I don’t know the percentage of reversibility, but I do know that it isn’t sterilization. It doesn’t stop the production of sperm cells, it just cuts the line before it gets to the seminal fluid.
IMO arguing that men should have the same choices as women when it comes to parenthood is a denial of biological reality. They don’t and they can’t and there’s just no changing that. It’s like complaining that people who live closer to the equator get an unfair advantage when it comes to warm weather.
I’ve never seen a suggestion for a solution that didn’t replace one problem with a worse one. That’s no solution at all.
And of course, the only real question is what’s best for the child, not what the fathers think is “fair.”
That’s not the question until the child is born. This subject covers more than that.
I think it has to be divided into three parts. Sex and conception. Pregnancy, and then if carried to term, the third person that needs to be considered, the infant.
The only time when it’s equal is in the sex and conception portion. After that the biological differences and the third person play their role in determining what most fair and just for all concerned. It won’t be and can’t be equal.
I don’t think I said anywhere that it would be required. What I said was that if a man doesn’t want to have a kid he should get a vasectomy. Not a legal decree, but a way to just cut the shit and take matters in his own hand. I have heard it is reversible, but it is kind of a big deal. However, not as big as a deal as a woman getting her sterilization reversed. I just though it would be easier if the man stepped up to the plate.
Wrong. Children are not of such overriding importance that they reduce men to the status of inanimate objects. They are not some sort of higher order of being, like humans compared to rats. They deserve consideration, but so do men. If the position “screw the men, the children are all that matter” is moral, then so is the position “screw the children, it’s the men that matter”. Men deserve to be regarded as more than exploitable resources.
And I’d like to point out that half of those oh-so-important children will grow up to be men too, so your position isn’t really in their interest either.
And I’m still waiting for you to address the question I posed to you and Kobal earlier. It’s a really simple yes or no question.
If men were the ones to get pregnant instead of women, do you still think the law would deny males abortion rights but grant them to women?
You seem to be arguing biology has little or nothing to do with why women have rights in this arena that men do not have. But this is such a ludicrous idea that I’m reluctant to think you really believe this.
When it is argued how unfair it is that women that are allowed to control whether a child is born or not but men are not, the unspoken implication is that society can actually do something about this unfairness, as if this is a wrong that should be corrected because it is based on arbitrary criteria. But this could not be further from the truth. If we accept that:
- women get pregnant while men do not,
- women should be permited to have an abortion should they choose,
3)) men should not coerce or force a woman to undergo painful medical procedures against her will, and - mothers and fathers are equally responsible in the eyes of the law for the offspring they create and ethically responsible for taking actions to prevent their gametes from causing unwanted pregnancies…
… then why do we keep seeing people whine about what women can get away with as opposed to what men can’t? The persistence of this lament almost makes me think some people would prefer that abortion be illegal, just so that things are “fair” between the sexes. Of course that would be a lose lose proposition, but hey, at least those sperm-stealing hussies who put holes in condoms would no longer have an advantage over the poor men who got tricked into sleeping with them. Yay, justice for all!
So is there any reason why this negotiating cannot happen before sex? I have no problem with two people agreeing that they don’t want to have a child, and making something legally binding out of it. People should have the right to make a legal contract spelling out child support issues before sex.
I do have a problem with the idea that you have a “right” to do whatever you want, and then “opt out” the moment things get complicated. If you want to “opt out,” you ought to do that before you start sticking your dick in her. By the time the woman is pregnant, the damage is done. Don’t even begin to tell me it’s fair for you to sign a form and walk away.
It’s like setting off bottle rockets, and then arguing that should a fire break out, you should have the “right” to decline responsiblity as long as you do it withing the first ten minutes of it happening. After all, fires are easy to put out when they are small, right?
Because women can get away with a lot of things that men can’t, of course.
No, that would be injustice for both, also known as cutting off your nose to spite your face. The “persistence of this lament” is due to the simple fact that men don’t like being treated unfairly. Shocking, I know.
That sounds like a great way for a man to make sure that he doesn’t HAVE any sex.
That’s known as the “The slut should have kept her legs shut” argument when applied to women.
The argument that men should be coldly rational about sex doesn’t work. Both because men simply aren’t, and because if they WERE they simply wouldn’t have sex at all with women under our present laws.
Mmmhmm. You understand exactly whats happening.
Problem:
If I tell this woman that if she gets pregnant I’m not going to have anything to do with her, she won’t want to have sex with me. It turns out that women are generally not interested in the kinds of guys who would leave a pregnant lover high and dry. And it’s generally a turn off to say “Look, if you have my kid I don’t want to have anything to do with it, and I really don’t care if it suffers in poverty or not. My personal comfort is the much more important to me than my own child, much less some lady with the bad luck to get knocked up.” Hmmmm…
Solution:
AHA! If I don’t have to tell her that I’m the kind of guy who’d abandon her and my kid if trouble comes up until after I’ve had sex, she won’t say no! Why, there ought to be a law!
The reason why you don’t want to do these negotiations before sex is that it would hurt your chances of getting sex. You’d rather not tell your partner what kind of guy you are until after you’ve already gotten what you want. You’d like to maintain the illusion of the social contract that you act like a responsible adult when you have kid, because it serves you well. But you’d like to have the legal option not to actually have to do that.
Well, boo hoo.
Hypotheticals are one thing, nonsense is another.
Be accurate in your representations and you will get a better response.
The unfairness is not about the control of the existence of the child.
If a pregnant woman wishes to go through with her pregnancy and give birth, no one, and definitely not me, is bitching about her having the right to do that unimpeded.
If she wants to parent that child after it is born, I have no quarrel with that, either.
She is also absolutely entitled to not give birth to that child if she doesn’t want to. The court that declared she has that right clearly stated that it understood that she may wish to exercise that right because of a number of factors that have nothing to do with the fact that she is the one who carries it in her body.
Women have a right to make these reproductive decisions for themselves, decisions based on factors both pre and POST birth, and I support all of that.
My quarrel is with the fact that HER decisions can be imposed on HIM as well.
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Why do you feel the need to make things up? No one has said that abortion should be illegal to make it fair. There’s many pages outlining exactly what we think would be fair: men should be given the right relinquish their parental rights and responsibilities within a short period of time after learning they have helped conceive. Period. Simple. You don’t need to invent new things to argue against. Just deal directly and honestly with the ideas that are being put forth.
And in case you missed it, it seems to be more true than not that women can give their children up after birth as well, but men cannot.
So women have pretty much all the choices for everyone, and I think that is horribly unjust AND leads to some women using that power to manipulate their relationships with men, leading to the conception and birth of more children than would otherwise be the case.
And let’s not forget, I’m a woman.
She’s not imposing any decision on him. He made his decision before she did. He agreed to be a father when he came.
Having an abortion is taking responsibilty. And FWIW, it’s not exactly a walk in the park. Not taking responsibility would be leaving your kid for your husband to raise and then taking off. Or leaving it in a trashcan or something. In those cases, yeah, you should keep your legs shut.
Funny. You guys manage to control yourselves when AIDS is the issue. I bet if you moved to South Africa, you’d suddenly become very coldly rational about who you have sex with.
And are you saying that there are no sane men who would be willing to support their children? That no sane man says “Well, if it comes to that, we’ll find a way to work it out?” and actually does that? No sane men that are in the kinds of relationships where if things go wrong they work it out together? Or just that no sane man is capable of keeping himself to partners that he trusts not to poke holes in condoms?
This.
As someone else said, in slightly less than half of men, vasectomy can be reversed and pregancy achieved in two years. Considering that normal fertility sees 85 out of 100 couples pregnant in a year, this is a significant reduction in fertility, even for those for whom the reversal is considered successful. cite.
Plus, which I think no one’s mentioned yet, vasectomy on demand is still a pipe dream. Young men who request it are told to wait, often years, before they can find a doctor to consent to the procedure. The latest article I read about this phenomenon of young men seeking vasectomy, and their troubles finding a doctor willing to do it, was in the Chicago Sun-Times about a year ago, but if you google, you can find more.
Where did you get that definition of sterilization, Diogenes?
People always say this; but the idea of ‘what’s fair’ plays a very important role in the legal system.
If a dirt poor man gets a woman pregnant and wants nothing to do with the child; the mother will get a rather small child support cheque. It would be far more in the child’s interest to open up tax rolls and randomly choose a man with high income, declare him the father and get a much larger support cheque. We don’t this because it would be grossly unfair.
The point of this absurd hypothetical is just to point out you can’t wave away all questions of justice or fairness.
I’m starting to think that Dio has serious daddy issues.
And by the way, Dio, if your assertion were true, you would have to be advocating that abortion be made illegal for exactly the same reason: she “agrees” to be a mother when she decides to have sex.
And, again, this is so because the legal basis upon which women have had their right to an abortion acknowledged is their right to privacy, which SCOTUS interpreted to mean a woman’s right to her reproductive choices, in that having a baby could be burdensome on her psychologically, emotionally, socially, financially and of course, physically.
It’s a bitch when you hold two positions that pretty much cancel each other out, I understand that it leads to unfortunate things like sticking your fingers in your ears and saying lalalala I can’t hear you. My sympathies with your struggle.
On this we agree. Which is why the situation of the guy in the OP is unfair (assuming he’s not lying, obviously) : during or before the sex and conception portion, the woman told him she’d terminate an accidental pregnancy. And then she changes her mind, or was lying all along. There’s gotta be a disincentive for this scenario - it’s unfair to everyone, including the kid. No good comes of it.
I think it’s beyond evidence that the ultimate choice goes to the one getting pregnant. I acknowledged that biology was the reason women got the ultimate, uncontestable decision. But the decision is not just about “controlling what happens inside me”, it’s also a reproductive choice, and a motherhood pick. And that is not a hand-waivable side effect, considering it’s specifically mentionned in text by SCOTUS. Had their decision been “it’s about immediate body control”, they would have said “it’s about immediate body control”. They didn’t.
+1
Though I would like to stick up for the guys here, condoms can break or be defective. Forcing a guy to get a vasectomy is not the answer either until they come up with one that is 100% reversible. We can not force the guy to freeze his sperm on the off chance he might want to reproduce in the future. There i also a cultural bias against vasectomies in several cultures - men do not want to be seen as shooting blanks…it emasculates them.
[fwiw, as i have mentioned on here, i had 2 pregnancies while exercising birth control. The pill for the first one, taken correctly and while perfectly healthy and not on any meds or herbal substances, and once with the pill and a condom, also while healthy and not on meds or herbal substances. The rubber broke.]