Quite right. Autonomous temporary control over the pregnancy. Lest we forget, a pregnancy is not a child.
No. You see here is where you put your looney spin on things. He was prevented by law from being responsible for the pregnancy because it was not inside his body. This does nothing to lessen his responsibility for any child which would have resulted if she had not chosen abortion.
No, we’re not. You still refuse to provide any proof whatsoever that abortion or lack of it is sufficient to produce a child. Look at it this way. Anyone can have an abortion at any time. Well, ok, not anyone. I can’t. I don’t have the equipment evenif my doctor does. But my wife could have one at any time. The procedure could be perfomed at her request with a doctor’s agreement whenever she wanted. However, as has been pointed out to you many times and you have refused to acknowledge, such a decision could not produce a child. Similarly, the decision not to have an abortion does not produce a child. If it could, we would be hip deep in babies before we could sneeze.
I propose that most women choose not to have abortions almost twice a day. OK, thats a little bit low. Probably more often then that. If the decision to avoid an abortion were all that is required to produce children, men would have become superfluous many eons ago.
Do you see how silly your notion of “not abortion” as the deciding factor in producing children is? Its not simply wrong. Its fraudulently wrong.
Of course. But the result of that decision is not the production of a child. The production of a child requires somethine else. What could that be? I’m trying to work it out. Can any of you loonies help me? I seem to be missing something important here. A woman decides not to have an abortion, but then needs some other thing to make a child. What, oh what, could that other thing be? Where will she get it? What will it cost her? Will it come with any responsibilities from this other person or persons?
I’m sorry about the snippiness to everyone except the loonies in here. I just needed to do that for my own health.
No, not at all. If women were arguing that they should be able to harvest sperm without the male’s consent I would call bulshit just as vociferously.
Yes you are right. IF there were any legal inequity here to argue about. In a previous post you started down a road towards a real argument. But most of this thread has been about the looney assertion that abortion is identical to fertalization. I would argue with men, women, or aliens if they posited such an absurd notion.
Sorry. My bad. I looked at the name quickly and saw John.
And I have questioned their veracity. Can you provide additional proof as to what those numbers really mean? I assume you have the book. You are not merely reading some anti fatherhood site which quotes the book are you? If you have it, please see if there is a footnote or appendix which indicates what numbers the percentages are taken from. Also if you could point out which study the “50% of all mothers want their children to have nothing to do with fathers” came from.
OF course not. That’s why I started the paragraph of with “I believe”. It was directed specifically at IWLN and I believe I identified it as a hijack. If I did not do so loudly enough let me do so now. My personal opinions about the motivations for the people makeing the argument in support of the OP is not evidence of anything. Happy?
That right. I have said several times that men are perfectly and legally entitled to withdraw any and all material support from the fetus during its first 3 months. Just like the female. If withdrawing this support kills the fetus, then so be it. If it does not, however, then so be that.
Absolutely. As long as we are limiting our discussion to the first trimester I agree.
I reserve insults for people of any sex who deserve them. A man wants to stop feeding his fetus durign the first 3 months? Ok by me. A female wants to do the same? Ok by me as well. You see? No legal or moral inequity.
The problem comes when you guys (agenderal guys) want to complain that the man does not have the power to kill the fetus by withdrawing support for it. This becomes a silly rant against the facts of nature. And yes I insult you for believing that such things are unfair. Notice, I did not unsult you in the begining. Even after having gone through this same idiotic argument once before. I always try and believe that 1) the mistake could be an honest one or 2) I could be mistaken. After going round and round, however, I now believe that you guys(agenderal guys) are simply pissed about something and trying to avoid responsibility for your own actions.
This one at least you provided a link to. But did you read the link? It contains this little gem “Three years ago, McCarthy found out he was not the biological father of his then-15-year-old daughter.” That is, this gentlman had raised the daughter as his own for 15 YEARS! If that does not constitute acceptance of the parental responsibilities then I don’t know what would. You guys are nuts if you think that a fraud committed by the mother 15 YEARS ago is relevant to the questio of who this girl’s legal father is. I’d also like to point out that your original problem was worded like this “(biological father unless mother was married to another guy and then it’s the husband even though it’s not his kid and even if they were separated when the kid was conceived)”. Do any of your examples include cases were the man was divorced from his wife during conception and never took any action to accept the child but was still compelled to do so? I’d be willing to quibble over a few months. But 15 YEARS? Come on!
But calm down, pervert, maybe this case is closer to the issue. Oh, wait, I just read the appropriate portion of the article. “after learning three years ago that her 13-year-old daughter is not his”. 13 YEARS!?!?! WTF?
Do me a favor, catsix. Try and find a single case where a married man wants to withold child support early enough that no argument can be made that he already accepted paternity.
:)Yes. Yes it is:) <backs away slowly. No loud noises, no sudden movements>
To Razorsharp- I am sorry for the innane discussion that has followed your OP. The inability to focus on the central issue of your message is unbelievable. All the “Plagerism” and “previous postings” and “grammatical accuracy” is hard to take.
The issue at hand is the fair application of the law to men involving pregnancy, yes? In this sence I am in full agreement with you. Your points are valid and thoughtful.
Also, what are the circumstances leading up to sex that these people are referring to? Sit down and discuss, consider the implications, what kinda crap is that. We met, danced, went home together and had fun. No contract negotiations or long-range plans. Maybe we see each other again, maybe not. These clinical settings they consider are obsurd.
No one is positing that clinical negotiations are taking place before sex. However, we are all assuming that only mature adults are involved. Given that assumption, I think it is safe to say that both parties are aware of the possible outcomes of the encounter. Also, that they are both capable of assuming the responsibility of such outcomes.
That’s it. No one is saying that sex cannot be romantic, spontaneous, and even adventurous. Just that adults engaging in adult behavior should be willing to take adult responsibility for the outcome of that behavior.
As you have not participated in this thread up to now, so I will refrain from offering you a tinfoil hat.
I posted the source for the numbers. It’s not my duty to prove them wrong for you. If you’re so freaking sure they’re wrong, refute them.
As for the rest of your post, didn’t you previously say that the statute of limitations for fraud only begins when the defrauded party learns that there was a fraud committed?
Why are you now singing a different tune when the defrauded party is a man and the fraud is paternity fraud?
Well, I did not claim they were wrong. I only asked pertinent questions. Are you really sure you cannot look up whether or not the percentages mentioned really mean that more women are deadbeat parents than men? I’d think that proof of such a thing would be central to your case. If it were true you’d be willing to back it up many times over. Similarly to your claim that half of women do not want their children speaking to the children’s fathers.
Again, I’m not claiming that such assertions are wrong. Only that a single post of unsubstantiated percentages cannot constitute proof that they are right. Remember, I did not destroy your numbers. I only pointed out a way in which your numbers could be completely true, and yet not mean what you claim they mean. I also proposed a simple way for you to refute this. In the time it took you to post three times since then, you could have looked up the numbers. In case you need help, I found a reference you the 50% statistic you quoted on another message board. It is supposed to be on page 125 of the book.
Oh, wait. Maybe you did look them up.
Just to provide a little input into this debate, this is from the Amazon review of the book in question
I’m not sure I was the person you are refering to. But even if I were (or rather if that were true), the defrauder was not the child. In all of the cases you mentioned, the man has definate action against the woman. In every one of the cases, the man was able to divorce her. You guys are arguing that he should be able to divorce the child as well. furthermore, you are claiming that he should be able to divorce the child after years of accepting parantage.
You see, children are not chattel. You cannot accept responsibility for a child and then decide years later to simply abandon it.
Until you come up with a cite that refutes my numbers, they stand as correct. Your attempt to weasel by saying I didn’t list ‘enough’ sources for those numbers is just that. I gave you a source. You’re free to refute it, but you can’t.
And as for paternity fraud, the child isn’t the only victim. Why should a man have to pay for a crime someone else comitted?
Dude, seriously. If we have this much trouble understand each other on a simply matter, it is no wonder when a small amount of complexity it thrown in we are at loggerheads.
So, for the record. I did not refute your numbers. I believe them. You said they were published in a book, that is good enough for me. If 27% of dead beat dads, and 47% of dead beat moms are not paying any child support, then fine that is the number.
However, you drew a conclusion from them that may not be warented. It is this conclusion that I question. You questioned why we were pursuing dead beat dads and not the moms. You made the question as if it were obvious that your number meant that more moms were dead beat than dads. I am trying to suggest to you that your numbers do not prove this. Let’s accept you numbers. OK. Even so, there may still be many many many more dead beat dads than dead beat moms. If this is so, then the reason we are pursuing dead beat dads is obvious. There are more of them. That is, it is a bigger problem.
Even at that, we have to take the assumption that more is being done to pursue dead beat dads than is being done to pursue dead beat moms. Your assertion that this is so also is not proof. In fact, I gave you anecdotal evidence that it was not, in fact, true.
Well, he shouldn’t. However, a child who is now 13 or 15 is not a crime. Paying support for one is not paying for a crime.
Because he voluntarily assumed the role of father and is now estopped from denying it. The child isn’t the only victim but is the party whose needs come first.
He’s sending monthly payments to the woman who committed fraud against him. Therefore, he’s paying for the crime she committed. Victims should not be sending cash payments to the people who commit crimes against them.
I can appreciate that a lot of the cases you have presented are unfair. That being said, there is no “version of an abortion”. An abortion terminates a pregnancy, without an abortion there will be a baby. The resulting child is made up genetically of 50% of the father’s material. There is nothing he can do about that. The Law cannot change that fact.
This is a tricky one - as the size of the current thread attests - and my own feelings on the subject are mixed. On the one hand, I would never wish to coerce any woman into an abortion that she did not want. On the other hand, the issue of men’s rights does concern me and may concern my sons in their turn.
I do not feel that the argument “the man should have the same rights as the woman to withdraw nutrition and support from the foetus during the first trimester” is meant entirely seriously. Even if it is, this right-that-is-no-right does not accurately reflect the facts. Show me a woman who is able, by sheer force of will, to cease nurturing the thing in her uterus, and I’ll buy it. It is not the case that she is able to merely withdraw support - that is, by passive non-action to cease the supply of blood and nutrients - but that she can actively choose to license an act of violence against the foetus. This choice the man is denied from exercising, and as long is this so, the argument that he does have the same rights as her is absurd.
Unless there are some profound changes in the law and society in the next twenty years, I shall have to teach my sons that the instant their sperm lands in some woman’s vagina they irrevocably assume a share in the responsibility for the consequences of whatever choice she sees fit to make, while having no say in what choice that will be. But this is only to address realities, and does not prove that the realities are fair.
catsix - while there are many more sole-custodial mothers than sole-custodial fathers, it will make more financial sense for the State to pursue deadbeat dads than deadbeat moms. 28% of a lot will bring in more $$$'s than 48% of a little. Not that one inequity justifies yet another, but that the aim of reducing the welfare burden is to be the better served.
Thank you. See, they don’t want to focus on the central issue. Lacking any semblance of logic to refute the inequities that is present in the status quo, this is the only thing that they have available in defense of the indefensible. That and labeling the opposition as “loony” or some other negative connotation.
Being that the whole purpose of abortion is to prevent the birth of a child, then it is a totally logical conclusion to say that making the choice not to have an abortion, is making the choice to give birth to a child.
Unless the mother wishes to raise her child alone out of concerns for her own desires, Or if the mother doesn’t want to be burdened with the responsibilities of parenthood, and takes the newborn to a Safe Haven facility.
This is not the scenerio in question. What you have described is a voluntary situation where the man knows the circumstances. That is not the same as when a man’s wife, through an act of infidelity, gives birth to a child not related to her husband. That is a fraud perpetrated against her husband. If you cannot see the difference, you have no grounds to refer to anyone else as “loony”
It’s called stakin’ the deck.
Yeah, that’s the argument that those who defend the practice known as “partial-birth abortion” use. But, we all know better than that, don’t we?
Talk about spin! On one hand, you say that a man’s responsibility begins with the sex act, but then has no responsibility for nine months. Then, depending on the “choice” of the mother, he may have his responsibility again imposed upon him, or he may not have a responsibility.
How about if she had made the “choice” to terminate the pregnance, that would that have lessened his responsibility, wouldn’t it?
The proof lies in the fact that an abortion does prevent the birth of a child, and if it is a choice, and that’s what we hear all of the time, “freedom of choice”, then choosing not to have an abortion is tantamount to producing a child. And who should be held responsible for a “choice”? Wouldn’t that be the person who made the “choice”? Well, maybe not in Bizzaro world.
I don’t think that “voluntarily” is the correct word to use. He volunteered to raise “his” child.
Both not true and again, arbitrary.
It was only a few years ago, when we all witnessed a young boy crying as he was pulled away from the only parents he had ever known, only to be handed over to his biological father. The boy had lived with his adoptive parents for four years, ever since his mother gave him up for adoption.
Although the birth parents previously had a relationship, the couple split prior to the father having any knowlege of the pregnancy. The couple resumed their relation a few years later, upon which, the man became aware of the existance of his son
Even though the boy was both well cared for and provided for by a loving couple, the court gave primacy to the genetic link over “the best interests of the child”.
Of course, since there is no “cite”, Pervert will claim that it is all a fabrication. Ain’t that “looney”?
Dude, your thread has gone on for what, 5 or 6 pages now, and only a handful of them had anything to do with the possibility of plagerism. I would suggest that you reread you posts and notice that you are the one without a semblance of logic.
To wit:
You have made these claims over and over and over again. Yet you have never addressed the very pertinent point that it is illogical. The choice not to abort is not the same as the choice to birth. It is something called necessary, but not sufficient. It means that it is one of the conditions required to birth a child, but not the only one.
I have tried to explain how this central tenet of your argument is not logical. I have tried to understand how you can keep clining to it. I have resorted to calling you a looney because I cannot find any other explanation for your holding to this odd notion. If you will provide me with one, I will most emphatically withdraw my accusation.
That’s right. I made my post before any of you had provided any details of any cites that I could address. However, when one of you did, it turned out that the man had been providing support to the child for over 10 years. In other words, you are not asking for permission to abort a fetus. You are asking for permission to abandon a child of 13 or 15 years of age. I certainly see the difference. Do you?
Ok, but doesn’t this case prove that a genetic link exists? Legally? Or are you saying that this case proves something different? I’m not sure about it at all, because you did not cite it, but lets say everything happened just as you say.
notice that the child is 4 years old, not 15.
Notice that the child is not being thrown to the wolves in any case. It is being given to it s parents.
Notice that the court seems to be upholding some sort of parental rights on the part of the father. That is, fathers have rights as well as responsibilities. Especially note that although the mother gave the child up, the father’s rights were not destroyed by her action.
4)I don’t know what state this was in as I don’t remember the case. But most states have a certain time limit wherein the father can challenge an adoption. We talked about this when the subject of safe havens came up. In the state in question, they may have an extensive time limit. Especially if the father never knew about the child.
I’m not sure what you think this case proves. I have said many times that genetics and actions may provide parental rights and responsibilities. It is not an either or situation. Courts do the best they can in complicated cases. Sometimes they do the right thing, sometimes not. But your assertion that there is some vast legal conspiricy against men is simply nonsense.
Having said all that. I think I should add 1 thing. I do believe that many times our culture is biased against men when it comes to parental rights. There does seem to be a tendancy to view the mother’s relationship to the child as more important in many cases. However, I would suggest that the problem is diametrically opposed to the one proposed in the OP. Specifically, there are many men who want to support their children and cannot because of interference from the state, the mother, or some other complication due to the two parents not being a couple. These issues are complex and very important. They will require a lot of reasoned discussion to solve.
Positing that “women get to be pregnant which proves men are discriminated against” gets in the way of these important issues. It does not add to the solution.
In short, if you guys want to say that this or that case is unfair, then cool lets do that. We can argue about them, and maybe come up with some principles which could apply to even more cases. But arguing that men should be able to bow out of parental responsibilities after 15 years, or in the begining because they do not want the responsibility of their own sexual behavior, are not among them.
I can help you with that. As a tenet of the “pro-choice” orthodoxy, that “other thing” is an “unviable tissue mass”. Being an unviable tissue mass, the woman’s sexual partner has no vested interest. Thanks to a Supreme Court ruling, that “unviable tissue mass” is the woman’s private concern. As an issue of equity, if the woman can excise that tissue mass, without any regards for any second party, then a second party cannot be held responsible. Totally logical.
Sure, any time a woman makes the “choice” to have that “unviable tissue mass” excised from her being.
But, it is obvious that you have no logical basis for your explainations when you make statements such as:"
And, furthermore, your claim that,
is devoid of any logic, when noting that when one makes the choice to have an abortion, one is making the choice not to give birth.
Your argument is this (I think it has been a long time any logicians please correct my syntax)
A: decision to abort.
B: birth of a child.
A=>~B therefore ~A=>B
Again, I am not a logician, but this is most silly. It is not true.
You see, just because A implies ~B does not mean that ~A implies B.
The bottom line is that the central tenet of your entire argument is not logical at all. This explains things better than I can. Of course, if you can explain why your thesis is a Contrapositive instead of an inverse (I think you’d have to show that your statements are more restricted than the first instance but I’m not sure) then maybe you’d have something. Otherwise, we have to accept that your thesis is based on a logical fallacy.
But my wife could have one at any time. The procedure could be perfomed at her request with a doctor’s agreement whenever she wanted. However, as has been pointed out to you many times and you have refused to acknowledge, such a decision could not produce a child. Similarly, the decision not to have an abortion does not produce a child. If it could, we would be hip deep in babies before we could sneeze.