An interesting court case has been filed in the state of Michigan, but it concerns people all across our country. The details of this case follow, but I can give you the gist of the petition in a few words: seeking permission to be irresponsible.

It seems that Matt Dubay of Saginaw, MI has petitioned the court to release him from providing financial support for his biological child, a daughter he agrees was born out of a liaison with his ex-girlfriend. He says he informed his former girlfriend he did not want to have a child with her and that she told him she could not become pregnant because of an existing physical condition.

Dubay contends that the unintended pregnancy is not his problem and that the child resulting from their sexual encounter(s) is not his responsibility. He feels he should not be saddled with expenses to raise the child he helped create because he told his former girlfriend - before they had sexual relations - he didn't want a child.

You just knew I'd have some thoughts about that, didn't you??? And, sure enough, I do.

My first thought is that Dubay's ex-girlfriend has poor taste in men to become intimately involved with someone so lacking in compassion and ethical behavior.

There is not a doctor on the planet who will tell you that any method of birth control, outside of abstinence, is 100% effective. Couples across the world, informed there was a medical condition making them barren, nevertheless celebrate families conceived the old-fashioned way. Adoptive couples, assured they would never have biological children, are today parenting both. Some reproductive matters between any two given people are simply uncertain. And that is a 100% certainty.

That means that any time you enter the "risk zone" - which, in this case, is sexual intercourse - you could be engaging in behavior that may create a life. No matter how protected against doing that you may think you are, you must understand and accept responsibility for the fact that you are participating in behavior to procreate. And, indeed, procreation might result!

It strikes me that Dubay was willing to enter the "risk zone" for sexual relations, but vehemently unwilling to accept any responsibility for the unplanned result of those sexual relations.

You do understand what Dubay is trying to accomplish here, don't you? What Dubay is saying is that he doesn't want to financially support his biological child. He is petitioning the court to have his ex-girlfriend or the American people financially support his child - because, after all, he did say he didn't want a child and he wants that to negate the fact that he created one anyway. Dubay is screaming about his rights as a man, which he feels have been usurped by women.

What I don't hear anyone talking about are the rights of the child. Besides denying his child any emotional support, he's balking at taking responsibility for paying for the child to be raised to maturity. He'd rather not be bothered with all that.

The American people will support his child, if necessary, because we understand it's simply the right thing to do. Children are precious gifts to the world. If parents refuse to provide for them, then we certainly will.

A proper judge would prevent this from happening though. A proper judge would tell this guy he is wasting the court's time with his selfish and uncaring request, that he should grow up and father the child he helped create, and that his "setting the scene" for the connecting of his own Y chromosome to his former girlfriend's X chromosome indeed makes him responsible!

Yes, a proper judge should do that, but, considering what we've been witnessing in some of our courts lately, there's no guarantee a proper judge will prevail here.

In a perfect world, babies could choose their parents, selecting a mother and a father who would love them forever, happily parent them to maturity and willingly support them financially through childhood. Since that's not the way things work in our world, we must require a parent who simply abandons, be that man or woman, to at least financially support his/her child.

I admit I have no understanding of the abandonment of responsibility for one's own flesh and blood. Dubay's petition to the court strikes me as patently self-centered and truly shameful.

It also strikes me as overwhelmingly sad.