"Isn't Two Decades of a Man's Life Worth Nine Months of a Woman's?"

I spent part of the day re-reading Warren Farrell's amazing book The Myth of Male Power. I often forget how ahead of his time Farrell was when he wrote the first edition of the book in 1993 on why men are the disposable sex. Farrell's take on men's reproductive rights are spot on when he states:

Once a man allows himself to love a child deeply, he wants the right to love equally. He realizes that when a woman and he have created a pregnancy, the issue is not the rights of the female vs. the fetus, but the rights of the female, the fetus, and the father. He realizes that a woman who says "It's my body, it's my business," and then chooses to have a child that she makes him pay for forces him to take a job he might like less just because it pays more; forces him to stress himself out and die early--forces him to use his body for eighteen years. If it's his body being used for eighteen years, and his body dying sooner, shouldn't it be his business, too? Isn't two decades of a man's life worth nine months of a woman's?

The short answer is "yes."