If he doesn’t want a vasectomy, (and many men won’t) then he takes his chances. If he doesn’t want a vasectomy, he is in no position to bitch when he does accidentally get a woman pregnant. After all, he always could have had a vasectomy, which would reduce his risks to almost nothing. But he preferred to take his chances.
He shouldn’t expect a woman to have surgery (an abortion) when he was unwilling to have one himself (vasectomy). He is not entitled to feel ill-used because someone didn’t want to bail him out of a situation that he willingly allowed himself to get into.
Sorry if I misled you. I assumed it would be clear from the context of this thread (and my previous posts) that “announcing” meant making his choice known to the state, which would hypothetically have the power to exempt him from paying child support.
Certainly. I would expect any man who never intends to have children to take responsibility for preventing a pregnancy, which would prevent the situation we’re discussing from ever coming up.
However, this thread is about what to do once an unwanted pregnancy has already occurred. I don’t believe that the man’s failure to have a vasectomy is evidence that he consents to raise a child.
Ideally that’s what men who don’t want children would do. I haven’t brought up that point because this thread doesn’t seem to be about what to do before you have sex, it seems to be about what to do once there is a pregnancy and the woman and man disagree on whether it should result in a child.
It’s no more contradictory than “I don’t want my mailbox smashed, therefore I will hand this baseball bat to my neighbor.” Mailbox smashing is not an expected consequence of handing over the bat; raising a child, in many cases, is not an expected consequence of having sex while fertile (e.g., if birth control failed, or if the woman claimed she didn’t want a child and changed her mind later).
Should I be surprised that you’ve chosen to pick at the details of the analogy instead of addressing the point behind it?
The expected chances may be quite different if you have the woman’s assurance that she is unwilling to carry a child to term.
In any case, if she chooses to carry it to term, that’s her choice, and any financial burden it incurs is her responsibility. She had a few options to chose from, she picked one. No one else made that decision for her.
OK. So what? It’s still her choice. She chooses to make a different decision than she would have a few months earlier.
I wonder how you could have missed the most important part of my post: why is the pregnancy/child-support situation is so fundamentally different from the baseball-bat/mailbox situation that responsibility should be assigned to different parties?
A: My indirect action (handing my neighbor a baseball bat) enables someone else to make a direct action (smashing my mailbox), leading to a situation (smashed mailbox). Who is responsible? The person committing the direct action.
B: My indirect action (selling my neighbor a car) enables someone else to make a direct action (choosing not to renew the registration), leading to a situation (driving with expired tabs). Who is responsible? The person committing the direct action.
C: My indirect action (having sex while fertile) enables someone else to make a direct action (choosing to carry a child to term), leading to a situation (child needs financial support). Who is responsible?
What I’m hoping to learn is why your answer to “C” differs from the answers to “A” and “B”; what the specific difference is in that situation that places responsibility on the person committing the indirect action.
If the difference is you believe that having sex while fertile is actually a direct action (i.e. the situations are not comparable), please explain your definition of direct vs. indirect action, and how it applies differently to the situations above.
We seem to be repeating the same things over and over; I hope that we can get out of this rut by identifying the precise step where our logic differs.
And you know this will probably never happen in this century, right? And if it were to happen, a lot of guys would be getting a lot less nookie. Who wants to have sex with someone who wants to have no consequences for their actions?
The difference is, mailbox smashing is a criminal, freaky, bizarre and completely out-of-the-blue thing. Choosing to have a child after having sex and then getting pregnant is very commonplace. It’s what mother nature intends, after all. How many people have kids that were “suprises”? Lots. My oldest sister was a BIG surprise. The birth control failed, and a kid was born. Birth control fails, it happens all the time. Anyone who acts all astonished because a child resulted from (get this!) sex is an idiot. And, it is equally idiotic to expect or assume that a woman who once thought she didn’t want a kid will not be capable of changing her mind. (Once those hormones kick in…) This is also a well-documented occurrence, and you all know it. To pretend that it doesn’t happen, or that it is some freaky, completely out-of-the-blue thing (like mailbox smashing) is absurd.
The two things (mailbox smashing and carrying a child to term) are not at all alike. And the same goes for the absurd license plate analogy. Only a complete idiot lets their license stickers expire. That’s not how the whole license plate registration thing is supposed to work. But with sex, you are supposed to get pregnant. That’s what mother nature wants. Only through extraordinary effort do you thwart mother nature’s intentions. And sometimes, these efforts fail. Getting pregnant and carrying a child to term is not an unexpected thing, nor is it a freaky, out-of-the-blue thing. Failing to register your car is stupid and unexpected—it’s moronic, in fact.
Should I be suprised that you concocted a completely lame analogy that was woefully easy to pick apart?
You are 50% responsible. Having sex while fertile is not an indirect action. Mother nature intended sex for the creation of babies. It’s also pleasurable, but the baby thing is always there. Your sperm make the very direct action of seeking an egg to fertilize. You allow this, you know what you are doing, and you know what your sperm are working very hard to accomplish. Just because you take pains to thwart your sperm and mother nature doesn’t mean you will succeed. AND YOU KNOW THIS. You are 50% responsible for the situation. If you didn’t want to be in the situation, you’d get a vasectomy. Or, you’d choose to have sex with an infertile woman.
You have your chance to make a decision before the fact. After the fact (the pregnancy) the ball is in the woman’s court. Too bad for you, but biology is a bitch, ain’t it?
Yes, we are going around in circles, and I doubt we’ll ever get anywhere with this. As far as I am concerned, some of you want to have your cake and eat it too—you want to bear none of the responsibility for your actions in this situation. Argue all you will, rationalize, parse words all you want. It still won’t convince many of us that you just want to cop out, and you feel ill-used because you are not being allowed to. This is how I see it, this is how a lot of us see it. And thankfully, this is how the governement sees it.
That should be:
“It still won’t convince many of us that you don’t just want to cop out. It seems to us that you feel ill-used because you are not being allowed to cop out. This is how I see it, this is how a lot of us see it. And thankfully, this is how the governement sees it.”
Of course it won’t happen. As I said earlier, there are plenty of injustices that I don’t think will be corrected anytime soon.
Who wants to have sex with someone who wants to have no consequences for their actions? Well, all women can avoid 18 years of financial servitude, but that doesn’t keep guys from wanting to have sex with them.
Of course. I just don’t see why it matters. Whether it’s commonplace or not, the fact is it’s the woman’s choice.
I’d say choosing to raise a child with an unwilling father is pretty moronic too.
Since I’m pretty sure you realize that pregnancy and childbirth are separate events, it seems our definitions of “indirect” are different. Let’s share, ok?
I say having sex while fertile is an indirect action (wrt raising a child) because it doesn’t immediately lead to a child being born. There is another intervening choice: the mother’s choice whether to abort, raise the child, or give it up for adoption. Although one of those choices may be more common, the man does not make that choice when he decides to have sex while fertile.
Now I’m not so sure you’re distinguishing between pregnancy and childbirth. The situation that a vasectomy prevents is pregnancy; the situation you’re referring to is childbirth. Childbirth is only one possible result of pregnancy.
You might need to explain why childbirth being the “natural” or “commonplace” result of pregnancy means we should assume the woman is not responsible for her choice. I’m just not seeing it.
That’s exactly why I believe it’s the woman’s responsibility.
The very same “don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time” argument could be made against abortion (not that I would do it): “When a woman has sex while fertile, she knows there’s a likelihood of getting pregnant. She knows nature wants the sperm and egg to meet, and efforts to thwart it don’t always work. Therefore, abortion is a cop-out: she knew there was a chance of getting pregnant when she had sex, she knew pregnancy tends to result in childbirth, and she just wants to avoid responsibility for her actions.”
I don’t see how it’s productive, though. We realize there are undesirable circumstances that may result in a woman getting pregnant when she didn’t intend to, or she may want a child at first but later change her mind. I don’t consider that copping out.
So, in real life, are you just going to bellyache about this “injustice”, or are you going to do something proactive to prevent it falling upon you? Like get a vasectomy? Just curious.
“Financial servitude”? That’s what your parents are doing right now (or have recently done) in supporting you. And it’s such a terrible burden, such a terrible, wretched injustice that was foisted upon them. :rolleyes: There is a lot of “financial servitude” in this world, buddy. It’s called being responsible.
The woman’s choice is her business, because it’s her body. You knew this going in. You can’t make her choice for her, and you can’t dictate what it will be after the fact. All you can do is protect yourself from your end, (vasectomy) so that you don’t have to be involved in the consequences of her choice. Something you knew going in.
Sure, but that’s her choice. She’s got a right to be dumb, just as you do. And having sex while fertile with a woman who is fertile is pretty damn moronic, unless you are willing to face the reality of possibly supporting a kid.
You directly impregnate someone. You have NO CONTROL with what she does with her body after that, and YOU KNOW THAT GOING IN. You must consider that your direct act of impregnating her will result in her carrying the child to term, since this is what mother nature intends. You can’t stop it. You start something you are unable to stop, and yet you assume or expect someone will stop it for you? That’s dumb. You can’t assume or hope that she will artificially terminate mother nature’s wishes (especially when this “artificial termination” is fraught with controversy, and is not acceptable to all people).
Doesn’t change the fact that he KNOWS GOING IN that one of these choices will be the end result. Kinda like playing Russian Roulette, huh? You make your choice to play, and you know that you can’t predict the outcome. And you know that you won’t have any control of the outcome. And yet you play. Don’t bitch because you ended up with the woman making a choice you didn’t like. You didn’t need to play Russian Roulette, but you did anyway. No sympathy for you.
She’s absolutely responsible for her choice. Where have you been all during this thread? Do you think that she gets away consequence free? Please describe one—just one choice that she could make that is consequence-free.
Just because she is also responsible for her choice (and oh yes, she will have to face consequences) it does not mean she is responsible for his choice too. His choice to have sex with her, his choice to help get a kid started. He is responsible for that.
Why? Because she goes last? Ever heard of the phrase, “Well, he started it.”? He’s responsible for starting it. Without his sperm, she wouldn’t be making any choice. His active little sperm put her in the position of having to choose. And yet you think it’s all on her head? Bullshit.
Whether or not abortion is appropriate or right is a debate for another thread. But you have been claiming that this is all about “choice”, and that we are responsible for our own choices. And since a woman knows GOING IN that abortion is an option, it is not a “cop out” in that sense. She knows her choices, she knows her alternatives, and abortion is one of them. Just as a man knows his choices, and his alternatives going in. A man knows that he is not going to HAVE a choice after the seed is planted. He knows this going in, and yet he decides to risk planting that seed anyway. KNOWING AHEAD OF TIME that he could have chosen a vasectomy (but not wanting to). He is now “copping out” to expect her to clean up the mess he started. A mess that he could have avoided, had he made a different choice. She is not obligated to clean his mess up for him. And, once again, YOU KNEW THAT GOING IN.
This is becoming quite the reoccurring theme. I just want to point out that just because you know something is going to happen, that does not make it right. We are not complaining that the law is coning innocent men into having children that they must take care of. We are claiming that the law is unjust even though we KNOW THAT GOING IN.
When you say that the man is equally responsible for the child because he was 50% responsible for the pregnancy, you are saying that the choice to carry the pregnancy to term has no lawful repercussions. I realize that carrying the baby to term will result in many changes to the woman’s body and mind (and these are consequences for her choice), but they are not government induced consequences. You are stating that the pregnancy is the only thing that should trigger government induced consequences and the choice to carry the child to term (which is the only choice that matters in the long run) should carry no weight at all.
If I had a reason to fear that I would be forced to pay for a child, I probably would have a vasectomy, yes.
No, my parents wanted to raise me and their money was well spent. If my father didn’t want a child but my mother used the law to force him to pay for one, that would have been financial servitude.
Exactly. I don’t believe I’ve ever claimed anyone else should be able to make that choice for her.
What a man knows “going in” is that the law may require him to pay for the consequences of someone else’s choice; money doesn’t just start flowing from his bank account to hers as soon as the child is born.
My proposal is to change the law to eliminate that possibility. The man would notify the state and pay for 50% (hell, maybe 100%) of the cost of an abortion. If delivery is less expensive and the mother consents to raise the child on her own or give it up for adoption, he may pay for that instead. The money then belongs to the mother to do what she wants with it.
No, I don’t think I’ve ever said that. The mother may make her own choice.
Carrying the child to term is an indirect result of the man’s action; it’s a direct result of the mother’s choice to carry the child to term.
I can only assume you’ve been misreading my posts. I have no problem with her choosing to carry the child to term, have an abortion, or give it up to adoption. That’s her right.
My problem is with someone else being forced to pay for the consequences of that choice.
Yes, exactly because she goes last. She has the final decision as to whether a child is born. If she doesn’t want to be in the position of raising a child, she can prevent that from happening. A child can only be born with her agreement and cooperation.
Handing my neighbor a baseball bat puts him in the position of having to choose what to do with it. That doesn’t make me responsible for the consequences of his choice.
Under my proposed changes to the law, a man would know GOING IN that he won’t be held responsible for the woman’s choice. A woman would know GOING IN that if she wants to have a child, she can’t rely on someone else subsidizing it.
If you are all-fired upset about the unjustness of it, I assume you will assure that you will never fall victim to this particular injustice by getting a vasectomy. Right? Put your money where your mouth is. It’s a lot less traumatic and controversial a surgery than abortion (so I’ve been told). Vasectomy doctors are not generally murdered, after all.
Also, often a man will not balk and fight at the concept of supporting his own children, because he sees it is his obligation. Usually the government needn’t hunt a man down to get him to support his kids. Unless, of course, the man is an irresponsible, loserific deadbeat, in which case they’ll give him more than a little a nudge. Usually the victims of loserific deadbeats appreciate this government interference, and the loserific deadbeats are upset. Pretty predictable.
We could discuss the specifics of how the government intervenes, and the flaws in the system (of which there are many) but that is a topic for another thread. The fact is, most of us believe that a man should be responsible for his offspring, since helped create them. The fact that the woman had the audacity to not dispose of the child(ren) before they were born should not get him off the hook for helping to support the children. He helped create them, he knew that he wouldn’t be able stop the pregnancy being carried to term, and yet he went ahead and helped the pregnancy start. Too late now to change things.
We are not wringing our hands in distress because you feel that this expectation is “unjust”. We are not wringing our hands because you are expected to pay for your cable bill either—both are legitimate obligations. The world is full of legitimate obligations. When someone is unwilling to fulfill their legitimate obligations, the goverment has ways to help the process along. That’s usually how it works, in the Real World.
I know you want to live in this hypothetical state where there is no right and wrong, and Osama was just being “rude”, but most of us do not. We will never see things your way. Fine if you do feel this way, but try not to keep youself awake at nights stressing over the multitude of injustices that torment your delicate sensibilities. It’ll give you wrinkles.
You are acting as if the abortion is the “default” action in this case, when in reality it usually is not. Disposing of a pregnancy is not the “default”, the pregnancy is the default. It is mother nature’s default, and a lot of people see no reason to interfere with it.
The government is “triggered” into action when someone is being a loserific deadbeat and is unwilling to fulfill their obligations. When a child is born, the people who helped create it often are expected to support it. Unreasonable as it may seem to some of you, this expectation actually seems quite rational to most of us.
Your opinion (and those who agree with you) is in the minority. This opinion is generally reviled as a loserific stance. I am not calling you “loserific”, since you seem like an affable fellow, just the stance.
But we’ve gone over this, again and again, and I am convinced we will go nowhere. It’s been fun, but you’ll pardon me for confessing that my eyes are glazing over more and more frequently when I read this thread.
For all the myriad posts here, and the invective being hurled back and forth with reckless abandon, not a single person has clarified this issue into understandable terms.
Can this be simplified? A woman can say “there will be no baby”, and eliminate the financial responsibility. A man cannot make this decision. Aside from the biological reasoning, why or why not?
Can this be answered rationally, or will it degenerate every time it comes up?
So, the only thing he is ought to help pay for is an abortion? That’s it? The only procedure or option that he would be obligated to help pay for? Even though he helped get her in the situation, he (or you) gets to choose the cheapest alternative? The one that also may leave her with physical consequences and complications and possible emotional scars, (but of course, no consequences for him, other than shelling out a few bucks)? And here you go and make these disingenuous claims about how you don’t “expect” her to have an abortion. What hogwash.
So, in essence, abortion is the “default” solution as far as you are concerned. If it weren’t the default, other solutions could be funded instead. So, why abortion? Why is that the default?
Why is a sometimes risky and definitely controversial surgery for the woman the only option here? Because it’s the cheapest for the man? (Well, yeah, you’ve already made that very clear.) Because you don’t give a damn if the woman is left high and dry? (Oh wait, you’ve already as much as admitted that.) Because you don’t give a damn that the woman may experience health consequences if she has this surgery? (Oh wait, you’ve already as much as admitted that too.) So, because the man is too loserific to be responsible for his own sperm, she’s got to undergo surgery, or be stuck supporting his and her kid all by herself? (Or, allowing the government to help support his and her kid?)
And, even though I am unfamiliar with the specific costs of abortion vs. delivery, I can almost frickin’ guarantee you that pregnancy and delivery is a FAR more expensive process than an abortion. For you to suppose that there might be any money left over if she chose delivery instead of abortion shows how utterly clueless you are on all of this.
All I can add now is: :rolleyes:
Please. Get the vasectomy. Then you needn’t ever worry about paying for even an abortion. Save that abortion money and buy some extra video games instead.
My personal choice is to remain a virgin until I wish to become a father.
The fact that the injustice we are discussing will not ever affect me, does not remove my right to debate my point of view.
And now you have listed the second reason why this injustice will never affect me. I would never abandon the child. But once again, the fact that this injustice will not affect me does not remove my right to debate my point of view (something does not have to be personal for a person to feel passionately about it). I despise the vast majority of government involvement in our lives and adamantly fight against any that I feel we could do without. I am here to fight for the rights of “irresponsible, loserific deadbeats” to be irresponsible, loserific deadbeats. After all, to take away the very thing that defines a person is unjust (i.e. forcing a deadbeat to pay child support means he is no longer able to act like a deadbeat and thus his identity is striped from him).
If I can pay for sex like I pay for cable why is prostitution illegal?
The woman was not providing me a service to be paid for.
I realize that abortion is not the default state, but I do not think that which state is the default has any bearing on the issue. The choice not to act is still a choice (especially in the case of pregnancy where the choice not to act carries huge weight…no pun intended).
I know what you mean. I really enjoyed my “day off” from this thread. Though I couldn’t help but get back into it now could I?
It will degenerate every time. The problem is none of us really know if we are being totally rational. I am trying to be as rational as possible by choosing my point of view without emotion. But even then, I cannot say with certainty that a point of view created totally with logic and devoid of emotion is the most “rational” (though I believe that it is).
I said I wasn’t going to participate in this thread any more, but -
I think some of the people in this thread have a skewed idea of the cause-and-effect here. A child’s birth is not caused by the decision whether or not to have an abortion. I have, over the course of my adult life, reached the conclusion that I would not have an abortion. However, this decision has not led to a child. Why? 'Cause no man has started one with me.
When the decision to abort or not takes place, the child has already been “caused.” The father’s role in this cause is real, and deeply fundamental to the whole process. Without his contribution, there would be no baby. It’s that simple. Even if the woman has the abortion it doesn’t change the man’s fundamental responsibility for the child that would have been born. If the abortion doesn’t take, the father’s still responsible for the child. (Hopefully the doctor who botched the abortion will have to shoulder some responsibility was well in this case.)
The idea that the woman’s decision is the sole relevant factor is simply ridiculous. It’s relevant only to the extent that a successful abortion makes it impossible for the man to fulfill his obligations. He can’t support a child that doesn’t exist anymore. But the child did exist prior to the decision (we don’t call it a child, but it’s the exact same critter that becomes the child) and continues to exist, without interruption, until birth unless aborted.
There is no meaningful causal difference between the pregnancy and the child. The decision to abort or not isn’t part of the process. It can interrupt the process, but plays no actual role in the process itself.
We’re not talking about loaning out a baseball bat, here. There is no fundamental causal connection between giving you a baseball bat and what the baseball bat eventually does. In fact, the baseball bat won’t do anything of its own accord once given. It sits inert until a person uses it for something. The fetus, on the other hand, doesn’t just sit inert. It has one very specific function - to grow into a baby. And it will do this all of its own accord, because it is the nature of a fetus to do so. It isn’t the nature of a baseball bat to do anything.
Help create a fetus, and it grows into a baby. That’s what happens. That’s what fetuses do. And it’s the fetus/baby that the man is responsible for, not the “consequences of the mother’s decision.” The baby is a consequence of the pregnancy, not the decision. The mother’s decision has the power to remove the father’s responibilities (by removing the child), but that doesn’t mean it creates them. The pregnancy itself does that.
Another point: We have been speaking about the rights/responibilities of the parents - but child support is about the rights of the child. It is the child, not the mother, to whom the father owes his support. The father had a say in whether to participate in sex. The mother had this same choice, plus the additional choice of whether or not to abort. The child had no say. He was not asked if his mother should abort him or not. He couldn’t even be asked. He was concieved, and he was born.
The person to whom the child support is owed - the child, not the mother - did not have a choice. Whether or not his mother did is completely irrelevant.
It is the person who had no choices at all whose rights must be protected.
Thanks, Nonny Mouse. My eyes have been glazing over with increasing frequency on this thread, and it’s nice to have a more fresh (and more articulate) perspective on this.
(Not that it will change some minds, who are so hell bent on insisting that they are “victims” if they actually are expected to be responsible for their own actions…)
Makes sense to me. If I hit someone’s car, I’m not obligated to pay for whatever expensive replacement the owner would rather have, only to restore the car as it was. An abortion will end the pregnancy just as well as delivering the child.
If the mother would rather deliver the child, she’s free to do so. Nothing is stopping her except her own financial situation. If she can’t financially support a child herself, she shouldn’t raise one herself.
She can do whatever she wants as long as she doesn’t expect someone else to pay for it.
Because it’s the least expensive for everyone. I believe the man should be obligated to pay for one of the options, but not necessarily one of the woman’s choice. If he wants to pay for delivery and she wants to have an abortion, that’s fine too - she can have an abortion and pocket the difference.
Another reason is that abortion doesn’t lead to a child that needs to be supported. If delivery were less expensive and the man wanted to pay for that instead, the woman would be financially pressured to deliver the child, and then who would pay to raise it?
High and dry? She’s not pregnant any more. There’s no hungry mouth to feed.
If she’s sad because she can’t afford to have a kid, tough. She can find someone else who wants to help raise a child, or she can get a better job so she can afford it herself.
Oh, there are no health consequences from 9 months of pregnancy followed by childbirth?
I realize that. I was referring to potential future medical advances (doubtful but possible).
Glad to see you looking out for me. I’ll make my own decisions, though, and I’ll thank you to stop confusing my opinions in this thread with my personal life.
Ah, but the mother has the ability to prevent the child from being born, and therefore needing support.
The child can only exist with the mother’s consent and cooperation; when she gives that consent, she’s fully aware that she’s creating a person who will need 18 years of financial support. No one else makes that choice for her, and hers is the final decision - laying responsibility for that choice on anyone else is irrational.
The child can only exist with the father’s direct genetic contribution. When he makes that contribution, he is fully aware that he may be creating a person who will need 18 years of financial support. No one makes that choice for him, and he can’t be absolved of it based on what someone else might do about the situation. However, he has a direct and fundamental role in the woman’s choice - without him, she wouldn’t have to make it. If he doesn’t like living with the consequences of her choice, he shouldn’t have put her in the position of having to choose. Claiming she can absolve him of his responsibilits merely by having a choice is irrational.
Water-muddying moral question - what if the woman didn’t consent to the sex? What if this was a date-rape situation? The woman didn’t even want the sex - she didn’t even choose to take the risk that she’d concieve. But she’s decided against ending the pregnancy. Should her choice in this instance absolve him of responsibility for the kid? He essentially forced the decision on her - shouldn’t he be responsible for the consequences no matter what she decides?
You do realize that some women have trouble carrying a child to term after having abortions, don’t you? I believe someone already mentioned it on this thread.
Abortion is not a neutral procedure. It has consequences. The mother may have reasons to believe that carrying the child to term is a more appropriate option (health-wise) for her at this time. But hey! Who cares? Not you. As long as it’s cheaper, doesn’t matter if it possibly screws up her body. It warms my heart to see what consideration, compassion and understanding you have for women’s health issues.
Exactly.
“B-b-but it’s not fair! I know I am 50% responsible for getting her into the whole situation, but she coulda bailed me out, and she didn’t! So she oughta pay for everything now!” It doesn’t work like that in the Real World. No one else is obligated to bail you out of a situation you willingly got yourself into. Especially if they have to undergo surgery to do it.
We’re going around in circles with some of you. You think someone else should bail you out, and you think they should do it in the cheapest way possible (even though this way is personally risky and perhaps morally reprehensive to them). We get it. We understand where you are coming from. Really. And we also think it is a morally reprehensible veiwpoint. Really.
Ah, but his argument goes even further than that. She’s not just obligated to bail him out - the mere fact that she can has already done it for her! She has no say in the matter. His role in the process is meaningless, because she has a choice!
So, the rationale goes, he should have a choice too. Except her choice could absolve both of them of all parental responsibility - at worst it gives him just half. His choice would pile it all on her. And this, somehow, is supposed to make things more fair.
This argument reflects a very immature understanding of what “fair” means. “Fair”, you see, is what works out best for the one who evokes it.
