With abortion there is only one vote. The woman’s. She may seek advice from the man. Or her girlfriends, pastor, Planned Parenthood, Birthright, mother, strangers on the internet. But in the end there is one vote. So their is no tie. This may or may not be fair, but the OP said they’d mutually made that decision, so we won’t open that can of worms.
Adoption (a whole 'nother decision), both bio parents get a vote. If either does not agree to the adoption, it doesn’t happen. Of course, if you don’t agree to the adoption, you are accepting responsibility for primary custody. The other party is obligated to pay child support - even if it is the woman.
You’re only considering physcial risk of infection. You’re not accounting for a perforated uterus, a pelvic inflamation so severe as to render the woman sterile, or the very real emotional trauma a woman goes through when having an abortion. The trauma is real even when the abortion is had by choice - you want to force a woman to have an abortion now?
Man, I’m as pro-choice as they come, and this sounds barbaric to me.
Your scenario doesn’t change anything. Assuming males could carry a pregnancy, what if I wanted to be the childbearer, and then immediately have it aborted? The same conflict exists, only now it is not whether the mother should keep the child, but whether the mother should carry it (and presumably keep it), or the father, in which case it would presumably be terminated.
All a man has to do to avoid this situation is put on a condom.
But a woman has to endure birth control methods from the pill to the IUD that can have serious physical and potentially deadly side effects. And if the birth control fails she faces nine months of pregnancy again with serious and potentially deadly side effects.
The OP simply has no excuse.
My grandfather ran off on my grandmother and two year old mother in the 1940’s. Somehow he managed to avoid paying child support, leaving my mother and her mother dependent on the kindness of relatives and the bare support of menial jobs.
I don’t know if you can manage to do the same. I do know that if you do be prepared. If you think this board is cruel I doubt people in real life will be much kinder.
My mother never forgave her father. Even though he’s been dead and buried for quite a few years she still curses his name. Do you really want another human being to despise you that much?
No, my scenario was in answer to those men who would like to keep the baby that the mother has decided to abort. It happens. Quite a bit. I think you do men a misservice to presume that they’d terminate every unplanned pregnancy.
I’ve already explained why I think forcing a woman into an abortion is barbaric and wrong.
On the emotional side of things, let us not forget the emotional trauma experienced by the father. I speak from experience on this one - I made a girlfriend pregnant once (she eventually miscarried later on), and subsequently lost about thirty pounds and severely affected my overall health due to stress and sleep deprivation, and I also contemplated suicide. At the time, I would have cut my own dick off just to be able to take back the impregnation. To say that the father has no emotional stake in the matter is absurd.
So the argument stated becomes that the mother’s physical and emotional well-being, not necessarily objectively debated, but solely as judged by the mother herself, outweigh any possible physical or emotional implication on the father. As these consist largely of value-judgements, it seems that it would be difficult to make a case either way, from a logical standpoint.
I never meant to imply that this was a good idea. My statement went a bit awry if I did so. My intent was merely to examine the discrepancy between stakeholders’ say in the matter of whether to raise a child or not.
To the OP who came to the board with a candid question and asked for a suspension of judgment, I offer you the following: Your interest is best served by contacting an attorney in your state/local area as soon as possible. By in large, the legal advice dispensed on this board so far has been of the anecdotal variety, and as such is inherrently unreliablle if not simply wrong. If you require financial assistance to help pay for the attorney, ask your parents. If you haven’t told your parents, you might consider telling them. If your parents aren’t around, you might wish to seek the counsel of an indigent legal aid group. I don’t offer you any of this to encourage you to shirk your responsibility, and I would urge you to resist the temptation to “beat the system.”
You must udnerstand that much of the vitriol directed at you is the painful recollection of prior experience, and the responsibility for the anger and hurt arising from some past slight is now being projected on you.
Without a doubt, the child support systems in many states are inherrently flawed and quite unfair. Support obligations are often arrived at based on the father’s gross income, but then taken from the father’s net income. The support payments are then not taxed against the mother. An involuntary change in employment situtaitons can render a once reasonable obligation entirely unrealistic, and although downward adjustments in an obligation are possible, you often require the assitance of counsel to effect such chage (you can’t make your support payments, how can you afford a lawyer?).
None of this changes the fact that a lot of asshole dads skip out on their kids. Don’t do that. But, realize that now is the time to deal with this candidly and frankly, as your options are foreclosed daily. Assuming you do pay child support, everyone is better off if that payment is reasonable, something you can make, because you won’t be making any payments from jail. And remember, if you meet your obligations and barring some other defect in your parenting ability, you are entitled to be part of your child’s life. Take that opportunity.
I am not judging you because, in my opinion you’ve committed two crimes of which I (and most on this board) are guilty: you’ve engaged in premarital sex; and, you’ve weighed your options. Don’t be an asshole, but do proceed with much caution . . . and for what it’s worth, know that much of the anger directed at your post is directed at someone else. Don’t become like that someone else.
This discussion has taken place more than a few times.
The simple fact is that abortion is not the same as not paying child support. In the case of abortion, the child does not exist. In the case of a child that has actually been born, the child is legally and morally entitled to the support of both parents.
You’re operating on the assumption that there is some sort of equivalency between abortion and abandoning a living child, when they are in fact completely different acts. An abortion means no kid exists. But a child that DOES exist is entitled to support - it becomes, at the moment of birth, an issue of the child’s rights taking precedence, not the rights of the mother or father.
There’s no double standard here. Both men and women are legally responsible to support a child who actually exists. Both men and women are legally entitled to abortions, too - it’s just that men do not get pregnant very often. Either way, an aborted fetus doesn’t have to be clothed, fed, and supported. A living child does.
If the mother is not properly supporting the child, the father should call the proper authorities. Not paying child support isn’t going to ameliorate the situation.
I think that pregnancies should only ever be carried to fruition if BOTH mother and father are in agreement that they wish to have the child, as opposed to defaulting the other way. While some have stated that forcing abortion upon a woman is barbaric, this is true only due to the limitations of current technology as far as risk posed to the mother. In the years to come, I think we may see procedural and technological developments that permit the abortion of pregnancies with negligible risk to the mother. Where such technologies exist, if a mother wishes to carry a pregnancy to term despite the wishes of the father, I see no reason why the father should not be absolved of responsibility for the child.
Back to reality - as it stands, such a policy remains in the realm of the “barbaric”; however, I do think that in the case of an accident where a condom bursts, a birth control dose is forgotten, or similar circumstances, as an equal stakeholder the father should have the right at that point to insist that the mother take a “morning after pill” or equivalent measure to prevent the pregnancy. If all reasonable measures are taken with regard to birth control, and an accident happens, the male should have an equal stake in decision making until maternal health issues become a dominant priority. As before, at the request of the male partner, a woman who refuses such a simple and non-invasive measure to terminate a pregnancy should be permitted to continue the pregnancy only if paternal responsibilities are waived.
I think that intentional pregnancies which are supported by both parents, as such a responsibility scheme would favour, would go a long way to reducing the number of children living in poverty, and reduce the drain on state assistance.
There’s a fundamental difference between a woman deciding to keep a baby or not, and the father deciding. The difference is as follows:
Forcing a woman to carry a fetus to term and deliver it, in short, turns her into little more than a vessel for supporting another life.
Pregnancy is dangerous. Lots of things can go wrong. It can take a huge emotional toll on someone, regardless of whether or not things go wrong. In my mom’s family, there seems to be something hereditary that ‘encourages’ miscarriages: it happened to my grandmother, two aunts, and my mother. It’s very, very, emotionally scarring. If a woman is forced to carry a baby to term and deliver it, then put it up for adoption, hand it over to the father, whatever, I’m going to go ahead and say there’ll be some serious emotional trauma there, too.
Say neither dad or mom wanted a kid. Mom gets pregnant. Mom decides, as in the OP, she can’t give it up. Dad doesn’t want the financial burden? Tough shit. You slept with a woman. You knew there was a risk of getting a woman pregnant, and I don’t care if she’s on two types of birth control and you used condoms. You’re a healthy, fertile male, you insert tab A into slot B, and there’s a chance that an egg will be fertilized. It is in the woman’s body, it’s her choice - at least until we start forcing me to have vasectomies, or something.
-NinjaChick, who recently found out she was an accident after her mother miscarried.
I think this argument neglects the legitimacy of the pro-life position as a moral belief. While I am ardently pro-choice, I think that to set up a system requiring a woman to either be pro-choice or else bear the burden of exclusively raising and supporting children is immoral, just as forcing all women to carry all unwanted pregnancies to term would be immoral.
While your proposition at first glance sounds reasonable, Fuji, you’re essentially making women into brood mares or sterile critters at the whim of men. There is no “simple and non-invasive measure to terminate a pregnancy.” They *all *come with side effects. Not the least of which is that they are completely unacceptable to anti-choice women. And while I am very, very much pro-choice, I would never force and anti-choice woman to have an abortion.
WhyNot,
single mother to WhyKid after a very determined sperm made it through two intact barrier methods and two spermicides; rec’d a total of $680 in child support in 12 years
My ward got his girlfriend pregnant shortly before they finished high school. To receive Social Services help, she was obliged to sue him for support – apologetically, but with the fact that they had no other options at the time. He acknowledged paternity and basically accepted responsibility. The court ordered $25 a month in support, payments to start after graduation. He worked that summer, enlisted in the Marines in the fall, and they married after he finished Basic Training. (Amusing anecdote: After they married, they notified the Court that they were married and living together, and that court-ordered support could be terminated. A year later, our money-hungry county Social Services served him with a non-support warrant – she’d been getting no check from them, but they still wanted to collect from him. It went to court – to the same judge who had heard the original suit and whom they’d notified of the marriage. After requiring them to come back with documentary proof they were married and lived together, for the record, the judge essentially tore the Social Service lawyer a new one.
Hauss, taking on responsibility is never easy, but it’s an element of adult life. I suspect that in a few years you would regret signing away any rights to your child. I do need to ask, besides not wanting the responsibility of child support, is there any reason why you feel you ought not pay? Everyone so far has been making the assumption that it’s merely being unwilling to accept the financial responsibility – is there anything else motivating you?
Finally, the question of custody – it’s your child as much as it is hers; she merely is mandated by the facts of life to be the one to continue or terminate the pregnancy. Will she be a fit mother for the child, in your estimation? Are you willing to undertake the responsibility of being a father to the child? You’re stuck with the financial responsibility of that, barring adoption proceedings. But what about the child’s other needs – can you take on the responsibility of being the father that the child needs? Whoever has custody? You need to think that one through – because much more important than how much money that child has for its support is how much love that child has, and from whom. Trust me – I’ve seen some well-provided-for children turn out terrible as they grew up, because the man who should have been there for them was content to merely send a check. That’s a tough question – and you’re the only one who can answer it.
Thought I’d throw this in, since I just went through a support hearing. In PA, BOTH the mother’s and father’s incomes are taken into account. A total amount is decided for the monthly support, with a percentage given to each parent based on their percentage of the total monthly income. There are a number of ways to come to a “wage capacity” for the paying parent, and trust me, if the mom-to-be has a good lawyer, you can’t fake some low amount. Once the wage capacity is established, you can’t quit your job, or take a lower paying job voluntarily and change you support amount. Won’t work. The support then comes directly from your paycheck, or unemployment, or income tax return, so there go those options. You must have your child at least 40% of the time in a month to have support payments lowered, which doesn’t seem likely in your case.
I’m sure I’m biased, but the process seemed very fair and took into account both of our situations. I had to show proof of childcare expenses (for the suggestion earlier of showing receipts). But on that note, what would you except as proof of payments going the correct way? Child care? Mortgage? Electric? Groceries? Car payments? All of these are necessary for the care of my child.