WHILE THE ''Roe
v. Wade for men" lawsuit filed
in Michigan earlier this month seeks
the right for men to terminate their
financial obligations to a child in
case of unwanted pregnancy, another
dispute over male reproductive rights
has been making news as well. Last
week, a front-page New York Times
story explored the plight of unwed
fathers who fight for children placed
for adoption by the mothers.
One of the men profiled
in the article, 23-year-old Arizona
resident Adam Clayton Jones, learned
that his former fiancée -- who had
ended their relationship -- was pregnant
and seeking to put up the baby for
adoption in Florida, where they had
met while attending college. An adoption
agency called Jones to ask for his
consent to the adoption. He refused,
fully intending to raise the baby
himself. But Jones did not know that
in order to exercise his parental
rights, he had to register with the
state registry for unmarried fathers.
Because he missed the deadline, he
lost all his rights and has never
seen his child, now 18 months old.
Sadly, this case
is all too typical. While divorced
fathers complain that they are often
treated as second-class parents, never-married
fathers are much lower on the totem
pole. True, their situation has improved
since the 1970s, when an unwed father's
children could be given up for adoption
without his consent even if he had
raised them.
Today, partly as
a result of several legal controversies
in which unmarried fathers successfully
contested adoptions, the majority
of states have ''putative father registries"
by means of which a man can assert
his paternity. But the purpose of
these registries often seems to be
less to protect the rights of the
father than to protect the rights
of everyone else: the mother who wants
to give up the baby, the adoption
agency, and the adoptive parents.
Some would say that they also protect
the rights of the child. But that
depends on whether you believe that
a child is better off being adopted
than being raised by the biological
father.
In most states, the
unwed father has to file with the
registry either within a certain period
of the child's birth -- from five
to 30 days -- or, as in Massachusetts,
at any time before the adoption petition
is filed. But neither the mother nor
the adoption agency has any obligation
to notify the man of the adoption,
or of the fact that he is a father
or father-to-be. Even when the father
is notified, he may not be told about
the putative father registry -- which
is what happened to Jones, whose attorney,
Allison Perry, refers to the Florida
registry as a ''well-kept secret."
That is the situation in most states.
Not only are most men unaware of the
registries' existence, even some lawyers
don't know about them.
Amazingly, many specialists
believe that it's too much of a burden
on the woman or the adoption agency
to require that a man be notified
of his paternity. Instead, they argue
that it should be his responsibility
to file with the putative father registry
every time he enters a sexual relationship
with a woman, on the off-chance that
a pregnancy may result -- a requirement
that, if nothing else, smacks of a
humiliating invasion of privacy. Surely,
it is far more efficient and less
invasive to limit the notification
requirement to cases in which a pregnancy
actually happens, and to place the
burden on those who are aware of the
pregnancy.
You would think that,
unlike men who seek to avoid their
paternal responsibilities, fathers
who want to be responsible for raising
their own children would at least
encounter societal sympathy and support.
Sadly, that has not generally been
the case. Unwed fathers who contest
adoptions are often faulted for not
taking affirmative steps to find out
about the child's existence, and in
some cases are blamed even if they
were actively deceived by the mother.
Often, they're suspected of being
abusers whose real hidden motive is
to control the mother.
The issues of men
burdened with responsibility for unwanted
pregnancies, and of men who are not
allowed to be fathers to wanted children,
are linked by a common thread. Biology
has made men and women unequal with
regard to reproduction. In recent
decades, thanks to both technology
and social change, we have made strides
to alleviate the inequality for women,
helping them avoid unwanted childbearing.
But we have lagged far behind in equalizing
the situation for men. We cannot ask
men to be equal parents while giving
virtually all the power in reproductive
decisions to women.
Cathy
Young is a contributing editor at
Reason magazine. Her column appears
regularly in the Globe. |