Well, ok, every child ever born has passed through the fetus stage. During this stage the woman did not have to make a single concious decision to provide nutrients to the fetus. That is, all she had to do was not interfere. The process of pregnancy leading to child is perfectly natural and beyond her concious control.
Obviously, accidents can occur. I believe I read somewhere that most fertalizations do not lead to pregnancies or births. More importantly to our discussion, the female has the additional option of abortion. But again, this is not the same as total control over having a child. Your equations from the rest of your post falls apart when you realize that only the pregnant woman has control of the fetus. So when you write
you are wrong. The woman does not have control over whether there is a fetus. Therefore she does not have total control over the fetus. The only people who have total control over the fetus are the parents.
Both parents.
You guys are being willfully obtuse on this aren’t you.
Fallacy of complex cause. If any of the logic professors around here are still paying attention, they may be able to correct my identification of the appropriate fallacy. I suspect that others apply. For our purposes, I believe you guys haveidentified one cause of children (namely that the mother did not choose to abort). However, there are other causes (especially that the couple had sex). You are proposing that your cause is the only cause when it is plainly not. I really cannot understand how you maintain your position.
Do you really not see any problem with the proposition [not aborting] = [pregnancy]? It is so blatantly false that I have trouble understanding how an otherwise articulate mind can accept it. My problem I suppose.
Hey, I can’t make you understand what you clearly don’t want to. I can’t force you to not use critical thinking skills to interpret sentences. I can’t make you abandon a legal argument that has no basis. I can only attempt to show you why you are wrong, and you have to be willing to do the rest. I suspect that this was never really a debate, you have absolutely no interest in debating any part of this. You merely wish another forum to spew out your misinformation. Not much I can do about that.
Oh, you have yet to use your wonderful skills at “interpretation” to tell us what this quote means: “But the duty of the father, if he has means with which to do so, to support his infant children, springs immediately from the parental relationship.”
For three pages, I’ve cited law review articles, child support webpages, and caselaw that have shown you are incorrect in your assertion that a child does not have a right to support from his parents. I’ve done about an hour or two of research on my own time in an attempt to correct your misinformation. Yet, still without one citation, or even a link to these published arguments, you would rather use tortured interpretations of “parental relationship” and moving goalposts.
As the ever prophetic pravik said: “… which explains why all the lawyers except me have thrown up their hands and gone home.” Consider my arms thrown up. You enjoy the rest of this thread. I may be back when you make even more outrageous assertions, but at this juncture it’s just pointless.
In closing, to those who have actually paid attention, here’s a quote interpreting the Ruge decision:
The duty to pay maintenance arises from the marriage relationship, but the duty to pay child support arises from the parent-child relationship without respect to existence or non-existence of the marriage relationship of the parents.
Washington Practice Series TM
Family And Community Property Law
The fact that a woman may or may not get an abortion isn’t the only cause of a child. However, if you posit free will and all that stuff, since the woman made the choice to keep the child, it’s her responsibility, regardless of the choices made by others. Or, you can say that the decisions of people don’t matter when determining responsibility, and you’ve lost your grounds for holding anyone responsible.
Well, it would depend on how the court is defining “parental relationship” at the moment.
If the court is addressing a man who has found that the child he thought to be his, was not genetically linked to him, but the product of his wife’s infidelity, then it is the marriage that determines his obligation.
If the court is addressing a man named in a paternity suit, by a woman with whom no relationship existed, other than a consensual sexual encounter, then it is the genetic link to the child that determines the obligation.
See what happenes when the judiciary moves away from “the rule of law” and, instead, uses “arbitrary law”.
The judiciary can then render any politically correct decision they wish.
“If the facts are on your side, argue the facts; if the law is on your side, argue the law; and if you have neither on your side, pound the table.”
-Old Lawyer Saying
“If the facts are on your side, argue the facts; if the law is on your side, argue the law; and if you have neither on your side, call it politically correct, legal tyranny, and pound the table.”
I really have to thank you robert. I have not been this motivated to look up logical fallacies before.
Now you are using the false dilemma. . The fact of the matter is that the woman does have responsibility for the child. No one in this thread or anywhere else that I am aware of has ever in the history of mankind ever said that she did not. Your problem is that you are forgetting that the father also has responsibility. You see how this works? Both parents share responsibility.
No, You are the one saying that the father’s decisions don’t matter. And yes, it is one of the reasons you are loosing ground.
By your thought process, if I decided NOT to have chemotheraphy, that means I chose to have cancer. You have an interesting POV, but it hasn’t made any more sense with clarification.
Not a perfect analogy, because abortion is much better at ending pregnancy than chemotherapy is at ending cancer, but basically, yes. The decision not to get a treatment for a condition (assuming that the treatment is available and you aren’t being coereced) implies that you’re willing to accept the consequences of said condition. Is there something somewhere in this analogy I’m missing?
Yes, you’re missing the point of it. NOT getting chemo in no way reflects a decision to have cancer. There wasn’t an opportunity to make that decision. NOT getting an abortion is not choosing to be pregnant. Being unable to terminate a life doesn’t make me solely responsible for that life. Unless you believe that it is right to impose some sort of financial sanctions on people with different values and choices than yours. If this is right, we are going to have to change a lot of existing law.
The choice to treat cancer or not is not identical in every sense to the choice to have cancer or not. Similarly, the choice to abort or not is not identical in every way to the choice to be pregnant. In each case, you are trying to equate the two choices.
Certainly, in both cases, the choice not to undergo medical procedures carries with it certain responsibilities. But in neither case does it carry with it total responsibility. That is, if a person died from cancer, would you say they were guilty of suicide? That is, would you say that it was entirely the patients fault? If it had been possible for a third party to give the patient cancer, would you absolve him of responsibility since the patient did not seek out treatment? Can I kick the crap out of someone and avoid responsibility if they do not seek treatment?
You see, robert (and the rest of you), you are simply missing the fact that there is another choice besides the woman is responsible or the man is responsible. The fact of the matter (biologically, legally, and morally) is that both participants are responsible for the sexual act and anything which results from it.
If the female becomes pregnant, she is responsible to make the decision (with consultation with her doctor and hoepfully with her mate) to undergo the invasive abortion procedure or not. Since she has the final say on this, she has to shoulder complete responsibility for the results of that decision. However, your argument fails when you try to claim that children are the result from a decision not to abort. Such a decision is a contributing factor, but it is not the only wilfull concious act which lead to the child. Therefore, the female cannot be the only participant who is responsible for the child.
RazorsharpYou are missing the simple possiblitiy that parental responsibilities can be derived from marriageand from genetic parentage. That is, you are a parent if you fertalize an egg which is then born. You are also a parent if you marry a woman with children and support them. It is not an either or situation. There is nothing arbitrary or tyranical about such a situation.
My grandfather chose not to have any kind of treatment for his cancer, knowing that without it the cancer would be fatal, and with it there was a very good (around 90%) chance of beating the cancer.
He chose for his cancer to be terminal. The choice to do nothing is still a choice.
The point is he did NOT choose cancer. He later chose not to have treatment. Did not having treatment make him responsible for getting cancer? The point is two people are responsible for causing a pregnancy. Decisions made after the conception will NEVER negate that fact. Abortion is not an option for everyone and NOT surgically intervening does NOT absolve the other parent’s responsibility to their child.
So, she didn’t choose a zygote. Everything that happens after she knows the fetus exists is a choice. She chooses that the pregnancy results in birth. She chooses to have a baby. She chooses to keep the baby. She chooses to raise the baby.
Then she chooses to make someone else who had no say in the situation pay for it.