OK, here we go again…
Look, that might be YOUR opinion, but don’t generalize to other men. Many men want children, and they want to have them with their wife. For many men, having children is an important part of marriage, and if the wife suddenly decides not to have children, that pretty much ends the marriage. Maybe not for all men, but certainly for many.
Because they care about the woman and want the baby, but that doesn’t mean they’re entitled to anything.
We’re not talking about children, we’re talking about pregnancies.
Because we care about the woman. We still have nothing to do with the process.
I don’t see any of this as meaningful. I don’t see a woman choosing to terminate a pregnancy as victimizing the guy who contributed the sperm as being any different morally than a woman breaking up with a guy. Neither makes the guy a victim.
I agree with this. It is not feasible, even though, in a perfect world, it should. But, since I would tend to think most abortions come from a situation where the mother is alone in making that choice. That is there isnt even really a father present. You might say it’s a moot point.
Still, if one of my gf was pregnant with me, and wants an abortion, and didnt tell me anything about it, I dont even see the point of staying together.
I just dont understand the profoundly dogmatic answers I read in this thread. If I am the worst of bastards for deserting a pregnant girlfriend (and I would be), men are not out of the equation regarding abortions. And saying they’re throwing…erm… childlike tantrums for even thinking that is seriously warped.
I’m not saying they don’t want it. I’m saying that wanting it doesn’t entitle them to it, and not getting it does not make them victims.
*Some *Americans want that. Others want abortion illegal and nonexistent. I’m not one of them, and I don’t think it’s realistic. I think the options are safe and legal or unsafe and illegal. The rates of abortion are about the same, in either case.
Rare would be nice, considering that abortion - surgical or pharmaceutical - does have risks, both physical and emotional, but I’m not personally all that hung up on it.
No, the reason I think it’s a shitty reason (or rather, that I wouldn’t remain friends with the woman for long) is that it demonstrates a level of hostility towards gay people that I can’t tolerate in my friends. Nothing to do with the fetus, everything to do with homophobia.
[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
Because they care about the woman and want the baby, but that doesn’t mean they’re entitled to anything.
[/QUOTE]
Which is what I said. Trying to say that a man has nothing at all to do with a pregnancy however is what I was objecting too. As I said, a man’s emotional stake does not outweigh a woman’s right to choose.
What do you suppose is in the woman’s belly when she is pregnant? 
So…when a woman is pregnant and can’t work, or needs help a man does nothing at all? Provides no financial, emotional or physical support? Nothing? Really? Because, you see, my wife has had 4 kids, and I seem to recall that there was quite a bit I did besides the fun part right at the beginning.
You are misunderstanding the point, me thinks.
-XT
Yes, you did say that, but you also said much more. You said: “A man being broken up about a woman terminating a pregnancy is like a man being broken up because she won’t buy him a Corvette.”
That’s just ridiculous on the face of it. You might have not been affected one way or the other if your wife had terminated her pregnancy, but many (maybe even most) married men who were hoping to have families would be deeply affected.
I’m saying his emotional state is caused only by his own sense of entitlement.
Not a child.
What does any of this have to do with the physical pregnancy? I have 3 kids, and I don’t recall ever sharing any of the physical pregnancies. Helping my wife through them didn’t mean that I was sharing them.
That’s the way I see it.
I don’t see how. Not getting something you simply want, but don’t need and are not entitled to does not hurt you.
Let’s face facts here: fatherhood is genetic and emotional. Motherhood is biological. Pregnancy is entirely different from ejaculation.
Christian Rock band name.
Besides which, I think any person who knew that their partner might be getting a Corvette *would *be (understandably) upset if s/he knew that their partner chose not to get the Corvette after all. Assuming they wanted a Corvette, of course. Doesn’t mean that they should have the right to demand she get the Corvette, or should be legally able to require she get the Corvette, but emotional reactions are understandable. And when those emotional reactions are about a potential child instead of a potential car - given that emotions are higher for potential children than potential automobiles - even more understandable.
Otherwise, we’re saying that potential fathers have no right to be sad if they and their partner want to conceive and can’t. Potential children do (often) have emotional investments from their potential parents, even if they’re never conceived.
[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
I’m saying his emotional state is caused only by his own sense of entitlement.
[/QUOTE]
No, you were saying quite a bit more than that, which is what I was objecting to. And I disagree with you here as well…the emotional state a man is in when his wife or girl friend is pregnant doesn’t stem from some sense of entitlement. That’s ridiculous. Perhaps YOUR emotional state works that way…though, if it does, I find it very odd.
A cabbage?
Yeah, but you admitted that you didn’t care, and that to you it was the same emotional engagement as if she told you that you couldn’t have a new Corvette. So, helping your wife wasn’t a sharing part, because obviously you weren’t emotionally engaged…it would have been the equivalent of taking the garbage out or some other mundane chore. I say this not to be mean, but because that’s what YOU are saying. Not everyone feels the same way about it that you do. And we feel that way because we evolved to feel that way…and we evolved to have a real, necessary role in a woman’s pregnancy. You seem to think that a woman can have a baby all on her own, with no help or support at all. That might be true today (though most women need at least a bit of help at the hospital…I’m guessing your wife just went into the back yard and pushed those babies out at the end? Or she is independently wealthy and didn’t need any of your financial support to pay for the births?), but when we evolved that wasn’t the case, and all that emotional baggage is still with us.
This is all wandering far afield though. Substantially we are in agreement…a man’s emotional stake in a woman’s pregnancy does not outweigh her right to make the choice of whether or not she to carry a fetus to term. And her choice is HER choice…whether it be to have a baby or not, or to have a male or female baby, or to have a white or black baby, or to have a red headed or blond baby, or to have a straight or gay baby. As long as she doesn’t pick having a mutant alien space squirrel baby I think it’s her choice…
-XT
Like what? What else do you think I was saying?
There’s a difference between caring about the woman, and believing he is morally entitled to be a father.
A clump of insentient tissue.
Not at all. I cared about my wife and wanted her to be happy. It was no chore. I was concerned about her comfort and her emotional well-being. I wasn’t emotionally disengaged from my wife, but I didn’t think I was a father yet either, or believe that I had any ownership over her pregnancy.
I don’t think this at all. I’m parsing a distinction between emotional engagement with the woman and with the fetus.
I guess what I was saying was that I don’t see a woman terminating a pregnacy to avoid having a gay baby as being any worse - as having any more negative external effect on the word - than any other reason.
[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic
]
Like what? What else do you think I was saying?
[/QUOTE]
That men are completely disengaged from the process once they dump their sperm into a woman’s body. And you say that because that’s how you think…and you are projecting your thinking to every other man.
Wooah! Who said anything about moral entitlement?? Where are you getting all this?
You said you were a father and your wife had 3 babies. When she was pregnant did you think of what was growing in her belly as simply a ‘clump of insentient tissue’?? Well…perhaps you did. I thought of it as a ‘baby’. I’d say that most people, if asked what’s inside a woman’s belly when she is pregnant is going to go with my definition over yours.
I realize that this all goes into the various pro/anti abortion wrangles, and that thinking of it this way is important in those discussions, but let’s be real here.
Ownership? Where do you get these ideas from what we’re discussing?? If you were emotionally engaged, then you probably felt a bit more strongly than you’ve let on, and would have been a bit more disappointed had your wife lost the child (or ‘clump of insentient tissue’) half way through the pregnancy…or decided that, after all, she didn’t want to have it. Nothing you could do about the former, and the choice would have been her’s in the latter…but YOU would still have felt something more than being told you couldn’t have a new Corvette. Which was the whole point of this long digression.
And I’m trying to point out why men have more engagement in the process than simply dumping some sperm into a woman’s body and then walking away.
I think it’s a worse REASON…but I think it’s still the woman’s CHOICE. As I’ve said, either the woman has a choice or she doesn’t…and if she has a choice, then it’s her choice to make using her own criteria for making it.
-XT
The difference is that the will of God isn’t a good thing to base laws on, but laws have to be based on what’s good for the society. I think it’s more that we as a society support a woman’s right to choose, except when we don’t because it’s in our collective best interest not to.
YMMV, but my feelings on letting the will of society over ride a woman’s choice are on par with letting the supposed will of God dictate it…or the will of any other institution. It all works out to the same thing…that her choice becomes conditional.
-XT
That isn’t what I said. I was only saying that they are physically disengaged from the pregnancy.
yeah, pretty much…to the extent that I thought about it at all.
I would have been more concerned about my wife’s emotional state than anything else. To me, the babies didn’t exist until they were born.
I didn’t say anything about walking away, and you’re conflating emotional engagement with the woman with physical engagement in the pregnancy.
Here’s the thing.
The reason women but not men have the right to make decisions about abortions is because men can’t get pregnant, and if men could get pregnant they’d be women.
It is an inescapable biological fact that a human baby gestates inside a human female. Whether this is fair or unfair is irrelevant. Maybe someday we’ll have the technology to gestate humans in vitro, but that day is a long way off.
And so, it’s not so much that a woman has a right to make these decisions, as it is that no one else has the right to make another choice for her. And the reason we don’t allow other people to make these choices is because it won’t work outside of Handmaid’s Tale style prison/breeding camps. If pregnant women are allowed to walk around unescorted in public, then they have access to abortion, even if abortion is illegal.
And so, the question we ask about abortion isn’t why the woman wants an abortion, we just find out that she wants an abortion. Because anything else won’t work. I’m against abortion, but so what?
If pro-lifers could sketch out a public policy that would result in a better society than we have today (measuring “better” by my subjective preferences of course), then I’d listen. But just passing a law making abortion illegal won’t do that, it will result in a worse (see above) society. And all the half measures–requiring “medical necessity” or “economic necessity” or whatever don’t help either, because all that means is that pregnant women who want abortions will just doctor shop or lie until they get the governmental approval they want. And then the abortion proceeds anyway. Or they get an illegal abortion.
Putting up roadblocks and making people jump through hoops first is pointless. Once someone has determined to get an abortion, the best thing is for that abortion to occur as quickly and painlessly as possible.
But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing we can do about abortion, if we want to reduce abortion. How about things like sex and relationship education, social equality for women, access to birth control, access to prenatal care, access to social services for women with small children? America has a higher abortion rate compared to Europe, and it isn’t because abortion is illegal in Europe.
If pro-lifers really want to stop abortions, they should look at countries where the actual rates of abortion are lower than they are in America, and try to figure out what those places are doing that we should be doing. Or, if keeping taxes low and fostering personal responsibility is more important than providing expensive social services for pregnant women and children, shut up about how pro-life you are.
True, but I’d say that’s true of all the choices we make and all the rights we have.