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Male accountability is gender equality in post-Roe America [1]

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Date: 2023-08-26  

Perhaps, as Justice Alito proclaimed in the opinion that overturned Roe v. Wade , the decision in Roe was wrong from the start. It’s well known that the late Justice Ginsburg believed that it would have been better to approach it under the Equal Protection Clause, not the due process concept of privacy. After all, abortion is really a gender equality issue.

A pregnancy subjects a woman to a lifetime of bondage to a degree incomparable to that of a man. It affects her daily bodily function, freedom to work, obtain an education, travel and have social relationships. A pregnancy renders a woman physically and economically vulnerable. It completely alters her life trajectory and destiny. This is not so for the man who participated in the conception. The man’s physical body remains unchanged. The man’s freedom to work, attend school, travel and have social relationships remains unchanged. There is no outward evidence that he has created a pregnancy, thereby no social stigma attaches to him.

This Nation purports to value the opportunity for women and men to equally access its privileges and liberties, but we need to walk the walk. Being that the effect of pregnancy is so unequal between the woman and the man, we must maintain mechanisms that level the playing field between a woman and man for an unwanted pregnancy. The availability of safe, legal abortion is one way to provide that level playing field. Until men are held equally accountable for an unwanted pregnancy, abortion must remain legal for all of this Nation’s women. If abortion is not going to be legal for all of this Nation’s women, as is now the reality, then some legislation needs to be enacted to level this playing field.

You might say child support laws address this, but you would be missing the mark. If a man doesn’t want to be involved with a pregnancy, he can choose to remove himself from it. What I speak of is not child support; what I mean is true, equal accountability from the moment of the unwanted pregnancy’s inception. It must be as life-altering, stigmatizing, freedom-restrictive and physically demanding as an unwanted pregnancy.

Federal legislation can create this kind of accountability. Call it, for example, the ‘Male Equal Accountability Act.’ Any state that substantially limits the ability to obtain an abortion would be required to hold both parties equally accountable for unwanted pregnancies. This legislation would require a state to establish a DNA database, where the DNA of every male resident of the state would be stored. Every male would be mandated to provide a DNA sample for inclusion in the database. Then, when a woman or girl is forced to remain pregnant and give birth, she can choose to have the fetus’ DNA matched with that of the various states’ male DNA databases to determine the identity of the male whose sperm created the unwanted pregnancy. That male’s name will be published in newspapers and other media. His name will be listed on a public, searchable website where the names of all male creators of unwanted pregnancies will be listed. Financial support will be required at the outset of the pregnancy, and a court ordered ankle monitor will be worn by the male so as to ensure his participation in paid employment. Full financial reporting and attachment will be required so as to prevent the male from avoiding financial support.

The United States of America has decided that women do not have the same degree of freedom men do. This Nation has decided that women are merely subservient vessels to be held in bondage for the production of a valued commodity. If this country is to continue to be the world’s beacon of liberty in the absence of equal Constitutional footing among the genders, federal legislation must provide women and girls with equal protection of the laws should any one of them find herself mandated and bound to be pregnant when she doesn’t want to be. The Male Equal Accountability Act would do the trick. It’s the least the American people can do to level the playing field of accountability for unwanted pregnancies in the absence of a Constitutional right to terminate them.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/8/26/2189574/-Male-accountability-is-gender-equality-in-post-Roe-America

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