I'm really tired, but I really want to talk about this. We'll see how it goes.

I just finished an episode of Boston Legal and, like all such episodes, it was entertaining and witty. However, this particular one addressed an issue that I've been wrestling with most of my life--abortion rights. Not rights for the woman, at least not only rights for the woman, but specifically rights for the man.

The situation set up in the show is as follows: crazy woman seduces man into allowing her to perform fellatio on him. She spits his semen back out into a test-tube, takes it the fertility clinic and, unbeknownst to him, impregnates herself. He, not wanting to have a child with this woman and not wanting to be an absentee father, sues her for an abortion.

I know, I know--you can't let the courts go around ordering women to have abortions, that's akin to ordering women to not have abortions. I get it. But it does raise an issue that I feel has become lost in this great debate over whether we should or shouldn't--the man's rights. And yes, I do think the man has some rights.

Part of the problem with this topic in America is that we still argue over the legality of it; so stuck are we on whether it should or shouldn't be allowed that there is no room for deeper more evolved ethical thought. We can't begin to consider the issue of male rights because they might jeopardize the female's right to have an abortion. But assuming we can put all the theological stuff on the side for a minute--what should the course of action be when a woman unlawfully takes the sperm of a man? While the fellatio might have been consensual, I think I would consider this act something akin to sexual assault at least. But more importantly, are his only options to be an absentee father or tied for life to a crazy woman? He could sue her for custody once the child was born, but what if he doesn't want a child yet? And if you don't want a child but aren't prepared to be a poor father figure does that mean you are simply out of options?

At no point am I claiming that anyone should be able to make a decision for another human being's body, but I'm disturbed by the ethical dilemma here. Disturbed because I refuse to accept "the man just doesn't count." While it is the woman's body that is gestating the child, the child is half his and will affect him for the rest of his life as it will her. To rule out any civil rights on his part seems as wrong as it is to rule out any civil rights on her part. To cut the man out of the conversation is to, in fact, cut out half of the conversation. This isn't a situation that concerns only her--the pregnancy yes, the actual raising of the child, no.

It would be different if they had sex, vaginally that is. But when engaging in oral sex there should be no chance of conception there. If a man has to consider any ejaculation in the presence of a female as possible means for a pregnancy what ramifications does that carry? Because the technology allowed for her to do what she did her pregnancy is unnatural to some degree to begin with. All-in-all I wouldn't say this is an easy question and I, surprise surprise, don't have an answer for you.

What I do know is this: an increase in civil rights for some cannot come at the loss of civil rights for others. I don't mean the loss of a white man's right to ride at the front of the bus, or a man's right to beat his wife. I wouldn't consider those things civil rights. But while concessions might have to be made, affirmative action, abortion resting solely in the hands of the woman, shouldn't we be looking forward to the next step? To a better solution? A time when race and class are no longer so connected and a man has a say in whether or not a child is born?

I know it won't ever be completely fair; after all, you can't ever make a woman carry a baby to term and I'm pretty sure you shouldn't ever make a woman abort a fetus, but shouldn't there be some legal ramifications for a woman stealing a man's sperm? Shouldn't he have some recourse?

That's as far as I've gotten. What there should be, but no idea what that "should" entails. I don't know that it matters exactly, it's just a thought resparked by a television show, but it bears consideration. I think sometimes in our rush to point out how men objectify women we forget that men objectify themselves as well. Who knew men were people too.