We allow parents to give up responsibility of their children all the time. Its called putting them up for adoption.
Then why aren’t we willing to “stick” them with the consequences of the choice to have sex? Why do we give them another bite at the apple by letting them have abortions on demand?
Women can put up their kids for adoption and disconnect herself from responsibility. Why is it OK to force a man to have a child when we cannot force a woman to have one?
Should we elminate a woman’s right to give up her child for adoption?
The thread title is “abortion & child support.”
Are you under some kind of impression you can walk in off the street and walk out with an adopted baby under your arm? That the authorities don’t consider whether a couple is capable of providing support to a child before permitting adoption?
Yes it does! Several posters here have spoken harshly of the evil sluts who might refuse to abort inconvenient fetuses on demand. Then, these same posters have gone on to complain about the courts that might hamper their access to their darling children.
Concerning men having to pay support for children not their own: In the past, children born during a marriage were assumed to be the husband’s responsibility. Period. That was before genetic testing. Lately, there have been some cases in which children–after quite a few years–were discovered to be offspring of other men than the husbands. Alas, the unlucky cuckolds were not always allowed to sever all connections with the children they had helped raise.
There’s a simple solution. Fathers should have genetic testing done after every childbirth. Not just in cases of “unwed mothers” claiming support. Even in wedlock; guys can’t be too careful.
Indeed it was.
Reading the OP seems to help clear these misconceptions up though.
Here it is again:
Abortion and child support
Ok, this will be a good one.
Let’s put aside the legal abortion debate. Let’s just concede the point that it is the constitutional right of every woman to choose whether or not to abort. No father/spouse consent/notification or anything. That is unconstitutional as well.
If it is 100% your choice, then why when you exercise your choice to have the child is it okay to come to baby daddy with your hand out? If it is your choice, and not the father’s choice, why does he have to pay?"
In 2000: 46% of kids in foster care were white while 60.9% of the population was white; 36.6% were black while 15.1% of the population was black; 13.5% are hispanic while 17% of the population was hispanic; 2.6% were American Indian while 1.2% of the general population was American Indian and 1.4% were Asian compared to 3.6% of the general population.
There is a preference among adoptive parents to adopt children of the same race, so all other things being equal, the greatest demand would be for Asian kids followed by whites/hispanics and blacks/American Indians.
The average age of children entering foster care was about 8 years old. Many of these children are recovered by their parents or close relatives within 3 years. White parents recover their children 56% of the time while black parents recover their children 22% of the time. So you have even fewer white children in teh system available for adoption.
My understanding is that a large percentage of them are in foster care with relatives (about 25%) who adopt them if some yuppie couple comes sniffing around (and custodial relatives have a huge advantage in the adoption process). Indeed about 15% of children who enter foster care end up with their foster care relative.
The children available for adoption in 2007 (I’m using different years because taht is what i could find) were 38% white, 30% black, 21% Hispanic of any race, 2% Alaska Native/American Indian, 1% Asian, 5% two or more races, and 2% unknown or unable to determine.
White children were disproportionately adopted relative to their numbers as waiting children: of the children adopted from foster care in 2007, 45% were white, while 25% were black and 20% were Hispanic.
I don’t follow how that relates to the part you quoted, but I’ll try to answer. You’re conflating noncustodial parentage with court approved termination of parental rights, which has nothing to do with child support. Women don’t have the “right to give up children for adoption.” Parents can seek to have a court approved termination of their parental rights in adoptive proceedings, but the court has to approve it as being in the best interest of the child, and if they are in agreement or default, the court can terminate both parents, or not. Women can’t just “adopt out” children over the objections of fathers. If the biological father wants the child and the mother wants to sever her parental rights and adopt it out, she has no “right” to give it up for adoption any more than a father has the right to opt out of fatherhood and child support if the mother retains custody. If the mother is unwilling to assume her parental role and wants to adopt the child out but the father wants to raise the child, she’s out of luck - he gets the child, she pays him child support.
The kicker there being, if she carries the baby to term.
Exactly. The crux of the disagreement here is that the legal situation changes so drastically upon the birth of the child. You can argue that it’s the mother’s “fault” that the child was born, but child support laws really aren’t about apportioning blame or punishing people for having sex. Once the child is born, the issue that she could have chosen not to bear it is legally moot in the face of the brand new issue: the child now has a right to support from both of its biological parents so long as those parental relationships exist.
My brother is mentally disabled. As such, he receives some sort of Social Security payments. I’m not sure which kind. Since my parents are his legal guardians, the payments are sent to them. They have to account for every penny that they receive and show how it is being spent on him. Why isn’t such an agreement standard in the case of child support? If we agree that the child is/should be the recipient of support, why shouldn’t the custodial parent have to show how it is being used for their benefit?
Because the presumption is that it is being spent for the child’s benefit. If you can demonstrate it isn’t, you can go to a court and have the situation addressed. But people have a crazy idea of what can be seen as the child’s benefit and what cannot. If my ex-wife buys a winter coat - is that for the benefit of my child? Without it, she cannot go out in winter. But the people who are whining here would point to that as a classic example of a wastrel woman spending their hard earned (beer) money on her own spendthrift self.
I would say that that’s a bad presumption. I would also say that in your example, mom buying a coat for herself is not for the child’s benefit. I’m fairly certain that expense wouldn’t pass muster for my parents.
Money is fungible. How do you determine where money from her expenditures is coming from?
You don’t. You keep track of where the money is going. When I’m entrusted with my company’s money, I’m required to keep receipts. My parents have the same restriction with my brother’s money.
Oh man I’d LOVE to scream “bullshit”. And I would if there were laws regulating how child support money is spent, ensuring that it is spent on the child. But there aren’t, so… yeah, you’ve got a point.
And it’s even easier to do now in a paperless database society. Bank statements will at least say where you spent the money, if not what you actually bought.
Great idea in theory, but in practice it’s just not feasable. Court dockets are jammed as it is, and simply don’t have the time or manpower to audit the expenditure of every dollar of child support that gets paid each month. What’s worse, many parents fight every chance they get, and if you give them another weapon to use against each other the courts would be completely jammed with parents claiming the custodial parents aren’t spending the child support properly, a good proportion of which would be groundless or even harassment. Worse, it’s nearly impossible to prove in court that the money’s being misspent unless it’s very, very clearly being misspent to the detriment of the child. If it’s that clear, there already is an avenue of relief for the non-custodial parent: sue for custody yourself.
Wow. You’re joking right.
Anyone who would sever all connection to a child who’s called the “Daddy” since they were born, dreamed of you walking them down the aisle, and thought of you as a parent that gives them unconditional love…just to appease their bruised ego…well, that’s a person who doesn’t deserve love in their lives.