If we can draw up this type of agreement after sex, as is being proposed, we can surely think of a way to do it before sex.
If you don’t plan to support your kids, at the very least your partner deserves that information and the ability to make a decision based on that before the impregnating actually happens.
Has a contract of this kind ever stood up in court?
After pregnancy occurs, not “after sex”. I can’t imagine a practical way to get people to sign up for this before they ever have sex in the first place.
I agree. Which is why I said your idea was interesting. I just don’t see it as practical in most cases. But… for those men who are sure about this, and who want to be upfront with their sexual partners, I think it’s a great idea.
I mentioned upthread that this proposal comes from the youth wing of the Swedish Liberal Party and nobody else seems supportive. For the record, this same bunch of kids also wants to legalize incest and necrophilia. Apparently that doesn’t have any support, either. What is it with Swedish kids these days? Is it something in the meatballs?
In the US, if a couple had a signed contract that “any pregnancy would end in abortion unless the woman wanted to raise the kid herself w/o financial support from dad” hold up in court? That is, would the dad be let off child support?
I assume this sort of thing happens all the time with sperm donors, no?
The surrogacy contract with Mary Beth Whitehead and William Stern stated that if Stern wanted her to have an abortion and she didn’t, he could walk away with no consequences whatsoever.
It was struck down by the lower court, even though the rest of the contract was upheld.
Let’s face facts: the woman is pregnant. If she doesn’t want to continue the pregnancy, she has the option of aborting the fetus. If she decides to carry to term and keep the child., the genetic father should a moral obligation to his child.
There are cases where the woman has given a false name for the father, given the child up for adoption, and then the true father comes around and demands his child, as is his legal right.
Why not assume that this is the case if you are not married?
Because plenty of unmarried couples have babies nowadays. Not that that even matters. Why would that assumption make sense, when marriage is agreement between two people concerning their relationship with one another and has nothing to do with anyone else (including their offspring)?
So you are strongly pro-life? You believe that when a woman decides to have unprotected sex she takes on the responsibility of raising any children that result from that union?
Or, when you say “couple” do you actually only mean “male”?
And when did these couples say they would take on that responsibility? If it’s not a decision, but rather a state mandated responsibility, then the state can and should un-mandate it if it’s unjust.
And if we accept that state mandated responsibilities are OK when it comes to reproduction, then we are supporting the standard pro-life argument that a woman
takes on the responsibility of bearing any children that result from consensual sex.
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You are assuming one hell of a lot. How come I am now Strongly pro-life? I am not talking about abortion, I am talking about a man supporting his child if the mother continues with the pregnancy
if the child exists, it requires support. It has nothing to do with fairness. It’s the facts of life. Somebody will have to support the kid.
If we let the father off, that means the rest of us will have to chip in, since it’s too expensive to do alone. How is that fair, that the rest of us are left holding the check? Yes, the child’s creation is probably an accident. People have to pay for accidental expenses. That, too, is a fact of life.
I might be willing to let a father off the hook for supporting his child if he can find a surrogate father to take over the payments on his behalf. After all, it’s not fair to the child, who’s the most vulnerable party, to go without support and it’s not fair that society has to cover the expense of his accidental fatherhood. So, if the father can find an alternate support stream for the child, I think that would satisfy necessities.
Where would he find someone who would volunteer to provide the child support payments? Don’t care. Perhaps he should take it up with the anti-abortion groups.
Sweden’s fairly sturdy social safety net could probably handle it. This wouldn’t fly in the U.S. though, where Americans pay lower taxes and get fewer services.
Ya got me. Brilliantly devious publicity mindf***k trick to make the country UNattractive to refugees from a more traditionalist culture?
“Holy Ikea furniture kits, Mahfouz, did you see what they want to legalize? Maybe we should hit the road for Norway instead.”
Interesting idea … the father would be allow to just walk away … no questions asked. My own father died when I was very young, so I grew up fatherless and see how I turned out … do you really want people like me in abundance in your society?
BTW I looked it up and the Swedish Liberal Party is a smaller centrist (by Swedish standards, of course) party that once upon a time used to be the contender to the Socialists, but has placed no higher than third place in any general election since the 1960s.
What makes you think you have the right to have no consequences for your actions? Condoms break the pill is not 100% effective, obviously you know this fact going into the act. Here is an radical idea, only have sex with people you are willing to have children with. There is a reason why this has been a hard and fast rule for most of human existence. Used to be that men understood and accepted the consequences of their actions, today our world is full of little boys trying to have their fun and run from their responsibility.
her emotional issues are her own. She has control of her body.
Why? If she has control over her body then why does the man not have control of his?
Because a society where men have no responsibility toward their kids by default is likely to be a crappy one?
Then you still pay child support. Child support isn’t a punishment for bad decisions, even though unplanned pregnancies are often a result of bad decisions. It’s a realization that kids are unable to provide for themselves financially and survive on their own, and so somebody needs to provide for them and take care of them, and usually we say those people should be the parents, largely because the parents were the ones who created them. If the kid’s father doesn’t pay child support, that doesn’t all of a sudden mean that the kid needs any less. Kids with only one parent supporting them don’t eat half as much food, or wear half as much clothing, or only need to protect half of their body from the elements. Somebody’s still got to pick up the slack, and that means its either the other parent, which seems unfair to that parent, because that parent doesn’t bear sole responsibility for bringing that child in the world, or, if the parent can’t support the child, then either the society or the state, which I can’t think is a good thing.
This idea is bad social policy on a lot of levels. It’s bad for the kid, it’s bad for the mother, it’s bad for the society, and it’s even bad for the father.
The death of a parent is WAAAAAY different from anything like this.
I don’t see a difference between this and a couple, married or not, who splits up and the NCP does the “no child support in exchange for no visitation” thing, which I have been told is not done any more but my personal observations say otherwise - and in almost all cases, it’s for the best.