How so what? How is a woman’s body her body? Or are you asking how that gives her authority over her reproductive decisions? Both of those statements are pretty much self-explanatory. Or are you asking something else?
Sorry if this sounded brusque. It doesn’t sound like you’re trying to argue that a man should be able to prevent a woman from getting an abortion, so we have no quarrel here.
Are you serious? If I were trying to do that, I would say that either party should have equal authority to over the decision to abort or carry to term. Pregnancy is a biological process. Parenting is a life decision. I’m trying to impose *actual * equality on the sexes’ rights to determine the course of their own lives.
Try not to be obtuse. You would never say to a woman “You are morally and financially responsible for raising this child because you chose to have sex.” Why say the same to a man?
I had the flu a few weeks ago. One evening the kids were in bed early and the wife and I start fooling around. We both know that exchanging fluids could result in her contracting the virus but we agree to proceed. The fact that she gets sick after is not my fault. The only difference between this analogy and this thread is that I don’t have to pay child support for 18 years if my wife gets sick.
The points of no return may come at different times but the event that sparks that process is mutually shared, with notable exceptions. Both participants know the event could result in a pregnancy and therefore both participants should have the choice to reject the foetus once notified.
I woud say it if she chose to carry the pregnanct to term.
Because there is no later point at which he has any control over the biology.
This isn’t true, but if it were, second trimester is still a large chunk of “previable”. DNA can be collected through Chorionic Villi Sampling (CVS) in the 10th to 13th week. http://www.paternity-answers.com/paternity-prenatal-test.html
And, since my whole scheme is based on radically rewriting parental support laws, I expect by the time we get there, if ever, we’ll be able to test safely earlier.
I think that this would be an excellent reason to rethink the reasoning on the DNA test submission laws. I see no reason why we should take a woman at her word when the man doubts it. I’ve personally known women who were delusional enough to adamantly proclaim that person X was the father, conveniently forgetting that they slept with person Y the weekend before. Since sperm live for up to 5 days before conception, the person you had sex with Monday could be the father, even if you don’t ovulate and sleep with someone else until Friday. Baby Daddy ain’t always who you wish it was.
But, once again, none of this has any bearing over whether the father should be able to block or demand an abortion. He shouldn’t, ever.
And, I will once again go on record as saying that as technology changes, so should laws. The father of a preemie should absolutely be granted paternal rights over the preemie. If we ever get to the point where an embryo can be removed from a woman and implanted into a donor or mechanical womb, then he can demand that procedure instead of an abortion and be responsible for the resultant offspring. But until then, no one has the right to use a woman as an incubator against her will, not even the father of the fetus.
The problem lies in the latter clause. The male parent should have the same right as the female parent to give up the child for adoption (or to terminate his parental rights and along with it financial responsibility). I’m not sure how best to implement it, and I’m not saying parents should, at any time, be allowed to unilaterally terminate in this fashion, but it needs to be equitable, and one place where it isn’t is at the onset. Insofar as women can terminate via abortion, and unmarried women (at least*) can terminate responsibility via giving kid up for adoption after birth, men need to have the option as well.
- What does happen if a married woman elects not to have an abortion but also does not want to retain custody/rights/responsibility for the kid post-birth but the man does? Anyone with the legal knowledge got the answer on that one?
That sound a little coercive. It seems to me that an expectant mother would be more likely to choose an abortion if the father could get out of paying child support that easily.
Sure, it sounds unfair to men, but that’s life. The solution to (most) women’s ability to pee standing up is not to legilate that men have to pee sitting down.
I don’t understand how it’s coercive. It’s removing the “coersion” that nature has put into place.
Might more women choose to abort if they know they’ll be single moms with no child support? Perhaps, but I don’t see anything wrong with that. Again, it’s about informed consent. If my man claims, even by his silence, that he’ll support the baby, I’ll make my decision taking that into account. If I know he’s going to leave and I’m going to spend thousands of dollars chasing him through the court system and his kid is going to grow up conflicted and confused because “Daddy doesn’t want him” again, I’ll take that into account when making my decision.
Yeah, I’ve been there. I’d rather have known about it up front. I still would have decided to have the kid, but I would not have wasted all that time, money and frustration in court, and my kid could be honestly told that “Your biological father wasn’t ready to be a father, so he gave you to me as a wonderful gift,” rather than hearing empty promises from him for years and being disappointed time and time again.
Nope, but I’d like to see everyone given the opportunity to examine the toilet seat before they decide which to do.
In my ideal world, a pregnant woman would not be able to abort without the father’s consent. (Actually, in my ideal world, there would be no abortions at all, but that’s a different discussion…)
In the real world we live in, I agree with Diogenes:
If I don’t want to be responsible for an abortion, the onus is on me to watch who I impregnate.
Frankly, from a pro-life perspective, that’s the scariest risk inherent in extramarital sex: If I knock someone up, she gains the power of life and death over my child, and if she chooses to abort, there’s not a goddamn thing I could do to prevent it.
The thing with any prenatal testing is that it requires an invasive procedure that puts the fetus at risk. Amniocentesis is done all the time, sure, but there are risks involved and there is always a small risk of miscarriage. AFAIK, amnio is usually only done when there’s suspicion of a problem (trisomy, spina bifida, Rh incompatibility). Using it as part of a paternal opt-out procedure seems a bit silly to me when there’s a risk of harming the fetus (or mom), even if the risk is pretty small.
This site covers the basics about amniocentesis.
(bolding mine)
Right, and I’d consider “I need to let this woman know whether or not I’m willing to provide support for this child which I have reason to believe isn’t mine, and I need to do it in time to let her have her full range of legal options available to her” one of those “problems” that warrants an amnio.
If you’d rather let dads only “opt-out” after birth, and leave the woman only the options of adoption or being a single mom (as is currently the case, even if it’s not done legally), then I don’t think it’s possible for her to make an informed decision until after birth. I don’t like that. I want abortion to remain an informed choice.
Your solution would no more provide Mom with any assurance that Dad is going to stay/pay than the current system. I used to work in child support enforcement, and I lost count of the number of guys that quite happily signed the paternity papers in the hospital, but shortly thereafter began their lifelong quest to avoid paying one thin dime to support the kid.
At the same time, it lets men legally off the hook for the consequences of the single part of the whole ordeal where they do have an equal say in the decision-making process: conception.
If a woman wants to know up front, she always has the option of asking the father directly if he intends to help support the child, and make her decision based on that information. He could always lie and answer in the affirmative, but there’s nothing preventing him from doing that in court, either. That’s what my father-in-law did, and he still ended up $60,000 in the hole.
There is no way to make this fair, since no matter what women are the ones who get pregnant and have to suffer through painful, often degrading procedures. If men had to, I’d have more sympathy.
However, I think that support should be the default state, and any man wanting not to be on the hook for support should have to get his sex partner’s okay before the sex act. That would have two benefits. Men would be up front with what they will do, and women will have an added insight into said man’s thinking. I suspect fewer men would get laid. I can’t consider this a bad outcome.
Autonomy over your own person is a necessary but insufficient condition. I might claim autonomy over my own person gives me the right to take PCP, but the law, for good reason, finds in the other direction. Your autonomy would not be sufficient grounds to terminate if this violated the autonomy of your unborn child’s.
I am not trying to turn this into a tedious personhood of fetus debate. I am trying to convince you that if you compromise one of the most critical underpinnings of a critical pro-choice argument, you weaken the whole thing.
It is neither inconsistent nor unfair. A man has one opportunity to prevent pregnancy due to the nature of sexual reproduction. A woman has a continuum of opportunities that range from Plan B to RU-486. This seems incontrovertible to me. This is as sexist as claiming that men, on average, are taller. It is what it is.
Would you agree to let the man off the hook if he takes on a 9 month pseudopregnancy? Give him all the discomfort and degradation that the ladies go through. I suspect that many men would take that option vs. being saddled with the financial burden of an unwanted child for 18+ years.
I’m very much with Autumn Almanac, in a “perfect” world, both sexes would be able to participate, or not participate, at their choosing. It’s not a perfect world, so the woman gets greater flexibility and more choices (post-impregnation) than the man does.
I’m always disturbed by the argument that men get their choice when they chose to have sex. This was what we told women when abortion was illegal. It was a lousy argument then, it’s still a lousy argument.
Yep. Especially in the absence of a safe & reliable male contraceptive pill.
I already said what I think is the only solution. I do feel, however, that men are wanting all of the rewards of sex and none of the risks. Women are already burdened with the risk of becoming pregnant, and an unwanted pregnancy is a burden. So, on top of that, people seem to expect them to be mindreaders who can predict what men will say when faced with the prospect of impending fatherhood. They have to guess if the man will stick around, then make their choice, and risk that the man changes his mind or was lying/deceptive.
I’d like it to be clear. He’s on the hook unless he gets her written agreement that he isn’t before they ever have sex. No written agreement? 18 years. Written agreement? No strings (or, I suppose, any strings, depending on the agreement). She takes the risk of the pregnancy; he can take the risk that she’ll think he’s a scumball and won’t sleep with him.
Won’t somebody think of the deadbeats?
None of the risks? If anyone has the ability to have risk free sex these days, it’s women. The pendulum has swung, this isn’t the bad old days when some jerk could get a woman pregnant then just ditch with no consequences. 3 things have changed: contraception, abortion, deadbeat dad laws.
The man who has unprotected sex has started a timebomb that may or may not go off and completely change his life forever. He can only sit and wait for the kaboom. The women has started a timebomb too, but she’s got the off button in her hand, and you say SHE is the one taking on risk?
Ask men if they would trade the risk a 9 month pregnancy for the ability to decide the outcome, and I think you’d find a lot of takers. Especially when they can get an abortion after month 1.