Forced Procreation

In this week’s Boston Sunday Globe Ideas section (March 26, 2006), Drake Bennett’s Article “A Man’s Right to Choose” exposes an interesting underside to the “Pro choice/Pro life” debate. In a 2000 case called AZ v. BZ, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that

a man who had signed seven agreements granting his wife control over their frozen embryos in the event of a divorce could nonetheless change his mind and prevent her from implanting them.To decide otherwise, the court found, would be “forced procreation.”

In light of the Right to Life movement’s vicious campaign to outlaw abortion, I find the concept of “forced procreation” in the case of a man who does not want his sperm used to be laughable. What is being forced? You don’t want little “mini mes” running around without your permission? How many women have had to take care of unwanted children because they are unable to obtain a safe and legal abortion? The number of these women continues to grow as fewer and fewer doctors are being trained to perform abortions and fewer and fewer states are allowing abortions. Women effectively experience “forced procreation” whenever we cannot terminate an unwanted pregnancy.

Bennett’s article centers on a recent case taken on by The National Center for Men. The case concerns a 25 year old male who claims he did not want children and therefore should not have to pay child support for his 7 month old child. The case has been labeled (and trademarked) “Roe v. Wade for Men.”

I wonder if the National Center for Men gets the concept that Roe v. Wade is about a woman’s body, not merely what comes out of a woman’s body. Sperm and Egg are simply not equivalent. As long as women continue to provide the only safe place for a fertilized egg to grow into a human being, women’s role in procreation will continue to be vastly more complicated and more dangerous than a man’s. Women risk their own life every time they choose to have a child. Men simply do not take this risk.