Walking Checkbook

That seems rather appropriate for my topic. It seems that when it comes to rights of the father, that's all he gets; the right to be a walking checkbook. Mathewes-Green believes that the role of crisis pregnancy clinics is to act as a surrogate father:

The exhaustive efforts of a crisis pregnancy center are, in a sense, those of inventing an artificial husband, trying to meet the needs that in nature's design the child's father would supply. These efforts inevitably fall short.

Yet, activists on both sides of the abortion issue rarely expect the child's father to be a significant source of help in a crisis pregnancy. After 20 years of sexual revolution, social expectations of male responsibility have plummeted to almost zero. The presumption is that men just want to use women for sex and then walk away; the sole obligation they feel toward these women extends just as far as one-half the abortion fee.

What an unfair assumption. This comes from all of the years of trying to create equality and women's right to chose. While a right to chose is imperative, it should also be equally accesible to men. If we, as women, included men in our negotiations we would move so much further ahead.

To re-establish the child's father at the center of the mother's support system will require challenging this myth, and regaining the social expectation that men are not only obligated to help their mates, but desire to do so. Perhaps there is something about the "do it and run" mentality that men find ultimately hollow, disconnected, sad. Perhaps there is something about protecting and providing that is foundational to a man's self-esteem, even in the face of cultural counter-incentives.

What a profound statement. Men are much more than walking checkbooks.

Because the expectations for the father's behavior in a crisis pregnancy are so low, he is reduced to a fragment of his role--that of the walking checkbook.

Men are often reluctant to pay child support if the mother is denying him access to his children; while this raises fury among child-support advocates, the fact that the father-child connection is important to men is one more faint signal of the way men naturally view their own complete parenting role.

Ultimately, there is no substitute for a faithful man in a family. With his encouragement, many a woman will endure great hardships to give life to her child; without it, the best we can offer her may not be enough. The pain of knowing oneself an abandoned woman, carrying the child of a man who has rejected her, outweighs nearly all else. While a rare woman may spurn her baby's father, in most cases his support is a crucial factor in sparing or ending the child's life. The woman in a crisis pregnancy, more than she wants money or aid, wants a loving man to make it not be a crisis. Whatever we do to encourage him in this role, we do to help her as well (Mathewes-Green).

What this says to me is that in order to help women with these issues, we need to help men. The pendulum has swung so far the other way that we are not doing what is right for everyone involved. We are only doing what seems right to the loudest invovled.

Equal rights cannot be given to only a few. They must be available for all.