Choices, choices, choices -- but only for women

The newspapers tomorrow (Wednesday) will be reporting the decision
today of a Food and Drug Administration advisory panel that
morning-after contraceptive pills should be available to women without
prescriptions throughout the U.S.

Now, of course, although the FDA usually accepts the recommendations of
these advisory panels, it may not do so in this case. Several
influential pro-life groups are strongly opposed to this proposal. But
there is a definite possibility that the FDA WILL accept this proposal.
A minority of U.S. states (as well as several European countries)
ALREADY say that morning-after pills should be available to women on an
over-the-counter basis.

So . . . consider the steady extension of reproductive choices
available to women. Contrast it with the choices available to men who
may not want to be forced into fatherhood.

The post-conception choices available to women in the U.S. already
include abortion, dropping off newborns at fire stations, etc., in many
states, and (as a practical matter) a unilateral decision to put a child
up for adoption. Now it is likely that women will have available to
them, throughout the U.S., a morning-after pill without prescription.
If this happens, they will be able to go into a drugstore at any hour of
the day or night (as the National Organization for Women told the FDA)
and buy a morning-after pill without a prescription.

Meantime, what are the choices available to men, and how are THEIR
choices being enlarged? Just to ask the question is to know the
answer. Men's choices remain that of accepting the decision
unilaterally made by a woman, and -- quite possibly -- paying her 18+
years of so-called "child support" to make it easier for her to bear the
financial consequences of her own unilateral decision.

In their coverage of this matter, will the media even mention this
angle on the whole situation? Again, just to ask the question is to
know the answer.