too much to write...but I'll try to be concise.
I think that as 2 sentient, mature adults, the people invovled shoud be able to come to a fair compromise depending on the situation without having to bring in the law. I find it very sad that it was necessary for her to take him to court to resolve this issue. To me, this is is very clearly an issue of social and personal obligations that a parent should have the decency to fulfill without even the need to bring the law in as enforecement. In other words, this is simply an issue of basic human decency.
As far as legal rights go, I compare child support to littering fines. If you are caught littering on the highways, you can be fined a substantial amount. The way I see it, if a man gets a woman pregnant and for whatever reason, medical, personal, or religious, she decides to keep the baby -- he is basically littering on society if he tries to weasel out of taking care of that child, and so yes, he should be fined.
A couple of other points:
1. It was not an easy decision. A woman put her body thru 9 months of torture, knowing that the father may never provide any emotional or financial support. And if she was hoping for child support, and she can read and write, she probably already knows that it will be like pulling teeth to get any financial support from him. So unless she is a sucker for pain and torture, I don't think she was hoping that by getting pregnant, it would be her ticket to financial freedom.
2. It does not matter who did not want the baby. If he had gotten genital herpes instead of a woman pregnant, he'd be unhappy about the outcome, but, what matters is how he will take care of it. He made the choice to sleep with someone he didn't care about, and consequently his baby has been brought into the world and he should have enough human decency to make sure that the baby is taken care of.
3. Child support. The thing about child support is that it should cover just that, the amount of money it costs to keep that child clothed, schooled, fed, sheltered. That way no one can sit there and accuse the receiver of being a money grubber. If she is capable of caring for that child without the absentee father/bastard then child support should be minimal and should be deposited to a savings account in the child's name not to be accessed by anyone other than the child.
4. The father's rights. After the child is born, his rights becomes the same as that of the child's and the mothers -- the right to make sure that his offspring is taken well care of.
Just my pov.
