Since the New York Times hid its Op-Ed pages behind a reader's toll (aka subscription fee), I've pretty much ignored them. (At least Salon has the one-time ad-view bypass -- get a clue, Sulzberger!)

But a certain charming and admirable Madman drew this dreck to my attention:

The bottom line is that if we want to make fathers relevant, they need rights, too. If a father is willing to legally commit to raising a child with no help from the mother he should be able to obtain an injunction against the abortion of the fetus he helped create.

I don't know where to start on this. Apparently the guy who wrote this, one Dalton Conley, is so attached to his privilege that he considers being "willing to legally commit to raising a child" to constitute de facto rights over the woman's body.

That's right, ladies. If a man steps up to claim your womb, it's no longer yours! Tag! Your it!

What's more, the contribution of the pregnancy you bear hardly counts at all!

Well, you might argue that all the man provides is his seed in a moment of pleasure. The real work consists of carrying a child for nine months, with the attendant morning sickness, leg cramps, biological risks and so on.

But how many times have we heard that fatherhood is not about a moment, it is about being there for the lifetime of a child? If we extend that logic, those 40 weeks of pregnancy - as intense as they may be - are merely a small fraction of a lifetime commitment to that child.

Madman nails the thinking:

We made our choice when we had sex, and it is a more profound choice that a "moment of pleasure". That we often treat it as just that is a fault in us. We have surrendered our future to the choices of another person, if we wanted to be truly honest about it, the way women have been forced by custom, dogma, law and ... well ... physical force, to submit their futures to the vagaries of others for most of recorded history. We have chosen to be cast along by forces beyond our control. This terrifies men who were raised to believe that they could have the world when they were boys. When you get right down to it, men are bigger romantics that we like to admit. We LIKED be little princes, and we hope to grow up to be Prince Charming, completely in control of when we find the girl of our dreams, a girl who is saved by us and made our bride.

And let's not miss the significance of "princes":

• Princes in effect own other people and control their destinies.
• Princes rule by mere entitlement.
• Princes are deemed to be better than everyone else.
• Princes take offense if their privilege over you is challenged.

No thanks. If you want to be a prince, go play Dungeons & Dragons and leave the rest out of your fantasies.

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