I'm taking Pepilog's reaction as a starting point here. Simply because he's someone I read in my aggregator. But what I'm addressing applies to all men.
What absolutely fascinates me about this discussion is the rather twisted argumentation on the topic. The argument of the cuckoo child and the cheating mother keeps coming up—and how a man could defend himself against it, if not through secret paternity tests.
Now let's think about it from the other direction for a moment. What if secret paternity tests were legal? What would the consequences be: fathers could provide material from the—potentially shared—child for genetic analysis without the consent or knowledge of the mother. Mind you, the child probably wouldn't be asked either, which wouldn't be possible anyway at an infant age. But this would apply to all fathers—even those where the father only believes he's not the father because he's pathologically jealous or wants to shirk responsibility or has somehow gotten it into his head that the child isn't his. I'm exaggerating deliberately now—after all, the other side keeps acting like the cheating mother is the most normal situation in the world. But paternity support evasion by fathers is demonstrably a common situation...
The argument goes that one couldn't give the right to authorize the analysis to the woman alone, because then the man would be disadvantaged—he couldn't protect himself against cuckoo children. On the other hand, the secret test completely excludes the woman—how does that fit into this supposedly fair discussion? With a secret test, both the woman and the child are excluded to the point that they don't even know about it—unless the father unilaterally decides what he's doing.
The secret paternity test disrespects the woman's right to a say (it's not about the woman's sole right to decide—it's about having a say!) by completely negating that participation. It also disrespects the child's right—though one could debate whether at the point in time when this situation typically occurs (child in infancy) the child's right to self-determination should be weighted higher than the parents' right to a say.
Additionally, what really bothers me is the matter-of-factness with which the cheating mother is assumed—here something is being demanded that probably doesn't apply in 90 percent of cases—most couples probably still know quite well that their children are theirs together.
Actually, the whole thing is the archetypal self-reassurance obsession of men who, in every restriction of their absolute freedom, immediately suspect they're being discriminated against—something like an emancipation envy spreading since women have been fighting for their rights.
Sorry, but I have to tell us men something: a restriction of freedoms to protect the rights of others is not necessarily discrimination against yourself!
And it's precisely to protect the rights of the woman—namely her right to a say in matters concerning the child—that secret paternity tests definitively violate. Because no matter whether the father is the father or not: the woman is demonstrably the mother. Her rights are in no way in doubt. But they are violated by the secret test and denied to her—on the grounds that the man has no other way to defend himself. Poor male society, if such fears move us...