Abortion is “theoretically” a right? Do you have any cites that say that abortion is not “effectively” a right?
Men should have the right to ‘abort’ responsibility for an unborn child, Swedish political group say
People know this but if the mother doesn’t tell the hospital who the father is, the father never gets a say.
You can give up your kid for adoption (unless the absent father objects, can we just assume that this parenthetical is in all posts about giving up kids for adoption? I mean how often do fathers object to paying fucking child support and then insist that the child not be given up for adoption? Really?)
I don’t think anyone is arguing otherwise. At least not in this thread.
Or do you think the “men shouldn’t be forced to pay child support” is a stalking horse for “since men can be forced to pay child support, women can be forced to deliver babies”
I know someone who is in the process of trying to have her ex-husband’s rights terminated so her current husband can adopt her 8-year-old daughter. She divorced ex when daughter was not yet two, and he insisted on a paternity test before he would pay child support, then he didn’t pay, and she had to go to court to have his paycheck garnished. She remarried, and has been remarried for four years to a guy her kid calls “Dad,” and who supports her. Ex then moved twice, out of state, and was $20,000 in arrears once when she tracked him down. He has not seen the child since they split up, even though he was awarded visitation. She has told him that any time he wants to sign over his parental rights, he won’t have to pay child support, and husband #2 will adopt. Ex says he wants to be reimbursed for all his back child support first. He has just changed jobs again, so she has him on the “deadbeat” list, which means when he tries to renew any kind of license, they’ll deny him. If she and #2 were rich, they give him his back child support. They even said they’d try to get what he has in arrears forgiven, albeit, that needs to be done by a judge, since it’s owed to the child, not the wife.
She has a lawyer now who thinks if they can’t find him this time, after a certain amount of time, and it’s the third (or fourth, I may be misremembering) time he’s done this, it might be child abandonment, and they can get him declared unfit.
I know people who think that.
The logic is: women can opt out during the fetal stage, and during the baby stage, they can opt out either with the man’s consent or dropping the kid off at one of those no question baby surrender places. The man can only opt out during the baby stage with consent of the other partner. There should be a way for the man to opt out prior to that. Like ZPG said, its simply moving the time frame up to equal when the woman can make her decision
I don’t really see what that has to do with it. Laws in most places now force both parents to consider their actions whether or not the fetus receives support. Legally, its a party to how the parents are treated already. I want to remove that legal responsibility owing to the possible removal of the fetus by the woman at any time.
And I hope this law passes so that we stop automatically assuming the child is entitled to a portion of both parents’ incomes.
You’re wrong, women do have that privilege, its called abortion (though conservatives are constantly trying to undermine it). And yes, I am advocating for men to be able to abdicate responsibility for a possible future child. However, I want that to be done with the consent of the woman and/or the law/a judge based on whatever criteria Sweden is proposing. I am NOT advocating that men can do this alone with no consent from the mother, but simply to have the ability to agree with her to say: “Whatever I make, I keep, and I never have to pay to support this child in any way”. If all sides agree to it, who are you to tell them to stop?
Because I recognize that being pregnant with a child is different from the period before conception. There’s no need to go down that slippery slope, I can choose to decide where I would not extend my support
I feel that such a thing would be unworkable given how easily women may be deceived by men who lie or cover up that status. Its not a terrible idea, just needs some tweaks. For example, in a marriage, I wouldn’t be entirely opposed to the creation of such a status (of course the devil’s in the details)
The same right women have through legalized abortion. Men will never be able to biologically have the same rights as women because they can never abort their own kid without affecting the other parent. Women can, and should, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t at least try to somewhat equalize the rights for men
That is no different from the anti-abortion movement telling a woman she “consented” to be pregnant when she allowed a man to put his penis inside her and therefore can be used as brood mare for the adoption industry. By the way, as a woman I don’t produce any sperm. Though it wouldn’t surprise me if in a few years, some rabid breeder women don’t try to draft anyone who happens to have a real job into paying their expenses.
we have that. It’s called getting a vasectomy and using condoms.
Sperm donors have been successfully sued for child support. Here’s one case:
Not exactly. Many men were sued for “breach of promise” when they broke off relationships (engagements or not) with women they’d bedded down. The plaintiffs usually won, too. I don’t know if that would fly today.
Pregnancy vs. parenthood isn’t really the issue here. The issue is the right to walk away from an unwanted pregnancy. Women have it, men don’t. A woman can refuse to become a parent when faced with an unwanted pregnancy (and abortion is mainly used for birth control), but a man can’t.
I know it may sound cold-blooded to some, but if women want exclusive control over reproduction, they should also accept exclusive responsibility for it.
Nice attempted dodge, but the money is required to be spent for the benefit of the child. If a father suspects otherwise, he is free to file for an accounting.
Condoms can break. Even vasectomies are not 100% effective. I’ve known of cases that have grown back. They are also impractical for older teenagers who may be sexually active. Furthermore, we do not require every women who does not want to be pregnant to get a tubal litigation, now do we?
This new proposal (after pushing for legalisation of incest and necrophilia) from the Swedish Liberal Youth League is another solution to a non-problem, namely that of women going through pregnancy and childbirth just to collect money from the gullible men they somehow fooled to knock them up!
Yes, I acknowledge: we have a fair amount of lunatics even here in Sweden…
Women don’t have exclusive control over reproduction. You can’t get a woman pregnant if you don’t inject your sperm into her. There’s your goddam exclusive control over your own goddam fertility.
The notion that since we don’t want to send women to jail for having an abortion that men should therefore not have to pay child support is fucking ridiculous. Fucking ridiculous. It is the argument of a petulant child.
You want to make things fair? Argue that we should criminalize abortion. Oh, you don’t want to criminalize abortion? Then shut up.
Women don’t have the right to exclusively control their reproduction. They have the right to not be sent to prison if their pregnancy does not complete to term, even if they took steps to end that pregnancy. They don’t have the right to unilaterally discharge their parental rights, any more than men do. They can’t chuck the baby into a basket at the fire station and walk away. That’s a boneheaded misunderstanding of what so-called “safe haven” laws are about.
All that means is that if you dump your baby at the fire station, we won’t charge you with child abuse, like we would if you dumped your baby in a dumpster behind a McDonalds. Dumping your baby at the fire station doesn’t terminate your parental rights or responsibilities, it doesn’t get you out of paying for child support, it doesn’t terminate your custody of a baby. It’s just saying “ordinarily we’d send you to jail for abandoning your baby, but we’d rather not have you dump your baby in a place where it’s going to die, so in this case we’ll let you off the hook since you dumped it in a safe place.”
Again, all this wailing and gnashing of teeth about how unfair it is that women gestate babies in their wombs but men don’t could be solved by simply criminalizing abortion. Except you’re trying to get out of paying child support, not trying to make it fair. So in reality men who don’t want to pay child support for brats they don’t want are all in favor of abortion.
Bank some sperm for later use and get a vasectomy. Then you are covered even if you are a teenager.
I’m just saying that men who really don’t want to be parents DO have a fairly effective option that remarkably few choose to exploit. It is too bad that no one has come up with any other options for male contraception other than condoms, which have a horrible failure rate, and vasectomies.
Tubal ligations are quite a bit different that a vasectomy. It’s major surgery. Besides, I tried to get one and the doctor (male) chuckled condescendingly and refused, saying I would change my mind later.
Yikes… really. Talk about entering the snake pit. Its hard to be objective about this. I don’t know if that is a good thing. Being objective, that is.
Maybe posing another question would help: as a parent how do either one of you wish to fulfill your roles as parents. If the haunting of purpose is plaguing you then you need to remember how fear plays a role in your life.
Honestly this argument feels like arguing against reality. It’s reality that women get pregnant and that men don’t. It’s reality that the only one who gets to kill the baby before it’s born is its mother. I can’t imagine any society allowing men to unilaterally make the decision to abort. Unless you feel you should be able to kill the baby after it is born then the baby needs 18+ years of support. As the babies parent you owe that baby support. That baby is innocent, it didn’t ask to you to deposit your sperm in its mother, it didn’t ask to be born, it did nothing except exist. It’s not about punishing either parent it’s about responsibility for your actions. You knew the risks of your actions.
Who (and where) are all these fathers who are so deeply concerned with their parental rights but don’t even fucking realize that a woman they slept with has given birth to their child?
Like I said, pregnancy and childbirth aren’t really all that easy to hide from a partner who’s paying even a modicum of attention to the aftermath of their sexual encounters.
If a father claims paternity, then yes, he does get a say in the fate of the child. And if he wants to keep the child instead of giving it up for adoption as the mother would prefer, the mother will have to pay him child support.
Because only women can get pregnant. That’s why “pregnancy vs. parenthood” absolutely IS the issue here.
Women cannot “walk away from” unwanted parenthood any more than men can if their pregnancy is not terminated for whatever reason.
It’s endlessly flabbergasting how so many people who seem to have no interest at all in artificially redressing any of the intrinsic unfairness to women of biological differences in reproduction are immediately up in arms about the vital necessity of artificially redressing any possible accompanying unfairness that those biological differences may inflict on men.
When those people come up with a scheme for achieving parity by mandating comparable damage to a man’s lifestyle and health to balance that incurred by the woman he impregnates (say, emetics to give him nausea, prosthetics to mimic weight gain and bladder pressure, kicks in the balls to simulate labor pains, etc.), then they’ll look a little more credible when they claim that they’re only concerned about making things as fair as possible.
Can you show me a few examples of where a non-custodial father who doesn’t want to pay child support is against adoption? I don’t think its really that common.