Dads: No cash for unwanted children
In lawsuit, activists argue if women have right to decide fate of fetus, fathers can decline financial role.
David Shepardson and Eric Lacy / The Detroit News
A national men's rights group plans to file a federal lawsuit this morning in U.S. District Court in Detroit, claiming that fathers have the legal right to opt out of the financial responsibilities of supporting a child they didn't want -- in a claim they dub "Roe v. Wade for Men."
A Troy lawyer for the New York-based National Center for Men said he will file a long-shot lawsuit on behalf of 25-year-old Matt Dubay of Saginaw that seeks an order declaring the Michigan Paternity Act unconstitutional. Dubay recently was ordered to pay support for his 8-month-old daughter.
In 2004, Dubay, a computer technician, began dating a woman who worked in cell phone sales. He said she told him she couldn't get pregnant -- because she was using contraception and had physical conditions that prevented her from getting pregnant.
After three months, they stopped dating -- but soon afterward, she told him she was pregnant.
"It's just not fair. She has options in this. As a man, I have no options and am forced to live with her choices," Dubay said Wednesday night. "I was up front. I was clear that I didn't want to be a father and she reassured me that she was incapable of getting pregnant."
After learning of the pregnancy, they discussed adoption.
"I was trying to talk reason, to try and have a two-way conversation. She considered an adoption but then quickly stopped listening," Dubay said.
So he researched the issue and found the National Center for Men in New York, which agreed to take his case.
"The whole issue is, she made the decision based knowing that I wasn't going to be there for the child in any part and she said she could raise the child on her own," Dubay said.
Troy lawyer Jeffrey A. Cojocar, who is filing the lawsuit for the National Center for Men, acknowledged it will be an uphill battle.
"No one is denying this is going to be difficult. But we want the law applied equally between sexes. They each should have a say about a child's future," Cojocar said.
Women's organizations oppose the lawsuit because it leaves the child and mother to fend for themselves.
"This is ridiculous," said Leslie Sorkhe, director of operations for the Association for Children for Enforcement of Support. "This is about the child, a child that needs the emotional as well as the financial support of both parents. The child is entitled to his or her equal protection under the law."
Renee Beeker of Milford, legislative vice president for National Organization for Women's Michigan chapter, says the lawsuit implies that the burden of pregnancy prevention is solely on the woman.
"In the event of an unintended pregnancy, the needs of the child must be met," Beeker said.
The National Center for Men and its president don't want to be able to force women to have abortions or give up a child for adoption. They want to be able to go into court before a child is born and renounce parenting responsibilities -- and 18 years of child support.
"More than three decades ago, Roe v. Wade gave women control of their reproductive lives but nothing in the law changed for men. Women now have control of their lives after an unplanned conception," said Mel Feit, the group's director. "But men are routinely forced to give up control, forced to be financially responsible for choices only women are permitted to make, forced to relinquish reproductive choice as the price of intimacy."
Cojocar admits that courts across the United States have routinely thrown out lawsuits by fathers who claimed women committed fraud by lying about taking precautions to avoid getting pregnant. Those courts have typically found a greater state interest in ensuring that minor children are supported. This claim is different in that it cites the U.S. Constitution's equal protection clause.
But, the men's group says it should be more than biology.
"We will argue that, at a time of reproductive freedom for women, fatherhood must be more than a matter of DNA," Feit said. "A man must choose to be a father in the same way that a woman chooses to be a mother."
Saginaw County Circuit Judge Patrick McGraw recently ordered Dubay to pay $475 a month -- plus half of all health care expenses for the baby girl, Cojocar said.
He sold his dream car, a 1998 Trans Am, and took in a roommate to stretch his budget so he can begin to make child support payments next month. He has seen his daughter once -- when he took a DNA test to establish paternity.
The child's mother didn't return calls seeking comment.
Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox, who has made collecting unpaid child support a top issue, said fathers must support their children, regardless of the circumstances of the births.
"If the subject is child support, our focus should be on children, not on squabbles between the parents," Cox said. His office has collected more than $23 million in child support, his office will announce today.
Michigan parents owe more than $7 billion in unpaid child support -- part of the $100 billion owed nationwide by parents who fail to support their children.
Legal experts say a ruling allowing men to opt out of support could open a Pandora's box, forcing the state to pick up the difference to support children of single parents.
The planned suit names the girl's mother, who is 20, and the Saginaw County prosecutor as defendants.
