There’s one other person with legal rights in this equation that you’re leaving out.
Sorry, wrong link: #405.
That ignores a simple fact: unless we see radical changes in biology men cannot get pregnant. What’s unfair is that men cannot get pregnant and women can. It’s unfair because all the physical burdens of actually bringing children into this world fall on women and women alone. That cannot be changed. It should not be made even more unequal.
Your proposal not only continues to ignore that essential unchangeable biological fact, it actually makes things even more unfair for women and children. A man who willingly has sex and does not want to use effective birth control or find a partner who will agree to an abortion afterwards should she get pregnant should not be able to simply declare that he did not want the baby and does not want to support it. That has no comparison with a woman who has sex and then faces birth control failure and must face two difficult choices: either have an abortion or have a baby.
Society has every interest in not forcing an unwilling woman into bearing a child she does not want to bear. We most certainly do not have an interest in deciding to make abortion illegal based on a stranger’s religious or moral beliefs. Society has no interest at all in letting a man walk away from supporting his own children.
No legal framework should condone the alleged right of a man to father children and foster all the costs of caring for children on everyone else but him. That’s not “freedom” or “fairness.” That’s simply a lazy jerk who wants sexual pleasure without the clear reasonable rational expectation of sexual responsibility.
The woman has extra fucking options because we have fucking given her the damn right to those options. Abortions are about more than the fucking right to control ones body. It is about the damn right to fucking kill a fucking fetus. A fetus that (using your rationale) you fucking agreed to have as soon as you had sex. (See how my argument is more persuasive when I sprinkle it with words like fucking and damn?)
Why does the child have the right to support from its biological parents, especially from one that did not want it to begin with? Why can’t the state support the baby if a woman has a baby she cannot afford?
Because one is biologically driven and the other is legally derived.
How have both parties accepted the risk of a child when the woman can get an abortion?
We have never forced women to have abortions, I don’t think anyone is proposing that father have the right to force women to have abortions, I don’t know how that even enters the conversation. We are not forcing a woman to have an abortion by telling her that she cannot rely on a reluctant father for financial support in raising a child, its her choice.
Equating a woman’s right to an abortion to a man’s right to abstain from sex is kind of comical isn’t it?
Am I misremembering, or do you claim to be a lawyer?
Look at whose rights are at stake. Who is being supported here. Then you will realize why you are just flat out wrong.
Situation 1.
Man and woman have sex. Woman gets pregnant. Woman has abortion. No child support owed.
Situation 2.
Man and woman have sex. Woman gets pregnant. Woman does not have abortion. Child born. CHILD HAS RIGHTS TO SUPPORT.
The woman in neither situation has a financial claim on the man. The child does. I know this is the moment for ZPG to come in saying that women do this deliberately to live in luxury off men, and you to start blathering again “why isn’t it a flat rate.” But that is both of you, as you have the whole way, ignoring the fundamental issue. The child has the right to support. At least she is willing to admit that she doesn’t believe a child has that right, and should be left by the roadway to starve. You, on the other hand, talk around and around and around and around this issue, either deliberately ignoring or simply being incapable of understanding that this isn’t about women’s rights as to the wallets of men, is about a child’s rights to the wallets of its parents.
I’m getting pretty tired of repeating myself. I have addressed every point you have made in this thread, I don’t think you can say the same thing.
Are you under the impression that you have not been repeating yourself?
Perhaps we must agree to diasagree.
No. I know I have repeated myself.
Because you, ZPG, and the rest of the “it’s so unfair men have to support children they created” brigade are ignoring one simple fact. It’s the child’s right, not the woman’s.
Yeah, I remember that post, I don’t remember you citing any caselaw. I then came across inheritance laws that did in fact distinguish between legitimate and illeglitimate children. This distinction was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1971, Labine v. Vincent (1971).
Gomez v. Perez seems to be more on point than cases regarding inheritance.
Perhaps you can tell me why the Supreme Court distinguishes equal protection for child support from inheritances.
I don’t think anyone is ignoring the differences in biology.
In your hypo, why does the guy engage in unprotected sex and the woman has the misfortune of having a broken condom. What if the guy’s condom broke? What if the girl was on the pill and got pregnant anyway?
Why is there no interest in making abortion illegal? States can in fact regulate or even criminalize abortions after the first trimester, can’t they? The right to abortion is not absolute, is it?
I suppose one reason you would allow men to disavow their biological children is to make sure women only have children that they can support either alone or with a willing father.
Yep, a tax lawyer. But for most purposes related to the law, I might as well be a well informed orthodontist.
I trot out the fact that I am a tax lawyer when people start making up shit about how lowering the tax rate will increase tax revenue and other bullshit like that. I also trot it out when Rand Rover tries to imply that he is a useful member of society that “adds value” in proportion to his income (not taht he doesn’t add any but its not really proportional).
Because we have given them that right. Why should they have that right from an unwilling biological father?
And why can’t the state support the child? I can understand child support in cases where the biological father has implicitly or explicitly agreed to support the child why does a child have the right to the wallet of a parent that didn’t want them to begin with? I’ll tell you why, because the law says so, and that is not enough to make it right.
I would have hoped at law school you would have picked up some analytical skills, though.
Well, if your agenda is that it is better that my taxes should go to pay for the consequences of you getting your rocks off, than it is for you to put your hand in your own pocket, I might accused you of being more than a little self centered.
The purpose of child support laws is to prevent the children being dependent on the state. We don’t think it is a good idea, generally, to make people dependent on the state when there are other viable alternatives. We think it better that people work than sit at home receiving welfare. Not least because of that deficit thing out there.
Which was overruled by Trimble v. Gordon, 430 U.S. 762 (1977), and again in Reed v. Campbell, 476 U.S. 852 (1986).
It doesn’t in any significant way, but even if it did doing so would again derail the conversation from the matter being discussed. The fact of the matter is that the Equal Protection Clause requires that illegitimate and legitimate children be treated the same for purposes of child support.
So we should make abortion illegal. Then we should allow men to walk away from supporting their biological children. Because if we don’t it’s unfair to men who want to fuck and not deal with the results.
That’s insane. Again you are simply putting ALL of the burden of childbearing and child rearing on one sex. Worse, you are ludicrously doing so in the name of some absurd notion of fairness. First she has to make sure that she can support a child alone by herself even though the child carries half of someone else’s DNA. Then she has to find a willing partner. And by willing we apparently mean a man who will actually agree to help support the child he plans to help create. Then she has to carry the child for nine months and give birth to it. She isn’t allowed to have an abortion because it wouldn’t be fair to the man because he can’t get one.
If at any point the men objects to this process he can simply stick her with all the bills related to childrearing. Because to allow her to collect child support would be otherwise unfair. To men.
You have a truly strange definition of fairness.
You have got to be kidding me here. It’s wrong to ask a man to support his biological children . . . but it’s perfectly acceptable to make complete strangers support that child? Strangers who literally had nothing to do with his decision to stick his dick somewhere? And this is somehow supposed to be in the name of fairness?
Huh? Why should taxpayers get to pick up the tab for a man’s careless breeding decisions?
It’s a right the child shouldn’t have.
They aren’t picking up the tab for a man’s careless breeding decisions. They are picking up the tab for a woman’s careless gestating decision.
You can’t gestate without a man’s breeding decisions. No man has the right to ask strangers to pay child support for him.
This thread is completely ridiculous. In the name of “fairness” some people apparently believe that men should simply be able to fuck and breed without any consequences at all. What a demeaning view of half of humanity!
Yes you can; simply find a way to acquire a sperm sample (rape works), mix up an embryo, and you’re good to go. Moreover, there’s plenty of precedent saying that the father is still eligible for child support.
No, men are the ones who can’t make breeding decisions; any breeding that goes on happens at the sole discretion of the owner of the uterus in which the gestation is taking place.
And, power implies responsibility, etc.
Or, power doesn’t imply responsibility, children just have an inherent right to support, and fathers don’t have a right to ask for child support, they have a right to take it if they can’t provide it, since people don’t have an affirmative right to their own money greater than the affirmative right of children to be supported.
I agree… It took 2 to tango… And child support does not even cover half of what the custodial parent has to pay for the child… If you make it you take care of it.
Yes. Your position is known and at least consistent. It’s an odious opinion, but at least a consistent one.