One issue some fathers’-rights advocates raise is what’s sometimes called “choice for men” — the idea that a man who learns about an unplanned pregnancy outside of marriage should have a limited window to formally decline parental rights and financial responsibility, similar to how a mother can choose adoption. Under most proposals, he’d still owe some compensation tied to medical costs and the pregnancy itself, but wouldn’t be on the hook for ongoing child support if he had no say in the decision to carry the pregnancy to term.
It’s a genuinely contested idea, but it’s not only argued by fathers’ groups. Karen DeCrow, a former president of the National Organization for Women, once wrote: “If a woman makes a unilateral decision to bring a pregnancy to term, and the biological father does not, and cannot, share in this decision, he should not be liable for [two decades] of support … autonomous women making independent decisions about their lives should not expect men to finance their choice.”
To date, U.S. courts have consistently declined to recognize this kind of reproductive-rights argument for fathers, and child support obligations generally attach regardless of the circumstances of conception or a father’s wishes at the time. Whatever your view, it remains one of the more debated ideas in fathers’-rights advocacy.