In Favor of Legal Paternal Surrender
Legal paternal surrender (LPS) is the idea that men who unintentionally become fathers should be allowed to walk away from their paternal duties to the (unborn) child (i.e. child support), which would mirror women's right to walk away from their maternal duties via abortions. LPS would provide men with a legal equivalent to an abortion, which would give them the same sovereignty over their futures as parents (or as non-parents) that women have. This, I believe, would be more equal than our current system.

Now, because this topic is touchy and easily misunderstood, I would like to briefly clarify what LPS is not. LPS is not "spousal consent", wherein the mother can only abort if the father approves. Nor is it "forced abortion", wherein the mother is required to abort if the father demands it. LPS has nothing to do with the mother's right to abort; it simply says that men should have the right to refuse parenthood and walk away, as women already can. This means no child support, no duties whatsoever.

To reiterate: I am not arguing that the father should have the power to force a woman to abort her fetus or to keep it: I am arguing that the father should have the legally-protected right to completely sever ties to his future children, just as women can sever their future ties via abortion. It is still her body and her choice, but it's also his future, and I think he should have that choice, not her.

Legal paternal surrender is also a necessary freedom in cases where men are raped by women, just as abortion is a necessary freedom in cases where women are raped by men. Unfortunately, in our current system, male victims of female rapists are required to pay child support to their rapists, even when the male victims are under age, and this is unacceptable.

He then posts links to incidents were men are raped or tricked into having babies by women, and are sued into paying for child support.

Legal paternal surrender has been discussed in many different ways and by a wide variety of people, so I encourage you to supplement this essay with some of the discussions linked below. Instead of reiterating these arguments, I will spend the rest of this essay responding to some common objections to LPS, which most of these discussions never mention.

He posts other links and then tackles on some of the objections to this argument

1. LPS would let men have sex all they want with no consequences, leaving pregnant women in their wake! How is that fair?

1a. This is actually a very reasonable concern, and it is a good objection to LPS as it has been presented. I agree that this needs to be addressed before LPS becomes the law. Indeed, I have become increasingly disappointed in many of the arguments in favor of LPS because they never answer this objection, and by that token, they end up arguing for a system in which women have to do all the work involved in getting an abortion, while men would simply have to sign a form and that's it, which is totally unfair to women.

So, in order to make LPS as fair as possible for men and women, I would like to propose some caveats to the process that men would have to go through, with the goal of mirroring the difficulties that the mother would have to go through for an abortion. The caveats I propose are as follows:

> The father could only sign the paperwork at an abortion clinic (if one even exists near him).
> The father would have to jump through the same hoops as the mother would have to (waiting periods, multiple visits, maybe an unnecessary probe of some kind, etc.)
> The father would have to pay a fee equal to the theoretical cost of an abortion at that stage of pregnancy, just as the mother would have to.
> The father would have to complete this process in the same timeframe as the mother would have to complete the abortion process: up to 24 weeks, and this timeframe would begin when the father learned about the pregnancy or, if the mother kept her pregnancy secret, when he learned about the child.

These are some heavy caveats, but I think they make the process as fair as it can possibly be, and I'm confident that most men would accept these caveats if it afforded them the right to choose parenthood. I would even go so far as to guess that most men would even agree to a few good kicks in the balls to balance out whatever physical procedure a woman would have to endure, again, if it allowed them to choose not to be parents.

I think this would be a fair situation (or at least, as fair as we can possibly make it), and I wonder if feminists might even support this because it gives men a "horse in the race", so to speak, regarding abortion laws and restrictions: it forces men to jump through the same hoops as women, so maybe, just maybe, they'd be a little more motivated to remove those hoops.


2. The child has the right to the financial resources it needs: the child's right to basic necessities outweighs any of the father's rights.

2a. This assumes that all single mothers are struggling and that they need child support payments to provide their children with basic necessities, which is simply not true: mothers who don't need the money still receive child support from fathers, so in those situations, there is no conflict between the child's rights and the father's rights: the father's money is being taken for the convenience of the child and the mother.

Besides, if financial support from a second party was always required, then it would be mandatory for every single parent to receive money from others to help raise their child.

2b. In cases where a single mother is struggling to provide basic necessities for her child, I think the state should assist her as a form of welfare, The funny thing is, the state has already shown that it is willing to pay 100% of what a child needs (Google "safe haven laws"), so why not simply tell the state go halfway for single parents who need financial assistance? Why does the state take money from the father (who, unlike the mother, never had the option to detach himself from the child) when the state was willing to pay for everything? Does the state's desire to save money really allow it to take what they need from non-consenting men?

And no, it's not a form of tax: it's targeting specific men for decisions they did not make.

2c. As long as we're taking men's money "for the good of the child", why don't we just take some of Bill Gates' money? That's a lot more practical, both for the man, and for the child, and Bill Gates is just as responsible for the mother's decision to keep the child as their fathers were, so why not take the child support from Bill Gates?


3. It's about biology! That just sucks for men, but at the end of the day, it's her body and her choice. Abortions do not derive from a right to opt out of parenthood, but a right of sovereignty over one's body.

3a. Yes, her body, her choice, but it's also his future, her choice. If a woman decides to keep the baby, that's her choice, and it should be her responsibility.

Consequently, I also think that if a mother gives birth and chooses to give the baby up for adoption, but the father wants to keep it, then that's his choice, and the mother should have no further obligation to the child or the father: not even child support payments. In our current system, a mother may choose to give away her new baby, but if the father keeps that baby, she may become liable for child support, not because of her choices, but because of the father's choice, and that's not fair either: let people take responsibility for their own choices, not for other's choices.

As you can see, my argument for LPS is also an argument against legally-required child support in situations where there was no prior agreement to raise the child in question. I'm not arguing against child support in its entirety, just when the mother or father never agreed to become a parent. This stands in contrast with situations where both parents have already committed to raising a child: you can't just change your mind once you already have a child established in your care, but if you never agreed in the first place, then you shouldn't be held responsible for it.

3b. Suppose I invented an artifical uterus that could carry a child to term. If you became pregnant but did not want to undergo pregnancy, you could instantly and painlessly transplant the embryo into the artificial uterus. Essentially, I'm asking you to imagine a world in which a person's body was no longer a necessary factor in human reproduction.

If this technology existed, would these same opponents of LPS be okay with a complete ban on abortions because it's no longer "her body", so she no longer gets a choice? Would they really be okay with requiring women to become financially responsible for a child just because a condom broke? I doubt it.

This objection to LPS also implies that the only valid reason to get an abortion is because you don't want to be pregnant and give birth. However, the most common reasons why women get abortions have nothing to do with their bodies. Usually, women get abortions because they don't want to be responsible for a child. E.g. "I can't afford a baby" or "I just don't want another child." If these reasons are valid for women who don't want to be parents, then why aren't they valid for men?

4. If you're not ready to be a father, then wear a condom or don't have sex!

4a. This same argument was directed at women before Roe V. Wade: "if women don't want to get pregnant, they should just keep their legs closed". Feminists rightly called this "slut shaming", but those same feminists are oddly silent when it's men who are being slut shamed in the exact same way.


CONCLUSION

In our current system, consent to sex does not equal consent to parenthood, but only for women. And while it's true that biology curtails men's choice to have or not have biological children, it should not curtail their right to refuse involvement with those biological children.