But cannot laws help balance some of the “unfairness”? Is it “unfair” for there to be policies that allow a woman maternity leave? Why should she get that extra time off when the rest of us don’t? Is it “fair” to make laws that allow a little extra help and assistance to the handicapped? Hey, if they were born that way, tough shit. Why should any laws help them out? Why should they get all the good parking spaces? It’s “unfair” to the rest of us.
In our society, we take into account the differences of age, situation, gender, and we make policies to help compensate for that. Including policies that take into account that a woman is the only one that can carry a child—not the man. The laws acknowledge that she gives birth, but they also acknowledge that he was equally responsible for her pregnancy. What is so terribly “unfair” about this?
And the taxpayers are being forced to pay for the support of some of the handicapped. I work with developmentally disabled people. They were born this way. Biology is a bitch, ain’t it? And the state pays for some of these people’s care. The taxpayers are forced to pay. I suppose this law is “unfair” as well, so we should get rid of it, huh?
What is so wrong about a man paying for his decision to not have a vasectomy? And then to have sex while fertile?
And, as I mentioned above, we are all forced to pay for others decisions. We are all paying for the support of some developmentally disabled people. Hey—we didn’t ask for them to be born.
Who is talking about hysterectomy? Vasectomies are used as a form of birth control. Hysterectomies are a major surgery, and they are rarely (as far as I know) done for birth control. Abortions, however, are usually either done for birth control, or because the pregnancy is health-threatening. Why should a woman get a hysterectomy when an abortion will do?
But who is “forcing” anyone here? Hey, as you all have said, it’s her choice. I figure, it’s his choice too. And, vasectomies do not prevent a man from ever having children. Remember the sperm bank idea?
But each person is responsible for their part. The man should who does not want to have kids should not sit back, do nothing on his side, and say, “Well, since she goes last, I’ll let her take care of it. It’s her problem, not mine.” No, a man who does not want children should do whatever it takes on his side to assure that pregnancy won’t happen. HE needs to be proactive! If he isn’t, he may get her pregnant, and then it’s her turn to make her decisions. She can have an abortion, or she can keep the kid.
He’s already made his choice—he didn’t care enough to really assure that he won’t get a woman pregnant. He figured it was better to take his chances at getting her pregnant, than to have the vasectomy. So, now the ball is in her court. He had his turn already to make a decision, and he made it. Too late to go whining about how “unfair” it all is.
I have nothing against showing compassion toward those that need it, but when the government makes laws that enforce compassion, it leaves a foul taste in my mouth. I do not like governmental intervention even in the name of “fairness.” I am more likely to support a company that has policies to aid new mothers and the handicapped than I am to support one that does not. But for the government to force all companies to do it against their will is an example of the government getting too involved in our lives. A company can choose to make handicapped parking spaces and tow the vehicle of any non-handicapped person. I think this is a great idea. I respect the right of people to make their own choices (even bad ones). Boycotts are the way to force companies to change their policies, not laws.
I won’t deny that government intervention makes our lives easier in many ways. The laws that benefit employees, for example, help out the vast majority of us (myself included). But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t scrap them if given half a chance. The right to make your own choices is a freedom that we all feel strongly about. We simply draw the line at different places when it comes to deciding what choices we should have the freedom to make.
I do not advocate this to make America a better place, only a place with even more freedom. I do believe that some of the freedoms we have lost would make America better if restored, but there are others that clearly would not (e.g. rape, child molestation, etc.).
Private policies I support. Government policies I do not. Well, actually that is not entirely true. I have no problem with a government agency (such as the FBI) adopting policies such as maternity leave for its own employees. I do indeed support that. It is when the government tells private companies that they must have maternity leave policies that I stop my support. I would like the company to choose to have a maternity leave policy, but do not support them being forced to adopt one under threat of prosecution.
If I thought he were equally responsible for the child’s existence I would not find it “unfair”, but the rant at the end of my last post shows that this is not my belief at all.
That is correct. I look for compassion from the citizens, not the government. I support private charities and personal charitable donations, but not the government’s having its own similar organizations (because the money of the people is not the government’s to spend).
It causes a problem because you are looking at a step other than the last one. The more steps back you take, the more people that are involved (parents, grandparents, alcoholic beverage companies, music companies, etc.). All of these groups are only indirectly responsible for the child. It is also my opinion that the man is indirectly responsible for the child (though not the zygote). I really do understand your position on this issue. How responsible the man is for having sex while fertile is the point most of us keep clashing on. We have arrived at different conclusions and I do not know which step in our thought processes caused us to differ. There has to be a reason why I do not feel that men should have any of the rights and responsibilities of the child and you do. It is more than just that I am a man and you are a woman since there are men that agree with you and women that agree with me. It is times like this I wish I could break thoughts down into their component parts.
Vasectomies and hysterectomies are both things that permanently prevent someone from having children. Vasectomies have recently become somewhat reversible (though not always). It is true that a man could have his sperm frozen before hand, but then again, a woman could have her eggs frozen (though this does create the need for a surrogate mother). Personally, I would not ask anyone to do either of these. Not wanting kids at the current moment in your life and not wanting them ever are two different things entirely. And although many people do not mind using frozen sperm as a method of conceiving, there are those that find it unnatural and are unwilling to use it. The laws need to incorporate these people too. Just because someone has “abnormal” views does not mean the law should be biased against them.
I would argue that the man is responsible for his part when his decision overlaps with the woman’s. If both the woman and man want an abortion then the man should help pay. If both the woman and man want the child then the man should help pay. But when the two disagree, only the woman’s choice matters. Since the man’s choice was ignored, so is his lawful responsibility.
I whole-heartedly agree that the man (and woman for that matter) should be proactive in this matter. But I cannot support the government’s involvement in every matter that two people disagree on. Sometimes, when two people disagree, they just have to go their separate ways.
Actually, it is quite true…for me. I will not fight to take a child away from the mother, because I feel that the law that allows me to is completely unacceptable. Just because a law allows an injustice and other people use it does not mean I will permit myself to do the same.
But the purpose of a hysterectomy is not birth control. Vasectomies are for birth control. Vasectomies are (as you say) sometimes reversable. Hysterectomies are not. Hysterectomies are a major surgery. If I am not mistaken, some vasectomies can be pretty easy—the guy does not have to have a lengthy hospital stay (if any. But I am really not clear on the specifics, other than it is far less severe of a procedure). Men who have vasectomies do not require hormone replacement therapy for the rest of their lives.
Yes. And men have it far easier. For a man=vasectomy, frozen sperm, turkey baster. For a woman=major surgery, hormone replacement therapy, other health consequences, the great expense of a surrogate mother.
But you ask for a woman to have an abortion, a procedure also full of discomfort, controversy, and complications? Why?
That’s where the turkey baster comes in. And it really isn’t that expensive, or complicated. Not compared to the whole major surgery/hormone replacement/surrogate mother scheme that a woman would have to face.
Ooh! Ooh! Now it’s my turn! Their choice! Their choice! Why should we care if they don’t like it? It doesn’t negate that they still had the choice. Right? If they don’t like their options, if they have a problem with that particular procedure, too damned bad. Not our problem. Deal with it. That’s what y’all say about people who don’t want to have an abortion, isn’t it?
“There are those that find it unnatural and are unwilling to use it”. If it applies to frozen sperm, it sure as hell applies to abortion.
But by all means, don’t incorporate the woman who doesn’t want an abortion! Oh no, we must consider that she could have an abortion, right? No matter how much she’d object to the idea. Doesn’t matter what her feelings are, she still had the option. But, oh wait! We must “incorporate” the feelings of the people who don’t want to use a turkey baster, because…why? Why must one procedure be considered, but not the other?
Also quite true. The two processes are no where near equal.
I would not ask a woman to have an abortion. I claim that the main is not lawfully responsible because he does not have such a decision while the woman does. She certainly does not have to take the option. If she chooses to have the child she will be raising it on her own unless the man informs her otherwise. I am making each person responsible for only their own choices. The fact that the man failed to use a reliable form of birth control makes him partially responsible for the pregnancy. This may cause him to feel morally responsible for the child that results or it may not. I would let him make that decision himself, rather than having the government make it for him. The choice to have sex while fertile and the choice to have a child are not the same. The fact that the former has to come before the latter does not mean that all people that commit the former are consenting to the latter.
This is probably the ideal solution for any male that knows which woman he will spend the rest of his life with (this piece of knowledge is necessary so that he can make sure she is okay with it).
It is not a law that persecutes these women though. If they cannot bring themselves to abort, they can give it up for adoption. If they cannot bring themselves to give it up for adoption, then they have to support it. It is their own moral choice that is forcing them to support it, not governmental intervention. Just like a man that chooses to pay child support of his own free will is making his own moral choice without governmental intervention.
Absolutely. Which is why it is important that the government stays out of this part of our lives entirely so we have as many choices as possible.
By all mean the laws should incorporate women that don’t want to have an abortion. The easiest way to do this is to not have laws on the subject at all. There can be no government-caused injustice when the government is not involved at all.
And now for a quote to explain my point of view:
I choose to give people the freedom to make their own choices free of governmental intervention.
Please explain how that principle affects either your ability to adopt a child, or a court to grant you custody of any biological child of yours in the event of the death of imprisonment of the mother.
The government did not “cause” the injustice. The injustice occurs because of the choice participants make. Unwanted pregnancies are not caused by the government. This is ridiculous.
People have the ability to choose the behaviors they want. The government has nothing to do with the choice to engage in an activity that may cause pregnancy. In addition, males may certainly choose to meet or not meet their moral resonsibilities. If their choice is abandonment then good for them. Choose abandonment! I support your right to make this choice. I also support the government’s ability to hold you accountable for this choice.
You’re right - I mistook you for someone else. I also engaged in an ad hominem attack, which I am not normally in the habit of doing. Chalk it up to my extreme frustration with someone whose beliefs I find alien and incomprehensible.
I owe you both an apology. Here it is:
I’m sorry I attributed someone else’s arguments to you. And I’m sorry I personally attacked you
I think there are many men who would disagree strongly with point 2.
Regarding your own argument, I think my main point still has validity - that each parent is responsible for his or her own role, both in the child’s creation and its support, not the other parent’s. Each parent should be responsible for supporting the child to the best of his or her ability. No one can be absolved of his or her own responsibilies based on someone else’s actions, potential actions, or resources.
I’ve stayed away from this for a while. Partially to think, partially just to see where it would go if I shut up for a bit. I mostly want to thank pldennison for appologizing. I can understand that this is an emotional issue for many people, and I should have made clear when I first started posting in this thread that I wanted to discuss this as dispassionately as possible. I also shouldn’t have been quite so snippy in my replies to a few people.
Anyway, I am still following this thread. I have not changed my mind on this issue at this time, but am reconsidering it in light of some of the thoughts in this thread.
You can’t “abandon” a child when there is no child. Announcing one’s unwillingness to raise a child before the child is born, when it’s still possible to prevent a child from being born, is entirely different from abandoning a child that already exists and has needs.
Procacious has already addressed the posts on this page better than I could have. I agree that the crux of the argument seems to be whether having sex while fertile implies consenting to raise a child; or whether the man should be held responsible for the child because he could have abstained, preventing a pregnancy and therefore preventing the child from being born.
I think my position on that is clear, and frankly, I still don’t understand the logic behind the opposing position; it’s out of line with every other situation in which we assign responsibility for a situation that was influenced directly and indirectly by prior acts.
For example: I hand Bob a baseball bat. I know that one possible consequence is that he’ll use it to play ball with his friends in the park; another possible consequence is that he’ll use it to smash my mailbox and kill my dog. If Bob chooses to do the latter, I’m not held responsible for his actions, even though he only faced his decision as a result of mine. I may be responsible for putting him in a situation where he had to choose between baseball and violent rampage, but he chose rampage and he has to face the consequences.
Another example: I sell Bob a car, with license tabs that are due to expire next month. I know that the “default” (or perhaps “natural”) consequence of my decision is him driving around with expired tabs; he would have to go out of his way to re-register the license and get new tabs. Nevertheless, if he fails to license the car properly, he is held responsible, even though it never would have happened if I hadn’t sold him the car. Maybe I sold the car because my insurance company raised the rates, but we don’t blame them either; Bob made the direct decision and he’s the one facing the consequences.
Why is child support an exception to these common-sense (IMO) rules for assigning responsibility?
Common sense would be great!!! Your child is your own flesh and blood. Common sense would imo, lean toward the father being eager to support his child in every aspect.
Thankfully, most fathers agree with this “common sense” approach.
In the case of the death of the mother, there may be a will that covers what is to happen to the children. If the will does not name me, I will respect her decision. In the case of her dying without a will, it will depend on how she acted before her death. If we were split up because she absolutely despised me and the influence I had on her children, then I will respect her wishes and stay away after her death. If we split up only because we did not get along and she had no problem with me being around the kids, then I may very well adopt them (but in this case I got her approval before she died).
In the case of prison I would ask her.
As for adoption, that is a complex one. I obviously have to go through quite a process to even be declared fit, which makes it hard to adopt to begin with. The specifics however, go like this: If a mother gives her child to an adoption agency, she is granting the agency the right to make the decision of who raises the child. In effect, she is granting me the right to adopt her child simply by giving it up for adoption.
And in none of these cases am I asking the government to take the child away from her (not even for weekends, like so many fathers do). She did over 99.9% of the work necessary to produce that child and for me to take it against her wishes because I did a fraction of 1% of the work is unacceptable. It is unacceptable even if she is dead or in prison (I do not have the right to drive the car she worked for just because she dead or in prison).
Unwanted pregnancies are natural and are not unjust. The government’s getting involved in the issue at all is where the injustice comes in.
The only accountability of abandonment is the loss of parental rights (because the child “vanishes” from his/her life). Forcing people to pay child support is to deny them their right to abandon the child. Thus you cannot both support their right to choose abandonment and support the government’s forcing them to pay child support.
"To summarize, it seems unfair that women can eliminate their financial responsibility for a child with an inexpensive procedure and men have no such choice. "
The man’s choice is sold in every drug store and is even less expensive.
They can break? Those are the breaks. She gets the choice? Well, she give birth. this is the historical bedrock of tension between the sexes.
Frankly, given that we have left the half century when sex did not carry the risk of death, I think any man or woman involved in an unplanned pregancy is too stupid to breed.
Talk is cheap. “Announcing” that you don’t want to gain weight after you eat a Big Mac isn’t going to change the fact that you will gain weight after you eat the Big Mac (if your motabolism is so inclined). If you don’t want to have a child born, don’t lend your sperm to the creation of that child. “Announcing” doesn’t mean jack shit, if you’ll pardon me for saying it.
I’d still like to know why you have the double standard—you “don’t care” if a woman doesn’t want to have an abortion, therefore, if she chooses not to have one, she’s on her own. And yet, you want us to care (and worry about “unfairness”) if we expect the same from a man? That we expect him to have a vasectomy if he is so all-fired determined to not father children? Isn’t a vasectomy a more effective method of assuring that you won’t father any children? Far more affective than “announcing” that you don’t want one? (And what do you do after you make this “announcement”? Wave your magic wand?) If you are so worried about “unfairness”, put your money where your mouth is, and get a vasectomy. Don’t expect a woman to do your work for you (i.e. dispose of a child you didn’t want). Be proactive. Don’t even let the child get started.
How? If someone behaves in a contradictory manner (i.e. “I don’t want to have children, therefore I will have sex while fertile and risk getting someone pregnant”) then they are still expected to be responsible for what they actually do. Actions speak louder than words, and you are expected to be responsible for what YOU do. It’s called being a grown-up.
And I suppose that all baseball bats are sold with the big advertisment, “Play baseball, or…kill someone’s dog! Handy-dandy dog killer tool!”
How absurd. Baseball bats are not marketed for killing dogs. They are not generally used to kill dogs, or to cause destruction. It is abnormal to use a baseball bat in such a way—only criminals would do such a thing. If you were to loan your baseball bat to your friend with even the slightest suspicion that he will kill your dog with it, you:
a) would be a complete moron
b) don’t give a shit about your dog or your property, to put them at such risk
c) Hi Opal
d) both “a” and “b”, (and I know Opal would not approve of the dog being killed).
You already know it—a lot of women won’t be getting an abortion. YOU KNOW THIS, obviously. I daresay more people worry about getting a woman pregnant after they have sex than they worry about their friends killing their dogs with loaned baseball bats.
It’s a big risk you take when you have sex—that the woman won’t want to dispose of the child. If you go ahead and have sex anyway, you take your chances. Deal with it, or get a vasectomy. With a vasectomy, you’ve made your decision, like grown-ups are usually expected to do.
Good grief! What kind of friends do you have?!? Seriously! Is this the way you think? Is this the kind of behavior you expect from your friends? Do you have such loser deadbeat friends that they would kill your dog, and then go around driving in your a car, and not give a damn if the registration expires?
I think the moral of this story is, don’t have sex with flakey people who you don’t know, or can’t trust. If you are so worried that they are going to behave in such an unpredictable manner, wait to have sex with someone you, like, actually know. (And even then, allow for the fact that when it comes to a child growing inside her body, some women actually change their minds.) So just get the damned vasectomy if you don’t want kids.
COMMON SENSE? It is to laugh. We will judge the common sense rules when you present them to us.
"It’s a big risk you take when you have sex—that the woman won’t want to dispose of the child. If you go ahead and have sex anyway, you take your chances. Deal with it, or get a vasectomy. With a vasectomy, you’ve made your decision, like grown-ups are usually expected to do. "
Um, rubbers do work. The decision doesn’t have to be permanent.
But why would anyone have unprotected sex unless they wanted to start a baby? Or contract a fatal disease? I really do not get ths ‘accidental pregnancy’ idea; condoms can’t break that often.
Yes, rubbers do work. Usually. But when they don’t work, some of these men still want to get off the hook. He wants the woman to make the “permanent” decision (abortion—“permanently” disposing of a child). He couldn’t bother to have a vasectomy, but he expects her to have some surgery that she may or may not want to have. Why should he rely on her actions? And why should he cry “Unfair!” when she doesn’t do what he wants her to do? If he didn’t want to bother to take care of the “problem” from his end, he’s in no position to bitch because she is not willing to do it for him.
The only way he can assure that he won’t father a kid is to get a vasectomy. He shouldn’t be waiting for her to (maybe, he hopes) dispose of an unwanted child that he helped to start.
Yosemite: The only way he can assure that he won’t father a kid is to get a vasectomy. He shouldn’t be waiting for her to (maybe, he hopes) dispose of an unwanted child that he helped to start.
The man might not want a child now, or not with a particular woman (whether or not he should have sex under either circumstance is a different matter.) That doesn’t mean he has to decide to never have children, and have a vasectomy. He can take all sensible precautions to avoid pregnancy.
And if those precautions don’t work, that’s rough. He has to abide by her decision. Maybe be a daddy, maybe be a sperm donor, maybe be an involuntary financial contributor.
And he can bitch to his buddies; but they’re not going to believe the rubber broke, either.
He’s got to deal with it. And I don’t care how much the woman makes, he was there, it’s his kid, he pays.