people
reflexively whip out the phrase 'woman's choice' as if it were an
advertising slogan. In their minds it means quite simply that if a
woman finds herself pregnant, she has every right to decide whether
to follow through to full-term motherhood or to stop by an abortion
clinic and have her "biological mass" removed. Whatever she decides
to do, nobody is conceded the right to interfere with her choice for
abortion any more than with her choice between buying a schooner and
a catboat.
Our whole economy and democracy are solidly based on an abhorrence of
any restraint being made on our free choice. In the pro-choice logic,
this 'woman's choice' slogan is seen as a door slammer on a par with
'all men are created equal,' 'freedom of speech,' 'the American way,'
and 'separation of Church and state.' The 'woman's choice' slogan is
thought to preclude all further discussion or even thought on the
abortion issue. What more could possibly be said? Abortion sounds
like a wonderfully easy and clean solution to unwanted pregnancy, and
it apparently has the moral backing of our sacred utopia of consumer
choice. What we end up with then is a "bio-mass" or "product of
conception" under construction inside of the mother's body, and only
her caprice determines whether the embryo is a human being or an
expendable growth.
As a father, I look at my three children and ask where does
fatherhood come into all of this? If motherhood has no necessary
meaning for a woman, then what does our world want fatherhood to mean
to a man? Since both a man and a woman are needed to procreate a
baby, can I not assign a 50 percent share of the parenthood to each
of the actors in the procreation drama?
Neither one, working alone, can come up with a new addition to our
human race. The man contributes the spermatozoa and the woman
contributes the ovum and the womb where the new life will implant
itself and grow to birth readiness. If she decides that it is a baby,
then the father is expected to feel an unconditional and sublime love
for the son or daughter who is "flesh of his flesh, and blood of his
blood," one at being with his own heart, for love of whom he would
willingly sacrifice his own life. Interestingly, Lamaze childbirth
preparation classes have no vacillations about parental love. The
instructors state right from the first session that there is no such
thing as a pregnant woman; the couple is pregnant together. I just
cannot reconcile the concepts of "woman's choice" and "paternal
responsibilities."
If the entire choice of whether to let a baby be accepted as a human
being and be born rests solely on the choice of the mother, then how
can there be such a thing as paternal responsibility? Is it fair for
us to speak of paternal responsibility without including paternal
rights? How can we as a society hold a man responsible for the
existence of a baby if he indeed has no say in whether the child
reaches birth? Most importantly, how can that rock solid, limitless
and unconditional love which a father is expected to have for his
child spring into being if the child's continuing existence is at the
whim of the mother? These contrary expectations put a man in an
impossible situation, unless he has a heart of granite.
If a woman can use the expression 'my choice' to get out of
maternity, why can't a man use the same phrase to get out of
paternity? If we do not allow him to do this, then don't we say in
effect that a woman's rights are more important than a man's rights?
The entire struggle to make a woman's rights equal to a man's rights
is a worthy and noble cause, but if we put the woman's rights above
the man's rights, then we have fallen back into the trap of
re-establishing inequality before the law.
A generation ago we had white people enjoying more favor before the
law than did black people. What would it have solved to flip/flop
this situation and favor the blacks while discriminating against the
whites? We would have merely traded one form of social injustice and
discrimination for another and have set up a situation that cried out
for its own counter struggle.
Today when a mother goes into court with a paternity suit against the
father of her child, the man pleads with the judge that, since she
had the option of an abortion, there is no responsibility on his part
if she decided to keep the baby. We hear on the news (and know cases
personally) of men who have no attachment to or sense of
responsibility for their children, never see their kids, never pay
any child support money. Don't we instinctively condemn them on the
most basic of levels and want the government to force them to at
least live up to their financial responsibilities? What do we want of
fathers? What are the consequences to society of having less than
strong, dedicated, constant and self-sacrificing fathers?
Jane Addams, the famed foundress of Chicago's Hull House, in her 1907
book The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets, relates that "We all
know as a matter of course that every shop is crowded with workingmen
who year after year spend all of their wages upon the nature and
education of their children, reserving for themselves but the
shabbiest clothing and a crowded place at the family table. 'Bad
weather for you to be out in,' you remark on a February evening, as
you meet rheumatic Mr. S. hobbling home through the freezing sleet
without an overcoat. 'Yes, it is bad,' he asserts, 'but I've walked
to work all this last year. We've sent the oldest boy back to high
school, you know,' and he moves on with no thought that he is doing
other than fulfilling the ordinary lot of the ordinary man."
Another man tells her, "My cousin and his family had to go back to
Italy. He got to Ellis Island with his wife and five children, but
they wouldn't let in the feeble-minded boy, so of course they all
went back with him. My cousin was fearful disappointed." What do we
want to teach our sons about fatherhood? What qualities do we want
them to have as fathers when their turn comes in the next generation?
What sense of protectiveness do we want fathers to instinctively have
for their offspring? If we don't want the father to protect the child
in the womb against the mother's caprices, then why do we expect him
to protect that child later on from the inevitable dangers of the
world?
A few years ago the story was circulated of a well-to-do businessman
who went on a fishing trip to the coast of Alaska with two of his
friends, as well as his 12-year-old son. The father had made a
number of these vacation trips before and felt that his son was old
enough now that he could introduce him to the joys he had long found
with this type of fishing and outdoor living in the rugged North.
They all flew in on a small amphibious plane which the father piloted
to the inlet on the ocean along which their cabin was located.
They had a perfect time for the two weeks they were there, so much so
that all of them, including the boy, looked forward to coming back
there to fish in the coming year. As the four were leaving to come
back home, the little plane went out of control and crashed and sank
into that inlet from the sea. In the inevitable confusion and panic,
the two men were just able to make it to shore, in spite of the
strong offshore current.
The boy evidently had been severely enough hurt in the crash that he
was unconscious. The father stayed with him in the water and
struggled to bring the son to shore with him, but soon realized that
he could not make it to shore against such a strong current with the
son in tow. The horrified men on shore could do nothing to help the
situation. The father could not make it to shore with his son and
would not save himself at the expense of abandoning the boy in the
water. All he could do was stay with his boy to the end. They were
last seen drifting out to sea with the son in this father's arms.
Would the father have willingly sacrificed his own life for his son
in this way if the son's value only came from the mother's choice?
How can the depth of all of these paternal outpourings of love be
reconciled with the trivialization of children's lives by the easy
call for 'woman's choice'?
Jane Addams expressed the situation most poignantly when she said,
"That wonderful devotion to the child seems at times, in the midst of
our stupid social and industrial arrangements, all that keeps society
human, the touch of nature which unites it, as it was that same
devotion which lifted it out of the swamp of bestiality. The devotion
to the child is the inevitable conclusion of . . . the devotion of
man to woman." It is, of course, this tremendous force which makes
possible the family, that bond which holds society together and
blends the experience of generation[s] into a continuous story.
"...this dual bond must be made anew a myriad [of] times in each
generation, and the forces upon which its formation depend must be
powerful and unerring. It would be too great a risk to leave it to a
force whose manifestations are intermittent and uncertain. The
desired result is too grave and fundamental."
As long as the phrase 'woman's choice' holds sway, the concept of
fatherhood� not to mention family�is imperiled. Society cannot long
survive under its destructive influence.
Michael Peters is a technical writer who resides in Oak Park,
Illinois.
Taken from the August 1995 issue of "HLI Reports." To subscribe
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