Then the mom goes to jail, and likely loses custody of the baby, which is promptly gained by the father who perhaps puts the baby up for adoption. Besides, do underage kids of wealthy people have any assets or income to make them a target anyway? The idea that children of famous/wealthy people are more at risk because they might be required to support a rape baby strains credulity to say the least.
Insurance or whatever (Woman ordered to pay 2 million back after lying on football star about a rape), it doesn’t matter where the money, or other benefit, comes from. If you are comfortable insinuating that men who claim they’ve been raped are just dead-beat dads trying to scam out, you must be equally comfortable with insinuations that women who cry rape are just cheap sluts trying to scam some benefit.
Incidentally here are a few cases of men (& boys) being settled with paternity payments for non-censual sex: Abortion and Men’s Responsibility/Rights
There’s no “child” if it isn’t born.
No, it’s clearly to punish the boy, otherwise the government would pick up the tab or force the woman to support it herself since he is the victim here. And yes, much of the time it’s pretty clear that a major motivation for child support is some kind of collective punishment mentality against males; otherwise there’d be more concern for the actual welfare of the child in question, instead of the idea that all that matters is taking money from the man (or boy!) and giving it to the woman regardless of the circumstances or the consequences. Child support quite often is not for the child.
Why should you punish a victim because of what his or her rapist did? Would you force a raped woman to carry her rapist’s fetus to term and then raise the resulting child to adulthood? The gender bias here is obvious.
And the justice of it is hardly beside the point; if justice doesn’t matter then why should anyone care for that child or any other in the first place? You can’t say that justice only applies to certain people, because then it isn’t justice.
I am not saying men who claim they were raped are making it up NOW, I am saying that if you allow a rape exception to child support duties, you will have a bunch of men claiming they were too drunk to consent (and many very well may have been), etc. and therefore shouldn’t have to take care of their kids.
That said, the women claiming to be raped rarely allege such things for “insurance money” or any other benefit, but if it is likely they have, I have no issue calling them on it. I don’t think it should be assumed they have not because women are above such a thing, but rather because all evidence tells us that by and large, they don’t.
I’m okay with the woman having the right to abort, regardless of the circumstances of the impregnation. If she’s to face penalties, let it get hashed out in civil court.
I find brickbacon’s argument compelling: if the law was enacted as the OP proposes, the immediate result would be SOs of women falsely claiming they were raped in order to force the woman to bear the child, in numbers that would dwarf the number of cases of women actually raping men and getting pregnant by them.
And the OP’s scenario reeks of that lawyerly tendency to construct a very nontypical scenario in order to justify a legal stance that flies in the face of common sense.
Most courts, and common sense, have dictated that the murder of a pregnant women should in many cases be treated two deaths. The only reason there is ambiguity at all on this issue is because the anti-abortion crowd wants to use it for political aims.
No, it’s what’s in the best interest of the child. Is it better to have financial and hopefully custodial/parental support from the victim in this case or not. This is a civil matter about what is best for the kid, not a adjudication on what is fair and just for either parent.
This statement just shows how misguided you are. I don’t really think it needs a specific rebuttal given how nonsensical it is.
It’s not punishment. If anything, this child is a victim too. The question is why you think the father’s concerns trump the child’s. They don’t.
No. And call it what you will. As someone else stated, this is just another example of biology trumping an ideal world.
I am saying it doesn’t apply here at all given that justice is not what is being decided here, nor is there universal agreement about what that means.
If an “ideal world” requires putting aside something as basic as biology, then it’s a rather useless standard to strive for, wot?
I mean, ideally, nobody would ever die from falling. Curse you, physics!
What if a lesbian gets pregnant by raping an underaged child? Should she be forced to have the baby and give it to a “real” family? What if the lesbian’s lover is the mother of the underaged child? What if…what if…what if?
You are missing the point. His comment was about how such different standards are gender bias. I agree it is, but one we can’t correct via legislation or science at the moment. It doesn’t mean we are slaves to biology or physics, just that our limitations and abilities to trump those realities imposed on us are what they are.
?The reason that idea exists is because of the anti-abortion agenda; it’s meant as a legal wedge. First you get it declared murder to kill a fetus, then you start doing things like arresting women for miscarriage.
In other words you’re wrong and have no good argument. So you throw out a vague claim that I’m “nonsensical” since that means you don’t have to make any actual rebuttal.
This is about cruelty, not biology. This is about further tormenting a victim of sexual assault because of an obvious agenda against males. Just like the crusade against abortion, the child is just a weapon being used against the true target: the boy in this case.
The obvious, fair solution is to have the government pay; but that’s off the table because it doesn’t punish the boy.
No, the idea exists because people recognize that a pregnant who intends to keep their baby is essentially carrying a child. To treat stabbing a pregnant women in the stomach (killing her child) as the same as doing the same to a non-pregnant person is kinda dumb to most people. YMMV.
Or that when someone says:
Most people can understand that person who makes such statements is not being rational, nor are they interested in actual debate.
[QUOTE=DMX]
When I sleep, my man be out.
[/QUOTE]
..
No, I think that most people can understand the concept that other people actually disagree with them.
And I note that you’ve repeatedly ignored my point that the government can simply pay for the child, easily solving the problem of who supports it. Your ignoring that supports my belief that the real point is to punish the boy, not support the child.
Well, damn. Whenever I bring this up to an anti-abortion type, they say “Oh, that’s never going to happen.” It’s only a short hop, skip, and jump to arresting a woman for “killing a baby” when she miscarries and alcohol/caffeine/asprin/whatever is found in her blood.
Is there any way we can compare this question to one actually debated in the real world: castration of (male, obviously) rapists as part of their punishment?
I think if you’re serious you should start a new thread. This one is too tainted with stupid.
Practically speaking, this is a non-issue, because the legal determination takes too long (except in the case of a confession and out-of-court settlement).
Not nearly as common as most adolecent boys would have it.
The brood cow analog falls down because the pregnancy was caused by an intentional illegal act on the part of the cow.
The constitution guarantees a lot of rights that are abrogated for those in prison.
This is more on-point regarding current legal status. However, one of the aspects we’re discussing here is what should be, rather than what is.
Valid point from a practical perspective, but I believe we’ve already agreed that this isn’t a practical issue, and it’s the ethical issue we’re discussing.
Good point that child support is for the child rather than the parent. However, since child support can be reduced to a simple sum of money per month, why does it matter whether the parent pays or the government? If your answer is budgetary, well, please refer back to my point that this isn’t a practical issue, it’s an ethical one. (Plus, this would be so rare, if effectively policed, that the cost to the state would be trivial.)
Your harping on it is equally telling.
Good point, as well as the one about sovereighty.
… due to the criminal activity of another. However, I bet there are plenty of cases where the criminal activity of another can lead to additional costs to the victim. The difference here is whether the victim can stop that necessity with an abortion.
What avenues are those? My understanding is that both parents have to yield their parental rights, to allow an adoption. You can have your child taken away, but does that alleviate any burden for financial child support?
The bolded part implies to me that this fact is significant. In the case of a rape, I assume the victim would register a complaint, showing that it was not a case of civil consent.
I agree.
People who only see one side to this aren’t looking very hard. There’s plenty of stupid here, true, but there are also valid arguments on both sides.
However, I don’t see such a change happening in this country, even if it weren’t for the practical issues, due to the sovereignty issues raised by brickbacon and/or EverWonderWhy.
But I do feel that if you rape someone, you give up some of your rights, regardless of whether you’re a man or woman and who you rape. I would be OK with a woman being forced to yield the decision about the outcome of the rape, despite generally being a big proponent of women’s rights. If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.
But the arguments that such a decision would be a matter for courts to decide, not victims, is a good enough one for me to back off from that (regarding forcing either abortion or forced pregnancy).
Regarding child support: when a woman is raped, she can give up the child for adoption. Could a rapist prevent that? If so, and if a man is raped, should he have less rights than the woman?
People who have been raped should have the option to terminate parental rights without any hassle or prejudice, which would preclude the victims from paying support. Rapists should never be allowed custody, and should have to pay support if the victimized parent chooses to keep the child. If the victimized parent terminates their parental rights, the baby should be placed for adoption regardless of the rapist’s feelings on the matter.
But all this is dealing with a born child, not a pregnancy. Woman have the right to terminate their pregnancies, and that shouldn’t be removed. If rape victims have rights over their rapist’s bodies and medical decisions, then I say we cut all male rapists’ dicks off without anesthesia, because now it’s a “rape tool”. Except, no I don’t because that’s stupid, and also cruel and unusual punishment.
All this is ignoring the HUGE potential for reproductive abuse that would be opened up. Overall, this is just a terrible terrible idea, and the circumstances it involves are so vanishingly rare* it’s really not worth debating.
*A woman who wants a baby so bad she rapes a guy and steals his sperm :rolleyes: and THEN decides, whoops, no, now I want an abortion, but the rape victim dude wants to keep the baby, because apparently he also completely changed his mind about wanting kids, except in the opposite direction, and the rapist woman was convicted of rape fast enough (under 6 months!!) that there’s actually a chance she can legally have an abortion after her conviction. Yeah. :dubious:
The cause doesn’t matter. What you’re saying is like a rape and incest exception in an anti-abortion law. The woman’s rights to control her own body in this regard don’t change because of the circumstances of the pregnancy.