No on implied any such thing. I see on preview that Jodi said what I am about to say, but I think it bears repeating.
It’s really very simple. If a man and a woman want to have fun in the sack, they must both realize that there may be consequences, and they must both take responsibility for whatever happens. Your attitude seems to be that the man can have his fun and disregard any consequences. Care to explain?
I wouldn’t want such a procedure to be mandatory – merely highly encouraged. As with my opposition to seat belt laws, I am a firm believer in people’s right to be stupid.
The procedure would, however, have to be cheap, anonymously available to minors, painless, and above all very easy to reverse. The one main factor keeping men from getting a vasectomy nowadays – besides the thought of having surgical implements in such close proximity to their family jewels – is the fact that a modern vasectomy is more or less permanent.
Do you guys seriously believe that single mothers are living luxuriously off child support from the fathers?
Of all the single mothers I know, I got the biggest amount every month. That amount did not even cover the cost of daycare. And that’s only when the father decided to pay. Half the time, he’d go to court and claim he couldn’t pay. Then the court would force him to pay the minimum. $50 a month.
I don’t know a single woman in the world who would think of having a kid in order to get an extra $50 a month.
The man’s body does not produce a child. The woman’s body does, and therefore it is her choice and her responsibility. A “child” is not conceived - a zygote or fetus or whatever the precise term for a fertilized egg is. This is, legally and ethically speaking, not a child. The woman then has a choice over whether it becomes a child. Since it is her choice, it is her responsibility to care for a child if she chooses to have it.
This is precisely what I’m saying. (Of course, they also have no parental rights unless the woman allows them to have them, or if there was some sort of contract beforehand.) I agree that I won’t find many, if any, people who agree with me. The number of people who agree with me has no bearing on the accuracy of my position.
Where on earth did I give the impression that abortion is easy?
The man’s body does not produce a child. The woman’s body does, and therefore it is her choice and her responsibility. A “child” is not conceived - a zygote or fetus or whatever the precise term for a fertilized egg is. This is, legally and ethically speaking, not a child. The woman then has a choice over whether it becomes a child. Since it is her choice, it is her responsibility to care for a child if she chooses to have it.
This is precisely what I’m saying. (Of course, they also have no parental rights unless the woman allows them to have them, or if there was some sort of contract beforehand.) I agree that I won’t find many, if any, people who agree with me. The number of people who agree with me has no bearing on the accuracy of my position.
Where on earth did I give the impression that abortion is easy?
After all of this, I think I’ve got the responses I expected for the most part. Seems that while it isn’t entirely divisible, the most passioned responses against “male abortion” have been from women and the most passioned responses in support have been from men (when I could tell gender from handle or post.) Again, not universally true, but this seems to have occured to some degree.
I suspect there’s history in gender roles behind this issue that may affect our thinking. Most women probably know another woman who got saddled with raising a child all alone without financial assisstance from the father. Most men probably know another man who sent child support to a woman who used the money to go out to the pricey dance club 4 times a week and buy a home electronics system. I suppose that although we all know both of these stories happen it’s only natural we identify with the person of our own gender, because the situation of that person is most likely to be the one which we might fear falling afoul of later in life.
To avoid those gender-interest positions, I tried to frame the situation narrowly in the OP. Neither of those above situations is germane to the narrowly defined situation of “mom wants kid, dad doesn’t, mom has plenty of money.”
Perhaps we really do have to just throw up our hands, accept the status quo, and conclude that men and women will never abandon their own gender-interests. Women want to hold the power over men that child-support gives them even when they don’t need it, and men want the power to escape responsibility even when doing so would be disastrous for the other party, and perhaps both sides fear a slippery slope.
With conditions as they are now, maybe this can’t be solved. Maybe we can, as suggested, solve this issue by moving forward scientifically and eliminating the issue entirely. If we were able to rid ourselves of the dangerous, uncomfortable, and time-consuming process of pregnancy in utero, then every child would be a wanted child. A single woman who wanted a child could just tell the lab to take one of her eggs and a random sperm sample and grow the baby in a jar or some such device. Though…would that really even solve the problem? The sperm has to come from somebody. How long before that child decides he wants to know who his biological father is and goes knocking on the sperm donor’s door? How long before the child wants to go to college and comes up with a novel theory of law to support a suit against the father?
If only there were a way to make babies without sperm, then we could solve the problem, nobody could possibly be held responsible for a child they didn’t want then…but how? If only some brilliant scientist would come up with a way? Could it be called clon…nah, I better not go there 
God, this tired old issue again.
Men and women have the same rights. Exactly the same, right down the middle. Both men and women have the right to abort their pregnancies. Both men and women have a legal responsibility to provide support to children once they are born.
Of course, men don’t seem to get pregnant very often, so they rarely exercise that particular right.
IMHO, the notion of legalizing child abandonment - and that’s exactly what this ridiculous “male abortion” concept is - is idiotic in the extreme. If a child is born the parents should both be responsible. The status of abortion law’s an irrelevance. The child only comes into existence when it is born; it is at that point that parental rights and responsibilities kick in, not before. And since those rights and responsibilities are even-steven as it is, I say it’s fair as it is.
As for the fact that men can’t get pregnant and therefore rarely have the chance to have abortions, don’t blame the law. That was Mother Nature’s decision. Sex results in children. Tough shit; if the kid’s born you pay, and if you don’t pay you’re a dirty scumbag. Don’t want kids? Cut your nuts off or become a monk.
See, now this is why I rarely play devil’s advocate. sigh
I am not denying that each must take responsibility for whatever consequences arise. Let’s take a look, though, at what those responsibilities are for each of them:
The Woman:
1)Abortion- invasive, not always safe, but can be done without the man’s permission. Again- strictly HER choice.
2)Adoption- can be done with or without the man’s permission or even knowledge. Yes, I realize that adoption agencies require that the father be involved in the process- but all the mother has to do is claim that she doesn’t know who or where he is. Her choice, but potentially can only be done with the father’s permission.
Each one of those choices can be done without the father’s permission (with the possible exception of adoption- so no fair harping on this point; I’m willing to partially concede it).
Now for the Man:
Abortion- nope, can’t tell a woman what she can do with her body. Not a valid choice.
Adoption- what agency will POSSIBLY allow a single male to put a child up for adoption? This is only a choice IF the woman agrees to it. Not a valid choice.
The father truly has no choice. The woman holds ALL the cards in this. The only thing the father can attempt to do is try to convince the woman of his choice.
Now, each of these scenarios assumes that the couple doesn’t stay together (which is, of course, the optimal solution).
Okay, so, in the spirit of demonic advocacy- why not make the father’s decision on adoption be mandatory? In other words- if the man decides that, upon the birth of the child, that the child should be placed for adoption, then that decision will stand. If, at that point, the mother wishes to adopt the child, then she does so as if the child were an orphan- she cannot then levy child support against the father.
sigh I just KNOW I’m going to regret posting this. Can’t we all just get along?
This is a textbook example of both red herring and adhominum.
pldennison, I understand that this can be an emotional issue but please try to focus on the arguments and not the people.
Why? Because children are not poker chips, to be used as tools in some half-assed attempt at “fairness” to men. They are human beings, and have rights, including the right to be supported by their parents.
RexDart: FWIW, I am a male. Also, even taking into account the fungibility of money, it is illegal for a mother to use child support for her personal enrichment.
I once had a dream where a wise man said, “You can’t say, ‘They’re fucked up so we can be fucked up.’ That’s ignorant.” It was then that I woke up on my couch and realized I had fallen asleep while watching Chris Rock on HBO.
The point I’m trying to make is this…who cares what options the women have at their disposal? If you have sex and a baby is born that is yours (important), then be a man and help pay for and raise the kid. Period.
Actually, BlackKnight, it’s neither a red herring nor an ad hominem. It goes precisely to the point. Every indication in this thread is that there are certain men who feel they are entitled to absolute consequence-free sex, and who feel that declaring, “I do not want children” before they stick their penis in a woman’s vagina abrogates them from all responsibility to support any children of such a union. They’re willing to let children go unsupported in the name of some goofy concept of “fairness” that is at best misguided and at worst utterly immoral
I have a 13-year-old nephew. When he was born, my sister lived with the child’s father. Both agreed to have the child. They lived together (unmarried) until he was around 6 years old. Over the last few years, he has taken up with another woman, had two children with her, and decided he doesn’t really want to help raise my nephew any more. He rarely sees him, does not pay for any of his medical or dental expenses (he just got braces last month), and doesn’t meet his child support obligations.
In short, he’s decided he just doesn’t want parental responsibilities when it comes to my nephew. And you think that’s perfectly OK. There’s a word for people like that, but using it in this forum would get me banned. Suffice to say, though, that it precludes those people from lecturing others about maintaining focus.
But it’s not his body. It is not his choice. It is not his child. (Except in the biological sense. Not in the “entitlement / responsibility” sense.)
Why are you bringing “fun” into this? That is irrelevant and a red herring.
Bologna. I’m all for making sure people meet their responsibilities, male or female. It just so happens that, due to biology, men have no rights or responsibilities in this area. Blame mother nature.
How about you make that judgement and tell me your reasoning behind it? Otherwise, there’s really no point in this being in GD and not the Pit or IMHO.
This is an inaccurate statement. It implies that the birth is a chance occurance, when in fact, it isn’t. A more accurate statement would be “If the mother decides to bear the child, the parents should both be responsible.”
pldennison I don’t think anybody here thinks that your nephew’s father is in the right. He was part of the decision that resulted in the child, and should keep that responsibility.
In the bad old days, when women didn’t have an abortion choice, this system was perfectly appropriate. Both man and woman had an equal risk (WRT kids) when they decided to have sex. There was a risk of pregancy, a risk of birth and both would be stuck with the result. Equal risk, equal responsibility.
Women now have a choice, which reduces their risk, men are still in the same old situation.
You are incorrect. It is exactly those two things, and possibly more (such as “poisoning the well”).
Let’s look at what you said:
Nobody seems to be talking about orgasms but you. I’m trying to discuss responsibility, ethics, etc. Nobody is talking about punishing children either. In short, this statement has nothing at all to do with the topic at hand. You are trying to draw attention away from the main thrust of the argument and towards something only tangentially related. Ergo, a red herring.
This is obviously an ad hominum. The statement serves no purpose other than to try to dismiss an opposing viewpoint because of the percieved (lack of) morality of those promoting it.
If he led her to believe that he would stick around and support the child, then he has committed a form of fraud and therefore I do not and cannot condone his actions.
I can just as easily argue that half the child’s DNA comes from the father, therefore the father bears half the responsibility. But biology is not the only issue here. “Mother Nature” doesn’t care if the father is around or not, or if the mother has an abortion, or leaves the baby in a dumpster, or eats it. But we, as humans, who live in a society, and who presumably have morals, care about the welfare of that child. Regardless of how you justify your position with biology, it boils down to “I can have more women than Wilt Chamberlain, Rameses II, and Don Juan put together, but if they all get pregnant, well that ain’t my problem.”
This is demonstrably untrue.
Actually, you’re trying to discuss irresponsibility, to wit, refusing to support children generated as a result of your sexual activity.
Do you have some other way of defining the act of forcing a child to live with support from only one of its parents?
Consider the child support a down payment on some good karma, for requiring some mother to tell a 7-year-old child, “Your father didn’t want you and won’t pay to help raise you.”
I’d rather the problem be solved by men and women making love, only when they’re IN love, and ready to accept the consequences of their actions. i.e. to be really really careful with their bc or prepared to love and cherish any child that comes along or to have enough respect for each other to be able to come to an agreement that benefits both partners if it comes down to an abortion.
Wishful thinking, probably.
In the timeframes I’m proposing parental opt-out (i.e., while abortion is still a possibility), there are only two people involved as well.
If you disagree with the current state of the law on that matter, that’s the subject for another thread. Instead of rehashing the same female abortion thread, it might be better to just search the archives and pretend all those old threads are going on right now.
BLACKKNIGHT –
Kindly explain how, in the act of having sex: (a) a man uses a body not his own; (b) he does so not by choice; and © the child resulting from such sexual congress is not his child. I feel like I’ve gone through Alice’s mirror here, where people make arguments by saying things that make no sense. And you do not get to decide that it is “'not his child in the ‘entitlement/responsibility’ sense.” That is your own amazing opinion, comfortably divorced from reality.
Really? You think there’s a lot of guys out there who want to avoid reproduction but who are having sex for reasons other than fun? What reasons would those be? It is entirely relevant that a particularly pleasurable undertaking can have and sometimes does have very serious long term consequences, but people will nevertheless risk disease and pregnancy to do it. And why? Because it’s fun. The question is why you would allow a man to avoid the long term conseqences of something he’s doing for fun. And it is for fun, not reproduction – because he doesn’t want the child, remember?
Ah, yes, back through the mirror we go. But, of course, here on Planet Earth men do have rights and responsibilities for the biological consequences of their actions – at least those consequences that are up and walking around. Your position is that men should not have such responsibilities, but of course you’ve failed entirely to explain why not, so you merely assert – totally without foundation – that they do not.
Sure. Since you asked: I think the idea that men should be able to avoid responsibility for their own children just because they (the men) don’t want them (the children) is massively stupid – so stupid that its stupidity doesn’t really need pointing up. In a nutshell: A man creates the child; the man is responsible for it, just as a woman is respnsible for the child she creates as well. I think the reasonableness of this position is obvious, your reality-denying averments about men’s responsibilities notwithstanding. Furthermore, I think the reasonableness of the existing system is also underscored by the ridiculousness of the proposed alternatives – forced abortions; forced adoptions – which are so outrageous (and, incidentally, hostile to women) that they really need no comment.
We make people pay for the babies they create. It’s that simple and it’s that fair. I am not surprised to find that someone who wants to argue it is not fair must, in order to do so, argue that men have no hand in creating babies at all. But I continue to maintain the silliness of that position is self-evident.