As Diogenes mentions, she deemed him to be suitable as a father by virtue of the fact that she had sex with him. That choice is inherent in the choice to have sex, because birth control is not 100% reliable (as she discovered). And all the more because she chose not to abort.
Getting drunk and “rolling the dice” means accepting a small but non-zero chance that it will come up snake eyes (from your POV), or (from an evolutionary POV) hitting the jackpot.
But that’s the point - we evolved to roll the dice, because our ancestors did, and that meant they had more children than otherwise. Contraception has reduced that pressure, but certainly not eliminated it. And has not eliminated it much, if at all, on people who don’t even make the effort.
Sure I have, when I was young and stupid, but I drove drunk when I was young and stupid too. That doesn’t mean I lose the right forever to say that driving drunk is stupid.
I meant conceiving a child while currently on welfare.
I think there is a huge, HUGE difference between understanding and condoning… and asking me to pay for someone else’s choices.
You may not understand (nor condone) why I want to sit naked under a waterfall all day playing bongos. But… would you be willing to support me? Give me free housing? Food stamps? Welfare?
I am not, at all, discrediting, disagreeing, disbelieving, or just plain dissing anyone’s choice to have children. My objection is when they want me to pay to support them, and the children, through welfare. (Again, when the child is conceived while the mother and/or father are currently on welfare.)
You’re confusing negligence with intention. Someone who accidentally gets hit by a bus doesn’t intend to die, they just intended to cross the street. We get your point, okay? People who have sex risk, knowingly (or in some cases unknowingly), that the other person will become the parent of their child.
Arguably, if you consider it in the paradigm of genes acting as if they have their own agendas, then having sex with someone means that enough of your genes voted that the other person’s genes were a good vector to spread themselves. But a large portion of behavior seems independent from genes, so we really aren’t the direct sum of our genetic inputs.
I hope you’re being sarcastic, but unfortunately you made a good point.
Yes. It did work well. Now didn’t it?
Unfortunately, sterilization is usually irreversable. That’s why I can’t condone it. Someone who can’t afford to raise a child *right now *might be able to in several years. And they *should *be able to, *when *they are able to.
No way. She deemed him suitable to fuck. Not to be a father and not to be a partner for anything but sex. Accepting a consequence is not the same as deeming someone suitable.
But if they cross the street negligently (e.g. they run straight out into traffic without looking or using a crosswalk) and they get nailed, then it’s not just an unfortunate accident, but a result of an intentional action.
It made the population extremely fearful of any form of birth control, and made it that much harder for the government to educate people in the use of condoms, hormonal BC, and the like.
The only reason India’s population growth has been kept somewhat manageable since is a free, no-questions-asked abortion policy, which has itself had the unfortunate side effect of a big drop in female live births relative to male ones.
You can’t separate the consequences from the motivation that way. That’s like the drunk driver saying he wasn’t choosing to get arrested, he was just chosing to drive home. If you’re already deciding that pregnancy is an acceptable risk, then, unless you’ve already decided you will terminate any potential pregnancy, you’re ipso facto deciding that the guy doing the siring is an acceptable father. It’s childish to dispute that. It may not be a cognizant choice, but it’s an undeniable one.
As she found out, there is no way to eliminate the second and keep the first with 100% certainty.
You can pretend things are otherwise, but (as discovered) that doesn’t change anything. As I said, evolution works on what happens, and cares nothing about what should happen.
Regards,
Shodan
ETA - maybe I will just let Diogenes do my arguing for a while.
The fact that you can abort the pregnancy (whether you choose to or not)means the unspoken choice of suitability as a father is no longer on the table.
I’d be equally comfortable saying it if I hadn’t been lucky. I go back to the drunk driving analogy. Just because I’ve done something risky and been lucky doesn’t mean it’s not still risky or that I can’t tell other people it’s risky. I got away with both things because I was fortunate, not because I was smart.
Hence my qualification above, “…unless you’ve already decided you will terminate any potential pregnancy…” If abortion is not on the table for you, then you’ve chosen a potential father.
At the very least, you have decided that it’s acceptable for this guy to get you pregnant.
I’m sorry, I misunderstood you. I thought you meant Native Americans (American Indians), not the continent of India. Sorry, my mistake.
I’m not aware of factual evidence of forced sterilization used against Native Americans, but have heard rumor (urban legend?). I thought that’s what you were referencing. My reply was meant to convey that yes, forced sterilization (among other things, in the distant past) decimated the Native American population. So yes, it did “work” (in one horrible sense of the word).
I’d like to ask this: Are people who HAVEN’T had sex with anyone they didn’t want to marry or have children with allowed to hold the opinion that people who can’t support a baby alone shouldn’t fuck losers?
Because I haven’t. Not that I didn’t have the opportunity, either; I dodged a few bullets, I’m sure. I’ve only had sex with my husband, and yes before we were even engaged. But I’d rejected the “losers” on the grounds that I didn’t want that sort of entanglement, and I (correctly, I think, having known him now for 20+ years) was confident that the future Mr. S was the right person with whom to share the responsibility.
