You really are the Queen of the Non-Sequitur aren’t you? Plenty of people prefer their fast food burgers without pickles.
And like ZPG Zealot, those people are simply wrong.
and obviously, drinking and making decisions about risking pregnancy makes the participants responsible in most cases.
Let’s not waste time with rare scenarios. We have specific ways of measuring the line for driving but it’s much harder to determine the line where someone’s had enough drinks to be unable to give consent for sex. It would be rare indeed that a man might argue, “I’m not responsible for that child because I was too drunk.”
Making the decision to have sex and the risks involved.
It’s about both. Child support is about the needs of the child and about who is most responsible for those needs. The genetic parents who participated in the action that created the child answers that question.
Why would I? I think the fathers are responsible.
I’m not interested in pointless speculation about perverse scenarios.
We already have a system of support for women who don’t have support from the father. That’s not the discussion. Men should pay to support their offspring when they can, and legally compelled to even when they’d rather not. That’s the discussion.
Making everybody pay so that men who sire children can easily avoid that responsibility is not an improvement or more fair.
No it certainly isn’t and you haven’t established that at all.
The question is since children deserve support who should be responsible for paying it. 1st, the genetic parents, according to their ability.
Since women are held responsible for their share of the financial burden as well as caring for the child , no, there’s no real comparison.
Look , there’s lots of threads where this has been discussed repeatedly. If you’re interested about the discussions I suggest you read them.
I am attempting to import some of the rationale for abortion into this debate as well but you’re right, I’m probably stretching.
Your point seems to be that for some women, abortion is off the table so for all intents and purposes the “choice” is no different than a man’s. In what way is that not still the woman’s choice?
Once again this presumes that these children will be left starving in the cold if we don’t force the deadbeat dads to pay up.
As it is, if you are the biological child of a poor man that doesn’t want you, you might as well be on welfare while if you are the biological child of an affluent man, you get to go to private schools and take tennis lessons.
[quote=“even_sven, post:456, topic:563985”]
I was under the impression that we were only talking about the situation where there is an unwanted pregnancy and the woman decides not to get an abortion and the biological father pays child support.
How many non-custodial mothers are there paying child support in this scenario? None, because if they didn’t want custody, they could have just gotten an abortion. And if they didn’t get custody, then they probably can’t provide any child support anyways (in jail or a drug addict).
The mother the only person who gets to choose abortion and in the process decide whether the father will be paying child support.
If you are talking about child support after the fathers leave their families, then I don’t think there are any issues of equity.
That’s because it’s been discussed repeatedly and the same cinclusions are reached, so some of us consider it resolved and fairly clear.
They do, and suggesting they don’t indicates you haven’t examined the arguments and thought it through.
You really need to make the effort to look into the subject and the previous discussions if you’re interested. No offense but new participants just repeat arguments already discussed repeatedly The answers are available if you’re interested.
I don’t recognize that. People seem to think of fair as all things must be equal for the participants. That’s an ideal that cannot apply to this situation for obvious reasons. The manner is no more unfair to men than biology itself can be said to be unfair to women.
The situation is fair based on the biological realities of the world we live in. What always happens in these discussions is people try to propose some alternative and there are no alternatives that make it more fair than it is now. All the suggestions do is make it better for men, while making it even more unfair for women, innocent children , and society as a whole. It’s a scale that can never be perfectly balanced because of biology so abandon that as a possibility.
NO IT FUCKING DOESN’T.
Seriously, for the love of all that is holy, simply repeating stuff like this time and time again is incredibly frustrating. People (including myself) have said multiple times that a child has a legal right to support from BOTH parents, and they they support that right. If you had actually bothered to read the thread before wading in repeating the same stuff other people have advance multiple times you might know this.
It isn’t about stopping kids from starving. That is not the right at stake - the right not to starve. IT IS THE LEGAL RIGHT OF A CHILD TO RECEIVE SUPPORT FROM BOTH PARENTS. As a society, we have decided such a right is a good thing. You and ZPG don’t think it is a good thing. We know. She thinks it for her reasons; you, as pro-choice, think it presumably because it advances the pro-choice, anti-female agenda. But simply saying every single time children don’t have this right is so tiresome. They do. You don’t like it. We get it. There’s nothing stopping you wanting to turn the clock back hundreds of years in women’s and children’s rights. But it’s getting incredibly boring, especially when you clearly haven’t had the common courtesy to read the thread concerned.
That’s not really my point. The point is that women are given the judgment call to abort or carry to term because it’s their body. There’s no way to make that fair.
I think it’s a mistake to look at conception , pregnancy and birth as one thing because of the changes that take place. It’s really three stages.
In the decision of sex and risking pregnancy it’s pretty equal.
When the pregnancy occurs it just can’t be equal and that’s all there is to it. What’s fair, is that the woman get’s the final say because it’s her body.
Once the baby is born, the child’s needs enter into the question of who is responsible for what. The current system is that both parents bear the primary financial burden for the child’s care. That’s fair a well.
The only stage that seems unfair, is the 2nd one, which is simply cannot be fair.
No matter how many logical gymnastics and arguments you make that’s the simply reality of it all and you can’t shift things around to make it fair.
Nobody is assuming that.
again, we have to deal with the realities as they are and that’s messy. The assumption is that the child deserves the benefit of the resources available to the parents. So, if parents are rich, the child deserves a portion of those resources which will be more than the resources of a poor parent. Got that?
What villa said. Seriously, this has been addressed repeatedly in the thread. If you don’t read the whole thing, the same arguments get rehashed over and over.
This, of course, was meant to read anti-choice in both instances.
And yes, I acknowledge in one very early post I think I used the word starve as deliberate hyperbole.
If the answer is so clear then why are there several posters in this thread that seem to disagree with you. I don’t think its clear at all, I think you are clear on YOUR opinion and the conclusion YOU reached but its hardly clear that the situation is fair or even the best we can manage.
No I understand that child support doesn’t mean the woman never has to lift a finger for the rest of her life. I understand that raising a child is hard work and i frankly don’t understand how single mothers do it. That doesn’t change the fact that she ultimately had the choice. That doesn’t change the fact that under current law, she is imposing the consequences of her choice on the biological father for the next 18 years.
What has been said that hasn’t been said in this thread? Because as far as I can tell, the arguments seem to be:
-
He should have kept it in his pants if he didn’t want to be a father (I can imagine how that sort of argument would fly if we applied it to pregnant mothers).
-
Its the child’s right to support, not the mother’s right to help in raising the child that we are talking about here (and the child right to support is directly correlated to the income of the biological father? How does that make sense? Why is the biological child of a rich man entitled to more support than the biological child of a day laborer?)
-
Its fair because this is much much much much better than having the mother apply for government aid because it hold the fathers accountable for their promiscuity (This sounds pretty damn close to punishing men for having sex)
What argument have people made that I am missing?
Well, then aren’t you saying that its unfair? Necessary in your opinion but still unfair?
bolding mine
“make it better for men”? Don’t you mean make it fairer for the man who doesn’t want the child and is about to be forced to support it for the next 18 years?
How is it unfair to the woman who has a choice to have an abortion?
How is it unfair to the innocent child? Does the innocent child starve? Does the innocent child have some right to support that correlates to the innocent childs biological father’s income?
How is it unfair to society as a whole? Society as a whole has embraced social safety nets for innocent children (born in the USA).
Its almost like child support is supposed to be a deterrent for men from engaging in sexual activity?
I understand that the burden of raising a child is greater than the burden of paying child support in most cases so there are very few (but highly publicized) cases of women who have babies for the child support. But if we are talking about the average fella, the burden of child support for 18 years is not trivial either.
And why does that support come in the form of a percentage of the father’s income rather tahn some flat amount necessary to support a child?
I believe I’ve read all your arguments but it seems like you haven’t read any of mine.
The question isn’t “what is teh rule now, where have we drawn the line”
The question is whether that rule is fair, if we have drawn the line equitably.
WHAT!?!?!
Are you reading my mind now? (and poorly, I may add)
And that’s different from your monotonous repetitions how?
I think its turning the clock forward and pro-life women oppressors like Der Trihs seem to agree with me. When someone like Der Trihs see the inherent inequity of teh situation, rather than cautioning Der Trihs about the company he keeps, perhaps you should look at the positions you take and think about why you are taking those positions. Are they principled or results oriented?
I’ve read this thread, is there another thread I should be reading in addition to this one? I didn’t see a link in the OP.
Why does the rich man get to drive a nicer car and live in a bigger house than the day laborer? Why does more of his money get taken away in taxes?
ETA: Quoting from a previous thread on the exact same subject, where the exact same question was asked.
As I stated later, that was a typo. I meant anti-choice. You have said you are anti-choice. You’re therefore anti-female. And Der Trihs, while pro-choice, appears to labor under the premise that women are sitting around rubbing their hands trying to work out the next way to make men’s lives miserable, whether it is by false accusations of rape or deliberately getting pregnant by their best friends to entrap a poor man into long term child support payments. Why he holds these views I wouldn’t care to speculate.
I don’t believe you. If you have, explain why you triumphantly spout exactly the same arguments that have been made multiple times, and sit there with a shit eating grin as if you have discovered the Wheel.
Ditto.
I disagree. I think it would be wonderfully telling to simply try my own solution for 5 years. I think the drop in unplanned out of wedlock pregnancies would be extremely significant.
(My solution, in case no one in this thread has already mentioned it, and since I’ve done this topic extensively in the past I didnt’ read it all: change the law so that if a woman becomes pregnant, the burden is on her to inform the father within the window of time that she has for having a legal abortion. She must get his notarized and witnessed signature on a document which states that he is either accepting his responsibility as a parent to her offspring (which he can modify by requiring a paternity test if he wishes), or he is giving up all his parental rights.
It is the legal equivalent of giving him the right to abort…his aborting his parental role.
If she goes past her legal abortion window without contacting the father and obtaining his signed agreement/release, she cannot require him to take responsibility.
If all women knew this was the law, it would radically change a lot of women’s decisions to have children. Because too many women, especially very young, naive, ignorant girls, think that getting pregnant will tie a man to her. And there will always be women, even if the law acted as I suggest, who will still go through with it because they believe that he’ll change his mind. But far fewer.
We’re mildly irritated that he is repeating arguments that have been made and responded to throughout the thread, rather than responding to those responses. You express your argeement with him, and admit that you haven’t read the thread?
That did come up, actually. The pros and cons of exactly that are what we’ve been discussing for 10 solid pages.
Men know the law now, that they’ll be saddled with child support payments for 18 years if they have a child they get a woman pregnant. If that’s not dissuading them, why would your law dissuade women?
Please, for the love of God, just agree she has the right solution.