No, my view is simply that when rights are in conflict, lesser rights must yield to more fundamental ones. Bodily autonomy of a person is more fundamental than "a father's right to his child."

Suppose you went to see a performance of your local philharmonic, and after the performance you went to congratulate one of the great concert violinists on his performance. The violinist and his manager exchange significant looks, then whack you over the head. When you wake up, you are in a hospital room, with wires and tubes implanted all over your body hooking you to the violinist. You see, the violinist has some serious medical issues and will not survive unless he uses your body for total life support to regulate his own bodily functions. The good news is, he only needs you for nine months. Are you suggesting that you have no legal or moral right to unplug yourself? Of course you aren't! You have a right of bodily integrity, and that means that your bodily integrity cannot be forced to yield to that of another in this fashion.

A fetus is not a "person" under U.S. or European law and has no legally recognized "right to life" that is inviolate. (See, e.g., Roe v. Wade and Vo v. France). One has to be born to be a "person" under the law. Consequently, a fetus has far more limited legal rights than a person - a position with which I agree. Justice Stevens has suggested that the "rights" of a fetus, insofar as it has them, should increase and vest as the fetus grows and reaches the birth stage that brings it into full legal "personhood." While not formally adopted into law, I think his suggestion has merit.

I am also very cautious of the patriarchal traditions in our legal system. For many centuries, a fetus only had any legal rights on grounds of "denying a father the right to his offspring." The woman had no rights at all. As recently as fifty or sixty years ago, the Court still issued regular rulings depriving women of basic rights in the name of protecting them from themselves. Just a few decades before that, forced sterilizations of women were commonplace "cures" for everything from headache to depression. And now that a line of bodily integrity comparable to that which men have always enjoyed under the law has finally been acknowledged as extending equally to women, I am not about to advocate that we back away from it.

You want personal responsibility? Try single parenting. Women have been living under a regime of "if you screw up, there's consequences" for thousands of years while men have wandered off footloose and fancy-free.

You also seem to think that pregnancy is a "choice." That denies the real prevalence of rape and sexual coercion/exploitation, as well as the reality that birth control is not 100% effective.

Your solution does not violate any of the father's rights; it merely imposes on him the responsibility of providing limited financial support to his offspring. On the other hand, it completely tramples on the rights of women to the integrity of their own bodies.

If you can come up with a way to transplant a fetus into the body of this hypothetical father who so wants it - without significant risk to the mother - then maybe I'll back it.

But when your solution is "the State owns women's bodies, and oh - it can also collect a little bit of cash from the men," then the answer is no.

Hey..., I'm not here to implement this crap! I'm here to create debates :)