Child Support and the "male abortion"

Great Debates
201

I would appreciate it, yosemite, if you would actually stay on subject and not take potshots like:

This is just venom. It does not support your argument and does not refute the argument you are railing against.

In fact, so far I have not seen any evidence that you have both read and understood the argument that you so vehemently disagree with (at least not the one that I described earlier in this thread).

And stuff like:

makes me wonder if you’re reading the same thread I am, or if you have some sort of mental powers beyond mere mortals that allow you to discern the motives of others better than they themselves.

Others appear to be able to disagree without assuming bad things about those they disagree with.

Oh, and this:

I agree with. In fact, it is the very soul of my argument.

202

Black Knight: The quotes you give are the best you can find to show evidence of “venom”? I see them more as sarcasm, not venom. Especially the “women’s health” quote. That was pure sarcasm. Am I not allowed to sprinkle a little bit of sarcasm in with my posts? Is that not allowed in GD?

I understand perfectly well what the arguments here are. And I am entitled, just like everyone else is, to sum up my impressions of some of them. Here—Nonny Mouse puts it very well indeed:

Did you merely post to take exception with my sarcasm, or did you have anything else to offer?

203

Operative words: may be creating. He’s not directly creating a person who needs support, someone else is in control of that. I can’t justify holding him responsible for someone else’s choice.

Interesting… and good to see something new in this thread. The water’s so clear we can see the wall we’re pushing against, and it ain’t budging. :wink:

There are two separate decisions here, with separate acts of consent and separate consequences: having sex may lead to pregnancy, and carrying the child to term leads to a new person who needs financial support. Only the first decision was made by someone other than the mother, by the act of rape.

Therefore, I would shift the burden of the direct consequences of the rape onto the rapist, but not the indirect consequences. The rapist must pay for delivery, but since the mother made the choice to bring a new person into the world, she must pay to raise the child.

Admittedly, I’m unsure about that conclusion. It seems appropriate to me that the rapist should share the costs of raising the child, but I can’t think of a rational justification, especially if the mother is (quite understandably) unwilling to grant him any parental rights.

In that case, she can give the child up for adoption if she can’t afford to raise it herself. Given a doctor’s testimony that abortion is particularly unsafe in this case, it may be justified to force the man to share the costs of delivery, but not child support.

Apparently not. I don’t believe the man has some responsibility that he needs to be “bailed out” from, I believe he has no responsibility to support the child in the first place, because it resulted from someone else’s choice.

It would only be “bailing him out” if mandated child support were a natural phenomenon, if money simply flowed from his bank account to hers until someone put a stop to it.

Your attempts to pin blame on him because childbirth is the “natural” result of pregnancy are nonsense. Whether it’s through action or inaction, the mother makes the final decision; as you move backward through the chain of events…

childbirth <- couple has sex <- radio DJ plays suggestive music <- cab driver takes couple to motel <- bartender serves drinks to couple <- etc.

… you get further and further away from the directly responsible party. Whether you blame the man, the DJ, the cab driver, or the bartender is simply a matter of how far away you want to get. The only objective solution is to lay responsibility on the person who made the final decision.

I’m every bit as offended by yours, so we’re even.

Obviously we disagree vehemently about how to assign responsibility, and our constant reiteration isn’t going to help. I can only hope that the date rape scenario will lead to new insight into the topic.

BTW, I also took the comments BlackKnight quoted as insults, and strained to keep a civil tongue in response. Perhaps I was wrong, but it wasn’t clear.

204

The final decison in this scenario isn’t the pivotal one, though. The pivotal decision here is the one that creates the pregnancy. This is the decison from which all consequences and responsibilities derive. After that, no decision made by either party can absolve the other from responsibility, except to the extent that it removes that to which the responsibility is owed. The mother faces consequences no matter what, and they’re more extreme than the father’s from moment one - they involve both her body and her back account. There are no simple choices - no matter what, she doesn’t get to just walk away. Neither should he.

You say he should only be obligated to pay - financially - for birth or abortion - and he gets to decide which? This very state of affairs affects her available choices, especially if money is a real issue. By divorcing himself from responsibility for anything beyond the birth or the abortion - his choice which - he influences her toward abortion if that’s the choice he prefers. Either way, he influences her away from choosing to raise the child. In this scenario, he becomes partly responsible for the choices she ends up making. He influences her in the direction of the choice he’s willing to help pay for. Only when he actually has responsibility for supporting the child too is the choice really entirely hers.

Wow. I didn’t realize how ironic this is until I typed it.

But the irony works here. My point is that the man’s and woman’s roles in this matter are too fundamentally intertwined to be so easily separated, either morally or under the law. Under the current law, the man has responsibilities but no say. Under your scenario, he has a say but no responsibilities. There is no scenario under which he has both no say and no responsibilities unless you take away his responsibility for the pregnancy in the first place.

And both sides have agreed he’s responsible for that.

Nonny

205

What you are allowed to do and what is productive to do are two very different things.

So far, I have seen no evidence of this whatsoever in your posts. I don’t say this to be mean or sarcastic. I simply have not seen, so far, any indication that you have truly understood that which you are arguing against.

I’ve offered quite a lot in this thread that you have not addressed. Even in the post you are responding to I did more than just take exception with your sarcasm.

206

Nonny Mouse, wonderfully put, as usual.

Black Knight: I have explained my position on this thread quite extensively. I feel I am allowed to be a little sarcastic as well. I’m not the first, I won’t be the last. A lot of Dopers stray to sarcasm occasionally. If I was grievously offensive, I apologize.

Please persuade me to understand how I completely missed the stunning and stellar points of logic you have provided to further your case. (See, there’s some more sarcasm. :wink: ) And, while you’re at it, why not address some of Nonny Mouse’s points too? In my opinion, she’s far more articulate than I am on this issue.

207

There is now a brewing shiatstorm here because a man is suing his girlfriend to prevent her from having an abortion of their child. She broke up with him and says he is pressuring her to have to baby as a means of controlling her; he says he just wants to take care of the baby. Somehow I can’t see him winning.

208

Not to debate it either way but Nonny Mouse’s irony is the other side’s point. When responsibility is forced on the man the choice is given entirely to the woman. As Nonny Mouse also says whether a man wants to opt out or support a child influences the mother’s decision. I guess the question is shouldn’t he be able to influence the decision? Is this not in fact the system as it stands, at least how it works. When a woman gets pregnant and the guy starts getting decidedly shifty eyed and looking at the exits it will affect her decision. I’m sure she doesn’t feel confident that if he takes off to live in another state the courts are going to track him down. The OP suggestion merely formalizes and brings up front what happens every day.

Now to actually debate the point I think it is a bad idea. While I am pro-choice I see this as shifting abortion into a male contraception device(and thats just gross).

209

It seems I need to clarify my point a little more.

The moment the man can say, “If you don’t abort it, I won’t support it,” he places limits on the woman’s choices. Depending on the woman’s situation, she may feel her choices have been limited to aborting the pregnancy. This is one of the main reasons why child support laws as they stand now were created - to protect the woman and her prospective child from this kind of coercion. The kind of coercion that used to lead to many a back-alley abortion and dead mother in the bad old days. Abortion is legal now, but it still has risks, and it’s still a moral minefield.

Abortion’s supposed to be a choice, not an ultimatum.

Besides, the mother needs some kind of protection from the father’s being able to say now that he’ll support the child, but bail later on when it’s too late for her to abort. (Protection for the child, that is - it’s his rights we’re talking about.) If we set the precendent that she’s solely responsible for the birth because she chose not to abort, we let him off the hook even after the fact. And that’s simply not acceptible.

I agree, by the way, that the man should have some input, some influence - and it may suprise you to hear me say this, but I think abortion is the one option the father should not have to pay for. The moral and ethical minefield that still surrounds this procedure means that no one, mother, father, or doctor, should be required to participate in one without his or her full consent. No one should be forced to participate, either materially or financially, in an act one considers to be murder, whether the law agrees or not. The right of conscience must be protected.

Both mother and father should be able to say, “sorry, this is a morally reprehensible choice for me, and you can’t expect me to do it.” Not because it’s inconvenient, as in the case of the father’s having to support the child, but because it’s morally reprehensible (to that person).

The right of both parents not to have/support an abortion is just as important as the mother’s right to have one. Just 'cause it’s legal for her to have one doesn’t mean he should have to pay for it, or that it should be considered an option whose very existence absolves the father of his responsibilities.

Hmmm - which leads me back to my hypothetical date rapist, and whether or not he should have to pay for an abortion…

Gotta think about that one for a while.

Nonny

210

This is a perfect example of what I meant when I said that morals are just opinions and should not be enforced by a government.

It is hypothetically possible that a person would find bringing a child into this world “morally reprehensible” and would wish not to have anything to do with it. Since consenting to sex and consenting to raising a child are not the same thing, a man that adamantly points out that he does not want any children before he has sex is clearly making his point (I am assuming in this case that this point is based on his morality and not just his wallet). The argument that sex can lead to children and therefore he should not have sex is only partially valid. There are plenty of people morally against killing that fire their guns into the air in celebration and end up killing people when the bullets rain down. Just because they fired the gun into the air does not mean they do not find the fact that they killed a person to be morally reprehensible. If we argue that they should still go to jail for killing someone and that the man should still be forced to pay for the child if the woman gives birth to it, then we also must argue that he should be forced to pay for the abortion. He may not have wanted the abortion, but if his actions that produced the zygote make him responsible for paying for the child after it is born, those actions also make him responsible for its execution (i.e. the zygote would not exist to be killed if he hadn’t had sex).

I obviously do not agree with this, but it is consistent. If the man has to pay for the woman’s decision when she chooses to raise the child, then there is no reason he would not have to pay for the abortion when she chooses to kill it. I would definitely like to allow people to make their own moral decisions, but as it stands now, we do not have that. The man is currently forced to go along with the woman’s decision no matter what the decision is and no matter how morally reprehensible he finds it. I do not support the man forcing the woman to follow his moral code, but he should at least be able to wash his hands of the situation if he finds it moral disturbing (and that may very well mean that he never speaks to, nor takes care of, the child once it is born).

211

So, laws should not be based on moral concepts, but the current law should be changed bacuse iyou think it’s unfair? Guess what. Fairness is a moral concept. You can’t divorce law from morality - morality is the foundation on which virtually all law is built.

The idea that a person may find the idea of bringing a child into the world morally reprehensible is an interesting one, but it’s a point without legal significance because it’s a position that society as a whole would resoundingly reject. Also, I would think that a person who really held this position would have no qualms about sterilization, and would, indeed, be eager to have it done.

Won’t get into how hard it is for a healthy young woman to get sterilized here - bloody doctors are more than happy to let her get rid of the kid after the fact, but help her make really sure she doesn’t have to? Nope. Whoops, got into it, didn’t I? Please excuse tangent.

Well, society’s jury is still out on abortion, and probably always will be. Right now the pro-abortion side (I refuse to use the partisan buzzwords life and choice) holds more ground, but the anti-abortion side’s making inroads.

The bottom line, however, is that we can debate this subject until the aborted cow fetuses come home - the state of affairs you seek is never going to happen. You can’t strip men of their responsibilities for their offspring without stripping them of their rights as well, and the majority of men are never going to go for that. It’s rough enough that men who want the kid have no legal recourse against abortion. It would be even worse - dare I say unfair? to take away all their other rights too. A really big percentage of fathers want these rights, and society as a whole is more than happy that they have them.

It wouldn’t make moral, legal, or practical sense to basically do away with the family as a legal institution just to please those men who’d rather not participate.

Nonny

212

Excellent points, all, Nonny Mouse!

That’s what I’m thinking too.

A man who is morally appalled or mortified at the thought of bringing more children into the world would most likely rush to get a vasectomy. He’d leap at the chance. I cannot imagine that a man would have an “on again, off again” wishy-washy sense of morality about bringing children into the world. (i.e. “It’s morally reprehensible for me to father a child this year, but in a few years, I think it might be a very good idea.”) That would make about as much sense as a vegetarian saying, “It’s morally reprehensible for me to eat the flesh of a dead animal this year, but next year, it’ll be OK for me to do so.” It doesn’t work that way, if the moral conviction has any strength or substance to it.

If the motivation is at least partially financially based, the person should take pains to assure that they remain responsible for their own financial situation. They should not behave in a way that brings someone else into their financial situation, and then expect the other person to bail them out. Especially if it may put the other person in a sticky moral or financial situation in the process.

213

I entirely agree. I think that if a man leads a woman to believe he will support the child, then he cannot morally just walk away later.

Not necessarily. I see a large difference between choosing to have a child knowing that the man will not support it, and choosing to have a child under false pretenses that the man will support it.

I ask this in all honesty: what if it is morally reprehensible to a man that he should be forced to pay for a child he didn’t want?

Same here. My gut reaction is that he should be forced to pay for whatever choice she makes. If she chooses to have an abortion, he should pay for it. If she decides to have the child, he should pay 18 years worth of child support for it.

214

The majority of men wouldn’t be stripped of their rights, only the ones who decide to “opt out” of supporting a child.

As to the moral reprehensibility of abortion, I don’t see how one person’s philosophical opposition to a procedure should create obligations for someone else. For example, someone might think it sinful and immoral to have his picture taken, but that doesn’t mean he gets to have a passport without his picture on it; it means he has to choose between upholding his morals and receiving a passport.

Finally, as to men promising to support a child and then leaving once it’s born, my proposal covers that. The man must make his intent to “opt out” known while abortion is still feasible; if he hasn’t done it by a certain date, he’s implicitly consenting to support the child.

215

In what way? Does he think he’s going to go to hell if he supports a child that he helped create, but doesn’t want to support? Does he think he’s murdering something (the way vegetarians think they are “murdering” animals)? Is it against some religion or belief system to pay for ones offspring? (I am not being facetous—I’m curious how this would work.)

Would they have some identifying mark on them, or some other way of proving that any woman who had sex with them would know that he would not be obligated to support any child that she may conceive? How would he prove that she knew beforehand that he was “off the hook” if she got pregnant? She could lie and say that she didn’t know, and how would he prove otherwise? He could not tell her beforehand, for fear she wouldn’t have sex with him, but lie and say that she did know. How would we really know who knew what, unless they both signed a contract before having sex? Do you really believe that most people, in the heat of passion, are going to stop everything and sign a contract before proceeding?

The obligations were created when they had sex and she conceived, and the child started to grow. He cannot then expect her to violate her own moral beliefs about terminating a child growing inside of her, merely because it is inconvenient to him financially. Unless it is against his religion or culture to support his own offspring?

And, why should he expect the government or some other agency to support his offspring? Even when the child is put up for adoption, the child may not be adopted right away, and must be supported while finding parents for him or her. Or, the child may not be adopted at all, and remain in the system for 18 years. At great cost to the taxpayers.

Why should money flow from the taxpayer’s wallets to support a child that this man helped create, just because he is unwilling to support it himself?

216

Fairness is obviously a moral concept, which is why any law that is not absolutely necessary to make the society function smoothly should not exist (and almost all laws fall into this category).

That is the way it usually works I am afraid. If the majority wants something, the minority gets the shaft, even in cases where it is not necessary for the law to exist to have the society operate well. As the years go by, more and more freedom is lost in an effort to force everyone to behave in the same manner.

As for the person that didn’t want kids, he or she could be avoiding sterilization under the assumption that the world may improve in his/her lifetime (or even that his or her mind would change).

I know it will probably never change. That is why I discuss it here instead of in a protest in front of Congress. I know when an idea of mine will never take hold, but I argue it anyway. Doing so is what makes Great Debates so interesting. What fun is it to have a crazy idea if I can not watch other people tear it apart?

And it really is amazing how many rights men have when it comes to children when you consider how little effort they put into child production. Women really got the shaft in that respect, but I already ranted on this issue earlier in this thread.

I am not interested in pleasing those men, but instead in doing away with government interference wherever possible. That is pretty much the stance I take in all threads no matter what the issue is.

[/quote]
That would make about as much sense as a vegetarian saying, “It’s morally reprehensible for me to eat the flesh of a dead animal this year, but next year, it’ll be OK for me to do so.”
[/quote]

Most people are not born with a moral that causes them to become a vegetarian, but develop that moral later in life (and sometimes lose it again later). Likewise there are women that have had an abortion that will never do it again because their morals have changed. People should have the right to change their morals as often as they feel it necessary.

I’ll use my own point of view as the example. I consider death to be a neutral state. I do not believe in an afterlife and do not think that dead people can think or feel. My assumption is that dead people experience nothing and therefore are always content. I consider it a far more serious thing to grant life to something than to take it away. When I give life to something I take the risk that it will live in misery. When I kill something, I am only making it permanently content. When I look at the lives of most people, I have trouble concluding that they would not be better of dead. I do find the concept of bring a child into this world morally reprehensible in the vast majority of situations (which is why I have chosen to abstain from sex until I am confident that I can provide the child with a good life).

217

But that wasn’t the point I was trying to make. The kind of moral conviction we are discussing is not one of a transitory nature, or one that is destined (or scheduled) to change. As far as I know, no vegetarian who is one for moral reasons predicts, “Yes, I am a vegetarian for moral reasons, because I believe meat is murder. But next year, I intend to start eating meat again, because then, to me, meat will no longer be murder.”

It simply does not work that way. If you are able to predict that your “deeply held moral conviction” is destined to change (and therefore you don’t want to commit yourself to it too much), then most around you will judge your conviction to be shallow and not worth taking seriously.

218

I do admit that no one will ever predict that their morals will change one year from today, but that does not mean that there morals will not change one year from today. Morals can change with time. You do not know in advance that they most certainly will change, but you can be conscious of the fact that they might.

And I pointed out that the world changes. A person’s opinion that the current world is not a place to raise children is only true for an instant because the world is constantly changing. At some point the person may evaluate the world and say that it is a good place to raise children even though they thought it wasn’t 10 years earlier (or even one year earlier to use your example). They will not know for certain that the world will be a better place 1 year from now, but they surely can understand that it is possible. The decision not to have children ever is quite different from the decision not to have child while the world is in its current state. (And I have known a few people that were vegetarians for moral reasons that later concluded that their reasoning was flawed. Such people are rare, but they do exist).

219

I am a vegetarian. I’ve met no vegetarians (who are “serious” about their vegetarianism, anyway) who have discussed the possibility of quitting vegetarianism. It doesn’t mean that they won’t, just that they have no intention of doing so.

I don’t think I’ll change my mind about being a vegetarian (I’m not one for strictly moral reasons, though). I may change my mind in the future, (but since it’s been 16 years now, I sort of doubt it). As far as I am concerned, I’m veggie for life, and I behave accordingly.

If I were to try to “cover my ass” and say, “Wellll…I can’t eat animals now, but you never know, by Thanksgiving I may not be veggie, so you’d better prepare enough turkey for me, just in case”, then I’d be a piss-poor vegetarian, and I wouldn’t expect anyone to respect my vegetarianism. With moral beliefs, should come conviction. If a person does not display a certain amount of tangible moral conviction (other than just talk), others around them will not take them seriously.

In which case, a vasectomy (while saving sperm in the sperm bank) may still be a good option to someone who wants to enjoy sex without worrying about unwanted kids. The saved sperm will always be there, if they are needed later on.

If a person is appalled at the idea of bringing up children in this world’s current state, that’s fine. But their moral mortification over bringing a child into this world cannot trump someone else’s moral mortification over abortion, should it? Wouldn’t it be better for the person with the specific moral conviction to do everything on his end to assure that his morals will not be compromised, instead of expecting someone else to possibly violate their own moral convictions, in order to adhere to his moral beliefs? (How many times did I use the word “moral” there? Must be some kind of record.)

220

REAL PROBLEM: Government Involvement!

Being a divorced (and remarried) Dad with custody of my children, my views are neither academic or impartial.

As to the previous poster who ponitificated that the mother was not allowed to use child support money for herself…“what’re you smokin’ man…I want some!!”. As a practical matter, family courts and child support bureaus don’t care. In virtually every state, a custodial parent does not have to account for expenditures of child support. Oh true, the courts do go through a motion of having both parents fill out “income and expense” disclosures, but this in reality serves only to give the judge the ability to INCREASE child support above the state’s already ludicriously high “guidelines”. If a non-custodial father has extraordinary expenses (ex: medical bills) they will usually be ignored while any on the mother’s part will result in extra buck$ for her.

I actually experience the other side of the coin since I’ve had primary custody of my children for four years. I get nothing…zilch, zip, nada…their mother is heavily involved in a quasi-religious cult and makes little effort to earn a normal living. Were I to have done same when it was my turn to pay, I’d have landed in the clink quicker than “Jack Rabbit”. In fact, I worked two jobs (delivered pizza on the side)…and I do so now, but for a different reason. Was glad to do so in order to meet my obligations and ensure that my kids were clothed, fed, sheltered, and guided.

IMO, the best solution is simply to do away with the chimera of child support and custody laws, and let the matter be determined as the private business of the family members involved. The truth about the present “system” is that it rewards avarice, deceit, and indolence, and punishes hard work and honesty. No government agnecy can make parents love their children and shoulder their family responsiblities…those that will might occasionally stumble but will exert themselves to provide. Those that won’t do it on their own won’t care about jail…they’ll live in the underground economy much like the so-called “father” of my stepchildren does, and if jailed, well, it’s “three hots and a cot” anyway. The present system, rather than act as a safeguard for mothers and children (the original intent), has been perverted into a lottery and mechanism for looting productive fathers by a spouse who is either bored with marriage, immature, immoral, flighty, or combination thereof, and seeks the heavy-handed assistance of the all-powerful state in looting her husband future earnings. Lastly, before the lazy bitch is awarded welfare the father, if willling and able, should receive custody first. That ALONE would greatly reduce the welfare caseloads…but that’s too dammed obvious.

Pissed off Dad and Staunch Liberatarian