This post from TBogg and the following comments made me giggle uncontrollably – sometimes commenters are more entertaining than the orginal post. You have to wonder why ‘cinc’ is not blogging her or himself.
The Geography Of The Psyche
I was puttering around earlier working on something else and I came across this hilarious paper dealing with the spousal notification issue from the “men’s rights” perspective.
[…]
This reasoning might be questioned on several fronts. First, it is not the case that the biology is all with the women. As dozens of studies of couvade syndrome indicate, expectant fathers experience biological symptoms of pregnancy along with their partners. Both partners may feel nausea, irritability, food cravings, indigestion, and so on. Both can anticipate discomforts from pregnancy and the stresses of infant care. While the man?s aches and pains are “psychosomatic,” and are likely to be less intense than the woman?s, they are not inconsequential. Men and women both experience biological effects of pregnancy.
And they both have that glow…
In any event, the right to privacy recognized in Roe v. Wade is not based on biology only, but also on issues of emotion and identity. Justices O?Conner, Kennedy and Souter stated as much in Casey, observing that the Fourteenth Amendment protects the most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a lifetime, choices central to personal dignity and autonomy. These choices include the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. This is not the language of biology, but of religion or philosophy.
And if men choose to define their “concept of existence, of meaning, of the mystery of life” as being pregnant, the law should give them equal rights to the female body that is actually, you know, biologically pregnant. That’s called equality.
The greater maternal involvement in biological pregnancy cannot by itself resolve these larger issues. What matters, in addition to the physical effects on the body, are the consequences of abortion for the individual?s basic value structure and self-concept. Once the liberty interest protected by the Fourteenth Amendment is phrased in terms of choices and a concept of the self, rather than biology alone, the argument that the woman?s interests should trump the man?s requires further elaboration. Both men and women face choices about their roles as parents and their concepts of their own identities. Both men and women become bonded with the fetus. The fetus may be physically growing in the woman?s belly, but in the geography of the psyche, it is inside the man as well. To exclude expectant fathers from juridical notice on grounds of biology is to miss the importance of pregnancy in a man?s concept of himself as a parent and a procreative being and his vision of the meaning of his life.
Waaaah! So he wants us to give his emotions corporeal form in law now?
Commenter cinc notes the absurdity:
Seriously, I could see allowing such a law if each man seeking to enforce the law had to prove in court that (1) he is the emotional father, and (2) he is impregnated by the geography of psyche. The father should have to do this after he learns of his “emotional pregnancy,” whether by communication from the mother or by psychosomatic pee test. Once established, the right would be registered. A woman seeking an abortion could then check against the database without the delay of court proceedings.
It is really quite a beautiful solution. The woman could only subjugated by a man that is legally emotionally pregnant with her child, which I believe is the Constitutional standard. And it avoids any direct communication between the couple.
cinc 11.03.05 – 1:36 am #
Read the whole thing here…
