Or get a vasectomy. Easy option.
Men should have the right to ‘abort’ responsibility for an unborn child, Swedish political group say
There are three parties involved, not two. Where’s the fairness to the child? They are literally the only person in the equation who is a completely innocent victim of circumstance. Do you honestly believe it’s fair for the child to only receive support from one parent if there are two who are capable of providing for it? And in countries where there’s a social safety net, is it fair to the taxpayers to pick up the slack of the unwilling parent if they are capable of paying but just don’t want to?
This discussion seems to focus a lot on what’s fair for the father or what’s fair for the mother, but the child support system is supposed to be child-centric. Letting fathers off the hook because they didn’t want a child might be fair to the fathers, but how is it fair to the child?
If women can legally abdicate responsibility in the same way, then it’s not intrinsically unfair. If a woman can say “hey, if a baby results from this sex (because I can’t get an abortion in time or because I change my mind about motherhood during the pregnancy or whatever), I legally renounce all rights and responsibility for the child the instant the umbilical cord is cut”, then I could see a valid argument for giving men the same option.
That means if you impregnate a woman and you want to be a father but she changes her mind about wanting to be a mother and walks away after the birth, you have no claim on her whatsoever. No colostrum, no breastfeeding, no childcare, no child support, no nothing. Supporting and caring for that baby is entirely on Daddy and his several thousand gallons of formula.
Likewise, if both parents renounce responsibility, then there has to be some mechanism in place whereby the state steps in to undertake caring for the child’s welfare.
If unilaterally renouncing parenthood is to be legal, it has to be equally legal for both genders under the same circumstances. Unilaterally renouncing parenthood of an existing child is not a male equivalent of a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy.
And I don’t think you’re going to be able to sell society on a truly gender-egalitarian right of parental abdication. Some people are willing to let fathers off the hook for parental responsibilities as long as they know that the mother is still going to be left holding the baby, literally and figuratively, but I don’t think they’d be so keen to give mothers the same walkaway option.
Fairness doesn’t mean using the law to artificially “correct” unfairness that is strictly biological in nature.
By your reasoning, it would be equally fair to legally require men to go around in some form of leg shackles or other restraint, to “correct” the biological unfairness of men being on average faster and stronger than women. Any biological advantages that men have should be compensated for by some equivalent legal advantage for women, in order “to make it as fair as possible”.
Heck, have a mixed-gender basketball league when men can score 2 or 3 points and women get 4 or 6 points for the same action.
I’m pretty sure (well, not really at all, just had that impression) there are “baby drop-offs” where anyone can just drop off an unwanted child, no questions asked, in most places in the US. Intended to prevent infanticide, which is what quite a few women who were unable to get an abortion do when saddled with an unwanted child.
Safe haven laws exist, in most cases for newborns. But the authorizes certainly check any dropped off babies against missing person and other relevant reports.
As even sven pointed out, the purpose of such “safe havens” is to protect the immediate safety of the infant, not to permanently relieve the mother of all responsibility for it no matter what. For instance, if a father reports that his baby’s missing and it’s found to have been dropped off at a safe haven, the mother will be identified and she will be on the hook for child support, no matter how much she doesn’t want the baby.
(Note also that in some states even dropping off a baby at a safe haven is considered to be technically illegal abandonment, and a complaint is routinely filed when it happens, even though the abandoner may never be identified or brought to answer the complaint.)
If nobody wants the dropped-off baby, then nobody will come looking for it, and neither of its parents will be identified, and both will avoid the burdens of parenthood. Which, presumably, is what both parents want in that case.
So safe havens are not the infallible “get out of motherhood free” card you may have been picturing them as. That generally happens only when both parents don’t want the child.
But of course, if both parents don’t want the child, then both are consenting to relinquish parental responsibility and the father is not being unfairly or unequally burdened at all.
No, you’re the one who’s doing that. Choosing to terminate a pregnancy in one’s own body is not equivalent to choosing to abdicate parental responsibility for an existing child who is a separate individual with rights of his/her own.
That may be the legal situation but practically speaking women can easily hide the pregnancy from the father and she’s under no real obligation to name him. That makes it logistically and legally difficult for a father to assert his parental rights.
“Easily hide the pregnancy from the father”? How? Maybe if she moves overseas or across the continent and cuts off all communication, but I’m not seeing that as a particularly “easy” thing to do.
Or perhaps what you mean is just that it’s “easy” for a woman to conceal a pregnancy from a casual sex partner who isn’t around any more and who doesn’t keep in touch with her.
That may well be so, but ISTM that if a man wants to be really sure of his paternal status, it’s on him to keep in some kind of touch with (or at least remain marginally informed about) the potential mother(s) of his children. Pregnancy and childbirth are not actually all that easy to hide from somebody who’s, you know, paying attention.
Exactly. If the mother is injured or dies in childbirth, should we maim or kill the father in a similar fashion?
Who said anything about unilaterally? There should be a time limit of a few weeks or so, similar to how a woman has only a few weeks to decide if she wants to continue a pregnancy or not, and once the decision to parent is made it is set in stone. However both potential parents should have a choice.
I have two sides to this question that I would like to express.
Firstly I think that this should be allowed due to situations I have seen and (sadly) have happened to myself this is a great thing to happen it will help a lot of men who are forced into parenthood by ‘Scoopers’ and women who refuse to have abortions just so they could attempt to trap a man in a relationship.
But then again this also has a bad side, now you will all know by the feminists shouting about how all men are pigs, there are some fucking piggish men out there, you know the scum of the earth who would knock a girl up and then leave, well that gives them an actual legal way so they can abandon a woman with a child so she has to take care of it herself
So I will say yes this is a great opportunity to stop scummy women from tapping men into relationships, but then again it enables scummy men to abandon woman with children
I do not have a wholly formed and coherent policy-attitude on this issue.
• My gut-level first response is “table the discussion until women’s right to an abortion, meaning its affordable availability sans restrictions, is solidly nailed down”. I’m almost zero tolerance on “men’s rights” political action causes that don’t embrace feminist causes and pursue what they’re pursuing as part of an overall gender parity objective.
•I’m familiar with the conventional pro-child attitude. “Men must be on the hook or the children will suffer”. False equation, false unspoken premises. The welfare of children should not be tied to the economic circumstances of their biological parents in that manner. That’s a huge can of worms in and of itself, all tied into attitudes towards the economic system itself, so I’m loath to open it here, but suffice it to say I think there are options and flexibilities here; that just as orphaned children or children of men who die shortly after the mother is impregnated should be taken care of, the children of men who remain alive should not be relegated to undue suffering in order to release the men from direct child support. (Indeed, the pro-child attitude and my own are in agreement on that much). And therefore if we are to release the men from direct child support responsibilities under certain circumstances, we will of course do so in such a way that the children do not suffer economic deprivation as a direct consequence. It’s an issue that has to be addressed, but it’s unfair to the debate to simply assume “well we can’t have men being able to abort their parental responsibilities because the children will suffer”.
• I do have strong feelings about child custody. It’s wrong to demand male support in the name of “you have responsibilities towards this child” without considering male parenting connection. I don’t want to enable custodial blackmail— “Either you release me from payment obligations, bitch, or I’m going to pursue joint custody”, etc; but neither is it appropriate to separate males from their children simply because they are not the female parent and at the same time demand financial support. Part of the problem here is that while society now has both formal and informal alternatives to the institution of marriage as far as sexual-romantic relationships are concerned, there’s not much provision of alternative structures for co-parenting.
Overall I like the notion of some kind of “pre-repro” agreement between the partners, one which states intentions w/regards to any resultant pregnancies. My notions here also are only half-formed. Interesting reading!
We used to have something like that, it was called “marriage”. If you were married to the man you were having sex with he would be obligated to provide for any children conceived. If you weren’t, then it was sometimes possible to get compensation, but at the cost of admitting you were a whore.
Sounds great for men, though, right? I mean, you could fuck a chick and if you weren’t married to her then you could just walk away. The only problem of course was that it made women a lot less interested in casual sex, since birth control options were pretty spotty. If she knows that if she got pregnant she’d be branded a whore and ostracized and obligated to support the child herself, while he walks away, then the casual sex spigot tends to dry up.
No, there is no third party. At the time of consideration, there is a fetus growing inside a mother who can get rid of it at any moment for any reason. Since Roe v. Wade, there has been a constant chipping away of abortion rights in this country. I don’t want that to happen in Sweden or anywhere else. Therefore, I’m unwilling to grant even the smallest bit of consideration to the fetus until it is born.
So yes, I do believe its fair. The mother and father are the only ones that need to be considered. It stands to reason that if the mother can essentially kill the fetus at any time, then it has no rights. The plan to allow one party (and it isn’t even as simple as one party, we already allow one party, the mother, to abdicate all rights to it, and we allow both. This plan would simply allow the other party to do the same) is fair because the process should take into account the ability of the mother to care for the child. Again, there are details to be worked out, I don’t know what considerations Swedish law will take, but done fairly, if the mother can provide for the child, there’s no reason to deny that to her.
I would totally support a way, other than through abortion, for the mother to abdicate responsibility as well. To truly make it fair, this should be gender neutral in language.
Of course the law can be and is used to correct biological unfairness. There’s a degree to which every one of us would go to in order to correct this and this doesn’t nearly cross or even approach the line. Don’t tell me you’re not in support of Title IX, separate restrooms, wheelchair ramps, maternity leaves, or gay marriage. Each one of those things is a biological difference amplified by society into differences we’ve all accepted, regulated by the law. To say that we cannot “correct” biological difference would mean that we expect everyone to use the same restroom, we expect women to be able to work through pregnancy, cancel all women’s sports programs except the ones that titillate men and make money, or tell those lazy wheelchair users to get out of their damn chairs.
The purpose of these laws is because there are structural, biological differences in sexes, or in the abled vs. disabled, and because the government has to serve everyone, we make allowances that allow some to be able to do or use or travel, using taxpayer money, that the rest of us don’t need to, or to clearly designate spaces for men and women because both sides prefer the choice of those spaces being available. This proposed Swedish law, to me, is the same thing. I’ve no problems with this correction. And please don’t assume that just because I’m in favor of this correction, that I’m in favor of others. Each one of us is driven by our own personal morals, I just don’t happen to think this one is all that big of a deal to do. That doesn’t mean I’ll be in support of something else you’re surely thinking of examples of.
I’m not considering the child after its born so I’m not mixing up the two. To give any consideration of what the birthed child would require is to mix up abortion and adoption rights. To me, before birth, both the woman and the man should have the right to abdicate responsibility. The only difference is the woman gets to do it unilaterally through an abortion and the proposed law to allow the man to do it isn’t a unilateral by him.
Apparently it can be done. There was a case last year where a married woman, cohabitating with hubby, gave birth to, I don’t remember, 6 or 7? babies over a decade and killed them all at birth. The husband and other family members were apparently clueless. Apparently religion prevented her from using contraception and abortions, so she just got rid of the unwanted kids the old-fashioned way.
I pay child support. Don’t really mind, but with that said if anyone here really doesn’t think that child support isn’t punitive, I’d like you to re-think that process.
What does it cost to raise a child? Couple hundred a month, more/less?
Then why is it tied to a percentage of pay?
It should be a flat rate and anything additional the father wants to pay for he does.
well there goes that last resort. Considering what the GOP is doing right now it looks like in a few months I won’t be able to obtain contraception, and if I get raped the pharmacist will refuse to issue Plan B and I won’t be able to get an abortion anywhere. No way in hell I’m raising an unwanted child or even paying for one. I have a lot of sympathy for men who don’t want to be forced into parenthood. I’m going to go look up methods for DIY abortions. I suggest you men go get vasectomies and stop complaining.