No More Back-Alley Vasectomies!

"Do these guys read Hit n Run?" asks reader John Feerick, alerting us to the story of Roe v. Wade For Men, a lawsuit in which a Saginaw, MI computer programmer seeks relief from having to pay support for a child he didn't want. Matt Dubay (didn't we just finish with this whole Dubay controversy?) has to pay $500 a month to his ex even though, he claims, she assured him she could not get pregnant.

Dubay, by his own account, does not expect to win the case. But he and Mel Feit, director of the National Center for Men, hope to get a debate going about the issue of "Men's Reproductive Rights."

It's not a completely unreasonable argument: Feit and his posse aren't looking to infringe on women's reproductive rights, and Feit proposes only a brief time window after the great sport, during which a man can refuse to acknowledge the whoreson. But like all efforts at fairness, this one sets up a goal that can never be reached. Feit says the current regime isn't fair to the father; another observer says increasing the costs of single parenthood wouldn't be fair to society; I say Feit's proposal (to let women who want to go through with the pregnancy either suck up the cost or put the baby up for adoption) isn't fair because men don't have to experience labor pains. Life is unfair. This is why, back in the Decade of the Penis, no less a figure than Magic Johnson advised us all: "Please put your thinking cap and your cap on down there."