In the 1980s, some men managed to obtain court injunctions or restraining orders barring their wives, ex-wives or girlfriends from having an abortion, but all these orders were thrown out by appellate courts. (Almost invariably, the women went ahead and had the abortion anyway while the injunction was still in force.)

As for "men's right to choose," the federal judiciary has yet to tackle this issue. Six years ago, the National Center for Men in New York announced its search for a plaintiff for a "Roe vs. Wade for men" lawsuit, an effort that attracted some media attention but ultimately fizzled.

Some men fighting paternity claims in several states have tried to argue, so far without success, that "forced parenthood" denies equal protection for men as long as women have the right to abortion. Peter Wallis, a New Mexico real estate broker, was equally unsuccessful in his suit against his ex-girlfriend, Kellie Smith, in 1998 for "intentionally acquiring and misusing" his bodily fluids by getting pregnant against his wishes; after a flurry of publicity, the case was tossed out. A few family court judges have sided with men who could prove that they were deliberately trapped -- for instance, that the woman lied about using birth control -- but none of those decisions survived on appeal.

If such a case does go to the Supreme Court, the equal protection argument is unlikely to hold up. It doesn't take a brilliant mind to make the case that men and women are not similarly situated with regard to pregnancy and childbearing. Moreover, under prevailing constitutional doctrine, unequal treatment of the sexes, while generally presumed to be illegal, can be justified (unlike race discrimination) by a "compelling state interest" -- such as ensuring adequate support for children already born.

Legal issues aside, do champions of men's reproductive rights have a moral leg to stand on? Are they apologists for male fecklessness or male dominance, backlashers who resent women's new rights, or cutting-edge fighters for equal justice?

The objection to paternal veto is easy to understand: A woman has physical primacy in every case. In surveys and interviews, even men who resent having so little say when it comes to dealing with a pregnancy generally agree that the woman should have the final word. (In Shostak's abortion clinic sample, nearly 60 percent of men agreed that a boyfriend should have input in the abortion decision, and 80 percent felt a husband should have an equal role -- yet, somewhat paradoxically, 60 percent agreed that if a wife wants the abortion, she should have it even over her husband's objections.)

It is not necessarily a sign of anti-male bias, as men's advocates contend, that a man's ability to control his income and his labor isn't accorded the same respect as a woman's ability to control her body. In our culture, bodily autonomy is seen as a more fundamental value than property; that's why chopping off an offender's finger seems to us far more barbaric than stiff financial penalties or even forced labor.

And yet, in a broader sense, men's autonomy is an issue. Advocates of choice for men like to cite a passage from a Planned Parenthood statement, "9 Reasons Why Abortions Are Legal": "At the most basic level, the abortion issue is not really about abortion. ... Should women make their own decisions about family, career and how to live their lives? Or should government do that for them? Do women have the option of deciding when or whether to have children?"

Substitute "men" for "women," and it's hard to deny that coerced fatherhood drastically curtails a man's ability to make key decisions about how to live his life, including when or whether to have children with the woman he loves. Think of "A Dad Too Soon," the young husband saddled with college loans, graduate school tuition, car payments and other expenses, and forced to give up a quarter of his earnings because he made a mistake as a teenager. (His admittedly one-sided narrative also suggests that the mother's paternity suit was partly driven by vindictiveness: Having waited for eight years, she filed the claim days after his wedding.) Yet, in the eyes of Ann Landers and many others, he deserves only a stern rebuke. Pay up and shut up. You play, you pay. It takes two to tango.

Advocates of "choice for men" have a point when they charge that there is a certain hypocrisy in these declarations, now that the link between sex and procreation has ceased to be binding for women. "We are no longer being truthful when we chide the male defendant: 'It took two to make the baby,'" writes Fred Hayward. "It might have taken two to conceive an embryo, but thanks to legalized abortion, only one person controlled whether or not the baby was made."

Some maverick feminists agree with this view. Karen DeCrow, an attorney who served as president of the National Organization for Women from 1974 to 1977, has written that "if a woman makes a unilateral decision to bring pregnancy to term, and the biological father does not, and cannot, share in this decision, he should not be liable for 21 years of support ... autonomous women making independent decisions about their lives should not expect men to finance their choice."

Yet, by and large, feminists and pro-choice activists have not been sympathetic to calls for men's reproductive freedom. "If there is a birth, the man has an obligation to support the child," says Marcia Greenberger, co-president of the National Women's Law Center. "The distinction with respect to abortion is the physical toll that it takes on a woman to carry a fetus to term, which doesn't have any translation for men. Once the child is born, neither can walk away from the obligations of parenthood." (Actually, a woman can give up the child for adoption, often without the father's consent, and be free of any further obligation.)

Indeed, on the issue of choice for men, staunch supporters of abortion rights can sound like an eerie echo of the other side: "They have a choice -- use condoms, get sterilized or keep their pants on." "They should think about the consequences before they have sex." (The irony is not lost on men's choice advocates or pro-lifers.) Yes, some admit, it's unfair that women still have a choice after conception and men don't, but biology isn't fair. As a male friend of mine succinctly put it, "Them's the breaks."

Order "Mothers Who Think: Tales of Real-Life Parenthood" from the editors of Mothers Who Think.