Yeah, defending the defenseless is pretty reprehensible.
I agree. Since that is two people I expect both of them to pay their share. You completely ignore what allowing men an easy out would do for their behavior. You essentially free them of any responsibility for their participation in the risk of pregnancy, pretty much insuring that more men will become the irresponsible spoiled brats you abhor.
Comparing accidental pregnancy to prostitution is an incredibly distorted and ignorant view of reality.
You seriously don’t think that occurs to women already? What you’re proposing is that society bear the financial cost so men can have an easy out to avoid the consequences of their choices. Hardly equitable. You seem to think that promoting irresponsible behavior in men will somehow be more than offset by an increase in responsibility from women and society. Then you call that equitable. It isn’t. Financially speaking I do think we should limit the amount women can get on welfare.
They volunteered when they took the risk knowing the potential consequences.
good luck getting that passed. legal requirements like that require a plan of enforcement. I don’t know what China does but it would be interesting to find out.
You seem perfectly comfortable with taking away people’s choices to enforce your personal view of morality. Good for you.
The pressure and the stigma have been in place for years so I think your expectations there are clearly unrealistic.
You have made clear in your example the man doesn’t want the child or anything to do with it. What is his role other than a sperm donor then? That’s his sole contribution - the genetic matter.
Does the mother bear more responsibility? I’d argue yes. She has custody of the child - he is just being asked to write a check once a month. Hell, he can even set it up automatically. I don’t see how you can not see her as shouldering more responsibility.
The car example is, frankly, completely silly. It’s not the way things work. And even if it were, the car doesn’t have legal rights, and isn’t alive, and won’t die if it is left on the street without oil and gas.
In an ideal world a woman would have the option to bear the child if she provide for it. Some women can and they are good single mothers. It’s the ones that choose to bear children in situations where they know they can’t afford the child and expect other people who did not approve or consent to their mommy aspirations to pay for it that I have a problem with. They should be held responsible for being idiots and lack of foresight. I see it as no different from me buying a private jet and then trying to collect a tax from everybody else to pay for it.
Hmm. If I get drunk beyond the capacity to consent to sex, but am seduced, do I get an out on child support?
Like I said, the talk about responsibility and choice is a red herring. We have decided as a culture that having sex is not an agreement to anything but having sex; we assume that parents will support children because that’s the way it works the vast, vast majority of the time.
Morally-speaking, I think the best alternative is a general child-support tax to aid in child support, and abortion-on-demand.
This does mean that society ends up paying for children that someone might not be able to afford, but happens anyway if someone without wages to garnish ends up having many children.
And why didn’t the woman accept that responsibility when she had consensual sex? Why does she get an extra bite at the apple? Why does she get to make her decisions regarding abortion with the force of law behind her right to force a man to become a father?
And the woman didn’t assume that risk? Or did the woman only assume the risk of having to make a choice later on? A choice that is colored by the financial health of the biological father.
Half the divorces I see result in this sort of dynamic. Daddy finds a new mommy and starts a new family and wants to forget he ever had kids with the old mommy. I’ve seen partners mark the days on their calendar until their kids by a previous marriage turn 18 so they can turn off the spigot. That sort of behaviour is reprehensible. Not wanting to support a child that you never wanted in the first place… a bit less so.
There are men who fathered children in their young teens with older women (i.e., the men were the victims of the horrible statutory rapist) who have been stuck paying child support. Your idea of a general child-support tax is interesting. I suspect it would wipe out a large segment of the anti-abortion movement once they were forced to put their money where their mouths are.
They don’t get to extort money from a sex partner for one thing. After that public services for the poor in the United States is rather punishing in and of itself.
It’s very simple. In the first case, a woman should be able to go out in public without being pressured to touch a man period. In the second case, in this society the decision to bear a child effects considerably more people than just the woman and child and they have a right to voice their opinion.
You realize that society has voiced that opinion by passing laws that require child support, right?
And just so we’re clear, shaking a woman’s hand is tantamount to rape, but a man shooting a woman pregnant with his child to get out of paying her child support should be considered justifiable homicide?
But these women aren’t trying to collect from “everyone”–they’re trying to collect from the fathers.
I do agree it’s not a great situation, bringing a child into the world if you can’t support it and your sexual partner doesn’t want a child. But to make abortion compulsory in that situation is such a gross violation of a woman’s autonomy. I find it incomprehensible that you think there’s ever a situation where a woman can be forced against her will into having an abortion but you think a man just holding his hand towards a woman means he’s likely to rape or sexually assault her. Surely if you’re this upset over a hand held in a woman’s general vicinity, no matter how you feel about how pampered children are in our society, you’d think that forcible surgery involving someone’s reproductive parts would be worse, no?
It seems that some people in this thread are taking the task of raising a child solo rather lightly.
Any slight financial benefits come at a high cost of responsibility, loss of freedom, lack of sleep, and others.
I would be curious to hear how many of the anti-support contingent have themselves raised a child (solo or otherwise). It’s a very hard job. I wouldn’t want to raise a child solo even if I were getting paid $1000 or $1500 a month or whatever. Some reward!
And perhaps some anti-abortionists feel similarly about the welfare of the fetus. When the convenience of the mother conflicts with the life of the fetus.