Letters to the Editor: Forced vasectomies and other post-Roe ways to make men responsible
To the editor: Law professor Darren Rosenblum gives a lot to think about in the op-ed article "If men were targets, abortion bans would be unimaginable." Men are the reason women become pregnant, and in many cases they do not contribute financially during a woman's pregnancy nor after the child is born.
Rosenblum's idea of collecting "DNA from all sperm-producing individuals" and creating a national registry to match all babies born so fathers are held responsible isn't as drastic as my suggestion.
Another way to help prevent unwanted pregnancies is for all men after puberty to have a vasectomy that can be reversed when they are ready to actually support a child. As I said, this is drastic, but so is forcing a woman to have a child with no financial help.
Donna McQuery, Los Angeles
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To the editor: There's actually a workable system for making men responsible for the children they create. My proposal: An immediate government-funded and administered system of prenatal child support with immediate wage garnishment for the father.
DNA testing early in pregnancy can prove who's the daddy. Wage garnishment will provide funds to meet the pregnant woman's immediate increased financial needs for housing, food, maternity clothes, medical bills, time off from work and more.
I would make this system optional (some pregnant women will not want to ID the daddy for reasons of personal safety) but funded and enforced by the government through immediate wage garnishment.
If the government's making you have a baby, it's simple fairness that the government should be making the baby's other parent pay for it too.
Linda Falcao, North Wales, Penn.
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To the editor: Here is another ploy to get government to see sense:
All who are pregnant, not just the ones who want abortions, report to your local jail. If you do not want an abortion and cannot pay for the work of gestating a child, the government can take you into custody and pay for your food, housing and medical care.
This would not fly as it would be cruel to the women, for sure. But the problem is still this: Why should we do such work at great risk and not be compensated?
Diane Starkey, Rochester, N.H.
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To the editor: Rosenblum seems to assume that cisgender, heterosexual men freely go about, impregnating women at will via "carefree sexual encounters" with no remorse or consequences. For a law professor he doesn't seem to know much about paternity law.
If we're going to have a mandatory national DNA database, let's include everyone. This would "serve many public interests," in Rosenblum's words. What could go wrong?
Bruce Bates, Laguna Beach
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To the editor: Professor Rosenblum, where have you been? At McGill University in Montreal, which makes sense because Canada makes sense.
The mere idea of men being legally held responsible for their macho tendencies to avoid condoms "because they don't feel natural" and impregnate countless women is simply startling — a thought I can honestly say I have never considered.
Perhaps Rosenblum could write a sequel to "The Handmaid's Tale" about men who are forced into mature adulthood due to their irresponsibility. How wonderfully refreshing that would be.
Nancy Maletz, Thousand Oaks
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
