Why would any man ever do anything but get a “paper abortion?” You’d be insane to promise to support your kid when you don’t legally have to.
So what would happen is that men and women would make plans to have a baby (or, at least, not make plans not to have a baby) and then when the woman was pregnant her partner is going to say something like “Honey, of course I’ll take care of you and our lovely child and I love you guys to pieces. We don’t need a legal contract to guarantee that! I have to sign this paper to make sure I have the flexibility to take care of you guys the right way. We are never splitting up, honey, so don’t worry about it. It doesn’t change a thing. Everything it going to be okay.” Or maybe, in between painting the nursery walls and shopping for car seats, he’ll duck into the courthouse and sign it without telling a soul, for insurance.
At that point, what is the woman going to do? Abort a child that she still believes is very much wanted and loved? Give up her hopes for a family? Of course not- she’s going to do what people have always done and hope for the best.
Of course then when one partners decides they are not into it any more, the custodial child and parents (and likely the taxpayers) are screwed.
This will happen hundreds of thousands of times, all to protect a few men who can’t be bothered to wrap it up before sticking it in the crazy.
You know some crazy vindictive people who are great at finding mind-numbingly stupid men, then.
A man can watch a woman take a morning after pill or insist on a secondary barrier method that meets his approval. He can buy all the sponges he wants online. Extreme? Not compared to “ruining your life” by having to pay child support for eighteen years. I buy pills, take them religiously, and deal with their side effects because I don’t want to have a baby (or an abortion.) And if one of us can’t find a condom, we aren’t having sex. Two methods or it’s a no go for me.
It’s a good deal of responsibility, and I don’t see why guys can’t do the same if they are so worried about it.
In practice, of course, these “extreme” measures are often totally unnecessary. Most women are not marriage-money-baby rabid, and those that are usually do not hide it very well. If you stick to depositing your sperm in people you have at least a bit of trust in, chances are almost certain you will not end up paying unwanted child support. Of course if you are a horrible judge of character, you will probably have to be bit more cautious with who you fuck, just like you should probably be a bit more careful who you lend money to.
As I said, the callous reference to human life is astounding. Women never spoke that way about having babies when I was younger. It was a good subject, not a “gestate a fetus” subject. Whether or not you got pregnant by a human, or any other organism, that is still human life. Obviously human life means nothing to you and your choice of men proves that. I DID NOT stay with the man I married, but thankfully once he was removed the resentment was removed as well. It doesn’t sound like you lost yours, at all. This would be a deplorable environment for a baby.
You’ve made the right choice to not have children.
Apparently, you believe it is only legal sanctions that force men to stay with their wives and children. Wow, talk about man-bashing. Any man that wanted a child and wanted to be a parent would not get a “paper abortion.” They would want to support and raise their child. In the case of those that don’t, the woman should know up front and should therefore plan accordingly. We all want things we can’t afford, but marture adults understand that just because you want something doesn’t entitle you to have it. You can’t steal the sportscar you covert or the lifestyle you covert. A woman’s desire to have a child is not a license to draft someone else help support her.
You’re looking at the past with rose colored glasses. Infanticide has been a constant through human history. Abortion happened whether it was legal or not. My grandmothers and great aunts have told me stories of how women would cry for hours after discovery they were pregnant and work strenuous hours hoping to miscarry.
So is any burglur I would shoot, if he or she broke into my house. Your point is?
Human life means everything to me, but I refuse to place the potential life of one fetus against that of many other humans. The only thing my choice of an ex-husband proves is that men can be lying rats about wanting children as easily as women. When we got married, he swore he was childfree. He lied. I was able to get out of it. I wish the men of the world the same freedom of choice I had.
You could drastically reduce the consequences to the taxpayers by incentive abortion in such a case, either with a subsidy (possibly directly from the father as part of the paper abortion).
Yes, it’s inconvenient for the woman, but, as based on your statements, she should have known the consequences before having the irresponsible and/or capricious stick it into her.
I am drawing a rough order-of equivalence between pregnancy/abortion and child support; if you do not believe that demand’s on one’s finances and legal freedoms for 18 years can approximate such, then it is understandable that one would disagree with me.
We have a 50% divorce rate. Not even legal sanctions can keep people together (and no, it’s not always about men leaving women…quite often it’s the woman who decides to move on.) The fact is that our romantic relationships often do not last long enough to raise a kid. Given that fact, we need systems in place to make sure those kids still get raised even when their parent’s best paid plans go awry.
It’d be stupid for anyone, no matter how in love and how much he wants to be a father, to get into an optional legal obligation. Any lawyer worth their salt would say “Hey, I know you intend to raise this kid, but it’s better to have more options than fewer. Sign the paper.” Men would have very little to lose from an “paper abortion” since chances are the woman is not going to abort the baby on that alone, but they potentially have a lot to gain. There is no reason not to sign it.
A woman generally cannot force a man to get her pregnant. There are a lot of steps in between that give men ample room to make sure they are not leaving their sperm inside of baby-hungry women.
It’d be good to make incentives to abort wanted, loved babies? Most single parents never meant to break up. They never thought they’d be on their own. They thought their love was going to last. It’s not until later- when the kid is already there- that things fall apart. This is a far, far, far, far more common scenario than “the evil bitch tricked me into impregnating her.”
But nobody is going to take on a massive legal obligation if there is any way around it. You don’t intend to get divorced, but that doesn’t mean you would be willing to sign a pre-nup promising hundreds of thousands of alimony. I maintain that getting a “legal abortion” would be routine. And I don’t see how you could prevent people from getting them in secret- it’s not like you are going to get many women to sign them. If promising to take care of your kids become optional, I can’t see why any man- even those who do intend to take care of their kids- would make that a legal obligation when they don’t have to.
I would be open to the idea of a pre-sex agreement, where both parties can state their intentions openly. That would keep people from saying one thing with their mouths and another with their lawyer. Of course “If I knock you up, you’re probably on your own, Babe,” probably isn’t going to get a lot of guys laid, which is why I suspect this idea isn’t floated. Otherwise, if your objectives are so clear why wouldn’t you be comfortable expressing them from the get-go?
That’s what I’m struggling to understand. Everyone should be in agreement that if one or both lovers do not want to become parents, they should make that explicitly and abundantly clear before an unwanted pregnancy occurs. I can’t see how this is arguable in the slightest. If a woman continues to have sex with a man who has told her upfront that he doesn’t want a kid and will not help her raise one, then I would be perfectly fine letting her be 100% responsible for any child created. Because she was given informed consent before playing with a loaded gun.
Since there is no better way to document that a person’s desires have been made explicitly and abundantly clear to another person than having them both sign a legal agreement, why do so many people reject this idea in favor of a system in which a man could theoretically tell a woman one thing (“I love you; let’s make babies!”) and then do a complete 180 once sex leads to pregnancy (“I hate you now that your ankles are swollen and you’re throwing up all over the place; I don’t want to be a dad anymore!”). It just makes no sense and unfortunately makes people who do this look stupid and/or sinister.
The beauty of having a pre-agreement is that in theory, it would allow a woman to fully inform her intentions to the man too. She could let him know that should she become pregnant, she would not pursue an abortion or give the baby away. Can someone explain to me why a man hellbent on not being a daddy and who thinks abortion is as simple as taking a pill would not want to know this information before he had sex with her? I mean, if I were such a guy, I wouldn’t want to let my gametes anywhere near her body. But it seems as though those who are pro “abortion rights” for men aren’t focusing on the benefits of an informed decision. They just want to have the power that they believe a woman has, with none of the negative consequences that come with this “power”. That’s all there is it to it.
Your prediction of what would happen is patently false. Today, men can get a prenup, to avoid giving away too much money after a divorce. According to your logic "It’d be stupid for anyone, no matter how in love and how much he wants to be a husband, to get into an optional legal obligation. Any lawyer worth their salt would say “Hey, I know you intend to stay married to this woman, but it’s better to have more options than fewer. Sign the paper.”
Yet, millions of men get married every year without seeking a prenup. There are several reasons why this is so, and similar reasons would mean that not all men would sign the “paper abortion”.
I think a lot of men would like to have the option to sign the pre-agreement you mention. It’s just that, according to some responses in this thread, such an agreement would not be legally binding, at least within our current legal system.
I don’t think a lot of men are against such an option.
I don’t know what men you hang around, but if you’ve never met a man who would voluntarily forgo signing a “paper abortion” for his pregnant wife, then you’re not hanging around the right sort of men.
(It’s funny that you caricature women who have babies to extract money/keep the guy around as bizarre rare nutcases that can easily be avoided, but then you caricature *all *men as selfish bastards who would sign a document saying they are not responsible for their kids, even within the context of a loving marriage)
I think even sven’s argument is that the paper doesn’t change anything for men who intend to support their children - they will carry on supporting them even if they do sign. It would be rational to sign in that situation - you continue to support your kids, but give yourself an opt out if things change later. Now I know we don’t all act rationally at all times, but it seems to be the rational thing to do, even in the context of a loving marriage.
Perhaps not. But in my experience, most people who argue for “abortion rights” for men (and this includes men and women), never argue for making pre-agreements legally binding. Usually they reject the idea out of hand because somehow they think its ridiculous (like the whole idea of “abortion for men” isn’t?..yeah, dream on), enormously difficult, or my personal favorite, harshly inconvenient (because they might not get laid, yall!). Search the board for past threads and you’ll see what I’m talking about. Or, just watch the number of excuses that will now pop up in this one.
The pro position in this eternal debate always seem to rally around the idea of giving men an out after pregnancy occurs, not before. Which is why they compare this to abortion in the first place.
By the same logic there is no reason for the woman to gestate a fetus if she knows the man intends to sign the paper abortion. The system I envision is rather simple. Woman discovers she is pregnant. She knows she has X number of days to get an abortion. If she doesn’t want to be raising that kid alone, she secures a formal legal agreement for support from either the biological father or someone willing to be the legal father and take on the financial responsibility that entails before X number of days are up. If she doesn’t she either has an abortion or deals with the consequences on her own.
One factor often discounted is that in many of the worlds cultures and for many people, any non-marital sex is considered to be an agreement that the sex is sex for pleasure and means nothing in terms of ties or commitment.
What is this “X” number of days? What if she discovers she’s pregnant when she’s 5 or 6 months pregnant? What does this do to “X”? Most importantly, how does the state verify when the woman discovers she’s pregnant? She could always say she didn’t know until the baby poked it head out. How would anyone know if she was lying or not? If a woman doesn’t know she’s pregnant until the birth occurs (and yeah, it happens, albeit rarely), why should she be held fully responsible for a newborn that was created by her and another person?
Your system is not “rather simple”. It’s a bureacratic nightmare that anyone with more than two brain cells could easily work around if they chose to do so. And really, I don’t know why this isn’t freakin obvious on its face.