My phrasing was inelegant, but the gist is that no amount of debate or legal hairsplitting or semantics is going to resolve the fundamental biological difference involved. I think in this particular case, the double standard is just going to have to be accepted and anyone who fights it is wasting their time.
Yes.
No.
Not if the father wants the baby.
That’s not exactly how safe haven laws work. Safe haven laws only allow somebody to abandon a child at a safe location without fear of criminal prosecution. They don’t automatically terminate the parental rights of either parent - that’s a separate proceeding in court. If a woman abandons a child at a safe haven location (or anywhere else) and the father finds out about it, he can get custody of the child and get child support from the mother, regardless of whether she wants to terminate her rights or not.
I totally agree, but to clarify, I’d also say that only the woman can decide whether to carry the fetus to term or to have an abortion. But if she decides to bear the child against the man’s wishes, she should pay for it.
And to those who say the man shouldn’t have sex if he doesn’t want to care for a child – Get with it! Birth control can and does fail, and sex is not only for the purpose of procreation, although it is a side effect.
But that’s only because the pregnancy involves her body. And that’s the whole point. Ending the pregnancy has the consequence of preventing a baby from being born, but that’s only incidental.
You hurt your case by saying men have no decisions at all. Of course they do, unless they’ve been raped.
I don’t know why documents must be signed to accept potential consequences of actions that should be understood by anyone who has had sex ed. If you know that sex can lead to an unwanted pregnancy, then you should either do your very best to lock up your sperm and you should not have sex. This rule of thumb applies to men and women.
I don’t think these laws will be changed. This is precisely why I am trying to come to terms with them.
I think a father should be responsible for half the costs of ending a pregnancy if that’s what they agreed. Ditto for the kid. If there is disagreement, since the father cannot force his opinion and the mother can, then the mother should shoulder the costs.
It seems that no. Only both in agreement can. This, to me, makes very little sense. Why can one be left off the hook if they get the other to agree but not on their own?
If the State is willing to shoulder 100% of the cost of raising that child (while dealing with the headache of actually raising the child or placing him in a family), why not just taking half the responsibility and have the baby already in a home?
This is probably the simplest answer to the whole deal. By dissociating these two issues, the resolution is forced to the current state of affairs. Whether or not it is right for these two issues to be separate matters is another discussion, but for as long as they are discussed separately, there is no other solution than what we have.
Tell me then. Should child support laws not focus on the best interests of the child? Or should abortion laws not balance the rights we grant to the fetus against the mother’s rights? Which do you want to change to make these two different situations more comparable?
Oh, ok. That makes a whole lot more sense than what I understood (and apparently many others, going by their responses here). Abandoning a child under safe haven rules does not then end the financial responsibility of either parent, right?
Now, are the parents financially responsible in any way under normal circumstances (being both agree to do it and none comes back to claim the baby)?
Again, I don’t have a case. And again, that is all before there is an actual pregnancy. Before that, the baby is just a risk, not a certainty. And the solution to that risk is the same for man or woman: no sex. My question is about what happens once there is a pregnancy on the table.
You mean, why can’t just one parent give a child up for adoption over the objection of the other? You’ve got one parent in court saying they want to give the child up to some strangers, and the other parent screaming bloody murder to please not take their baby away. What judge would approve that?
I am still trying to figure out the problem. I am nowhere near to being able to propose solutions.
I don’t predict I ever will. As a married man with kids and the factory closed, my personal involvement on this matter is purely academic and unlikely to become more than that for at least a dozen+ years when my kids get to that age. As for my academic concerns, they share my attention with many other things a lot more pleasant to ponder. This just came up in a recent conversation and I wanted to get a better grasp of the matter. Interestingly, the question that gave rise to my interest was basically the flip side of all this:
If a woman is pregnant, does she have the right to write off the dad and have the baby for herself without even mentioning the man on the birth certificate and leaving him without any form of power over the baby? (and I was hoping the answer to be “yes”, having a daughter myself).
But don’t let me derail my own thread, please.
Hah, none I hope. My question is if both can agree to do it and both are then free of responsibility, why cannot one do it and be free of his reponsibility?
If he never finds out about the baby and she never goes after him for support. Alternatively, she may be able to get him to sign an affidavit of relinquishment saying he disavows any interest in the kiddo, but the actual termination has to be approved by the court and they frown on letting either parent off the hook without good reason, even if both parents are in agreement. If he’s not in agreement and notices that the woman he slept with ten months ago now has a little baby that looks a lot like him, he can file a proceeding to establish his parentage over her objections. This is how a lot of acrimonious 18 year relationships get started.
But the father WOULD be “forcing his opinion” if he were to refuse to tak responsibility for a child, so why shouldn’t he be 100% responsible for the abortion if he’s the only one who wants it?
Are you still talking about safe haven laws? Either parent can surrender a baby at a safe haven without being prosecuted. Catsix said “guess which one” can do it. My answer was that either can.
If you’re talking about giving a baby up for adoption, then it can’t be done against the objection of either parent.
I don’t understand this question. If a willing and legally competentparent is available, then that’s where the child will go every time. The state isn’t going to take a baby away from a parent who wants it unless there’s reason to believe the parent is unfit.
Wait, you’re saying you hope no judge would take a child away over the objections of the other parent, but you wish that a woman would have the right to just have the baby and not notify the father at all? That seems kind of contradictory.
The state doesn’t take responsibility for babies put up for adoption. Adoptive parents do. One parent trying to skate places all the responsibility on one person. That’s not in the best interest of the child.
A few thoughts on the matter:
I’ve heard it advocated that a man who impregnates a woman ought to be able to buy off his support obligation within the first twelve weeks of pregnancy by depositing the full cost of an abortion. At the very least, this halfway stuff that Sapo’s advocated seems a bit silly for the reasons Dio brought up.
This debate might have a lot less acrimony if the ongoing issues with anti-father bias in the current system for dealing with separated parents of a born child were resolved. I know several guys with good white-collar jobs and good lives who pay a lot of support and who do not get any visitation except at the mother’s whim, and the courts do not appear to find anything wrong with this (in all three cases, the guys are actively fighting for 50/50 time and more visitation, and in all three cases, the mothers are opposing it on what are seemingly general principles).
What makes you think the legal system hasn’t considered that? We have to create laws and policies based on how biology actually works. What are our realistic choices as a society? I’m always amazed when this comes up and people suggest guys should be able to opt out of parental support if they want to. Don’t we have enough irresponsible behavior without encouraging more?
There won’t be a perfect solution and sometimes the consequences of our choices are very hard to deal with. Welcome to real life.
Certainly an agreement to have an abortion would be unenforceable, but that was put in for completeness - since an abortion makes the child support issue moot. The agreement would say that the mother takes responsibility - why is it impossible that a child be well supported without the help of a father? One would assume that the prospective mother knows she has the resources to raise a child before signing.
If we could figure out the way to make the signing of this contract mandatory before sex, we’d drive the unwanted pregnancy rate down to near zero. 
Actually I’m thinking more along the lines of making paternal responsibility the default, agreed to by the act of potentially becoming a father. If a man does not want the responsibility, he can get the mother to agree in advance about it, or not do the act.