Too fucking bad. It’s still her body, her choice. Men are responsible for their own semen. Wear a damn rubber.
As to the OP, there are a couple of major problems with giving the man any say over a woman’s prgnancy.
1.) How do you prove that any given man is really the father? What if the woman says, “he ain’t the daddy?” How do you prove her wrong?
2.) If there is a tie, how do you break it? Obviously, the woman has an immediate, physical stake in the matter that the man does not.
I would say that , if the non-custodial parent wanted the child/ren in question, that 25% of their take-home pay is unduly harsh, considering the relative lack of contact with their children. I would imagine that there are about as many people involuntarily kept from their children as there are people who receive nothing in child support.
That said, in many instances 25% of take-home pay is approximately accurate for the cost to raise a child, depending on circumstances. However, this appears to be in the high region of acceptability, especially since the custodial parent is more involved in the child-rearing.
With regards to abortions, I have often thought that if the male biological parent did not wish to have the child, that he would not have to pay support if the female did not get an abortion. I still believe that something like that should go into effect. Perhaps, a lesser amount of support in return for not having any visitation rights at all.
That said, I would think that , relatively speaking, a large number of males are the exception to these thoughts. I.e. they don’t particularly care about the children they sire, and will do anything to avoid both contact and payments. However, why punish those who do (often with the double whammy of payments much more than 25% along with malicious denial of visitation,) and use as an excuse those who don’t care enough to even spend a cent. They are not the same persons.
Wow, I never get tired of how abortion debates inevitably (sp?) devolve into a dick-waving vagina-monologue, he-said she-said. Thank God nobody ever thinks that at one point we, too, were all fetuses. It really is quite heartwarming.
Caveat: There are a few on these boards I can’t vouch for as being actual fetuses in the past. Like the matter just before the Big Bang, they were just magically here. 
Whining about a law that you knew about “going in”, is a particularly stupid thing to do. Sex is optional, child support is not. Your choice. Having to pay 25% is about the child, who had no choice in the matter. S/he deserves to be supported in a similar manner as s/he would have if it’s parents were more responsible. It is not a punishment. It is the child’s right. Visitation is also controlled by law and your failure to use the system to secure your rights is not a valid excuse for not supporting your own child. If a father decides he’s not interested in visitation, how does this lessen the financial needs of a child? Hey kid, dad’s not interested in you, so you’ll have to skip school clothes this year.:rolleyes: The custodial parent, besides providing for half of the support for the child does a hell of a lot of work, raising your child. Perhaps she should be compensated for doing the major share of the care, say another 10%. The whiners need to understand that once you have a child, which btw is entirely in your control, your needs come second, like it or not. There is no solution that is equally fair to both parents, but this is one that attempts to be as fair as possible to the child.
The first thing this English teacher noticed was the change in writing style. Razor Sharp’s posts are not particularly literate, stylistically persuasive or legalistic. The OP is (with some exceptions) – even though I disagree strongly with the premise(s).
Especially when the ideas and basic wording are not one’s own:
http://www.collegiatetimes.com/newsadmin/printable.php?ID=328
The above post was written by David Roberts. The following snipet serves as a comparison:
Razor Sharp’s post:
That’s just one tiny section that has been reworded. Although I find David Roberts’s version to be the better version and more in keeping with American traditions of acceptable usage, who knows what the original was like?
But because Razor Sharp’s ensuing posts have not at all matched the style of the OP, I will never be convinced that he was the originator.
While it’s not more reasonable, it’s as reasonable; if you want 100% certainties, there it is as unappealing as it might be- it works equally well for the boys and the girls. It’s rather unfortunate that the slogan “Don’t want kids? Then don’t fuck” just isn’t very catchy.
Perhaps I should add that the David Roberts posted his verstion prior to Razor Sharp’s logging on at Straight Dope.
Why not, “Her body, her responsibility”?
There is a thread in GQ currently where it has been shown that there have been at least one case where a man was raped and then forced to pay child support. I’m curious what others think of this.
I think that it’s an obvious injustice. Yet, if we assume that the child has an absolute right to being supported by both biological parents, it would seem to be perfectly just.
Which really means not reasonable at all, since people fought long and hard to ensure that this is no longer the case with women. All this parrotting of that nonsense makes me want to bring everyone back pre-Roe v Wade so they can see just how good an argument it really is. You’re all horrified if women are forced to deal with the consequences of unprotected/underprotected sex, but act like it’s no big thing if men are forced the same way.
pervert, I was really just thinking about a hypothetical situation, to illustrate that the concept of an out for men isn’t silly, it’s just not realistic.
So, what’s your point? There is life outside of “Straight Dope”.
But this is not the case. Roe V Wade extended the time during which the women have to make the final decision. It did NOT eliminate the decision. Women have this extension while men do not, because they have biological possesion of the fetus during the period when it is not viable. Or, as the Supreme Court said, during the period before the state had a reasonable interest in the child. Men and women have equal control over the genetic material needed to create a child before it becomes a child. However, once this material becomes fused with the female’s it is completely in the female’s control. This is not some sinister legal conflict. It is simply the facts of biology. It may seem unfair in some bizaarro world of fairness. But in the real world it is simply the facts of reality. Neither fair nor unfair.
Blacknight"Why not, “Her body, her responsibility”?" is exactly the situation right now. The only thing we are arguing about is whether shared responsibility is appropriate. That is, “Their sex, their responsibility.” I’m sure that everyone here would agree that anyone who gets pregnant, male or female, by having sex with themselves would not have any financial claim on anyone else.
How is choice in conflict with responsibility? I don’t buy the “raped” man story, btw. How is that possible?
No, we object to the government making choices over women’s reproductive rights. Choosing an abortion is dealing with the consequences. If she chooses to have the kid, though. The kid is entitled to support by both parents. It’s not about “punishing” the man, it’s about the rights of the innocent child. Men have control over what they stick their dicks in and I have no sympathy at all for deadbeat dads. I actually think we need much harsher laws for collecting from those swine.
BK: Why not, “Her body, her responsibility”?
Because according to the law, an early-term fetus is not a child, and so a woman does not have a legal responsibility to carry it to term if she doesn’t want to.
There is a thread in GQ currently where it has been shown that there have been at least one case where a man was raped and then forced to pay child support. I’m curious what others think of this.
I, for one, think it’s horribly unfair; yet as others have pointed out, the man’s entitled to press criminal charges against the rapist and also sue her. This is exactly the same approach that a woman is entitled to use against a rapist who impregnates her, by the way (which happens far more often).
I think that it’s an obvious injustice. Yet, if we assume that the child has an absolute right to being supported by both biological parents, it would seem to be perfectly just.
The law usually does hold both biological parents responsible for the child’s support, unless they jointly give the child up for adoption. And there are plenty of cases where the courts have forced absentee or “deadbeat” mothers to pay child support.
But as I said, the law holds that a fetus is not a child. Once the child is born, both mother and father are held responsible for its support. That’s fair. During pregnancy, the decision to terminate or continue the pregnancy, as well as the costs and risks associated with that decision, rests solely with the woman. That’s fair too, because it’s her body.
So to sum up the division of rights and responsibilities from sex to parenthood:
Deciding whether have sex and thereby incur risk of conceiving fetus: shared right/responsibility for man and woman.
Deciding whether to abort conceived embryo/fetus or bear it to term: right/responsibility rests solely with the woman, since it’s her body. Her pregnancy has no biological or medical impact on the man, so he has no say in whether to terminate it. Likewise, he bears no legal responsibility for its costs or risks.
Deciding whether to keep born child or give it up for adoption: shared right/responsibility for man and woman.
Supporting child if both parents do not agree to relinquish it for adoption: shared right/responsibility for man and woman.
So there is nothing unequal about the division of rights and responsibilities in sex or parenting. There is a legal imbalance when it comes to pregnancy, but that’s because there’s a biological imbalance: men don’t get pregnant.
So the “it’s not fair that men have to support an unwanted child, because women don’t have to carry to term an unwanted fetus” argument is fallacious. Supporting an unwanted child (which plenty of women have to do, if they can’t obtain an abortion or change their minds about it too late) is not analogous to continuing an unwanted pregnancy. Sex and parenthood are shared responsibilities; pregnancy is not. Yup, pregnancy is where a woman gets to decide (if she’s lucky) whether the end result of the sex will be parenthood, but that’s because she’s the pregnant one. Blame biology for that unfairness, not women or the courts.
That reasoning is not invalidated by the fact that some women trick men into impregnating them, or conceal pregnancies from them, or any other kind of illegal or dishonest behavior. Neither is a woman’s responsibility to support her child invalidated if the father deceived or lied to her.
That said, personally, I do feel that a woman has a moral obligation not to require financial support from the biological father if he has consistently made it clear that he doesn’t want a child. I personally would never consider it acceptable to con or coerce a guy into child support against his will, and I hope all men will avoid sex with women who would do such a thing. However, the law’s objective here is to ensure adequate support for children, who certainly are not to blame for the circumstances of their conception and birth. So I think it’s quite reasonable, from a legal standpoint, to say that once the child is born, if both parents don’t agree to let someone else adopt it, both parents are on the hook to support it financially, no matter whether or not they want to.
First of all, when one “refutes” something, they PROVE it to be erroneous. You, like myself, have provided no proof, only conjecture.
Oh really? People cannot be treated differently unless it is in the state’s interest? That may be acceptable in the socialist climate of certain Europeon nations, but in America, the concept of individual freedom and liberty is supposed to be paramount.
You’re way off base with your “segregated schools” and “water fountains” analogy. Those woud have been actions directly taken be the state. Requiring a married couple to continue supporting their children is not. Here’s why.
The institution of marriage existed long before the state of Texas or any Texas state law.
A child born within the institution of marriage was automatically a party to that marriage contract and had two parents.
A child born outside the institution of marriage only had one parent and was not a member of a marital contract.
Then came the state of Texas.
Texas law recognized the institution of marriage and had to deal with the issue of divorce.
Children born within a marriage were privileged to certain benefits that children born outside of marriage did not have. This had nothing to do with the Texas state legislature. Texas law dealing with the issue of divorce did NOT create a special provision for children classified as “legitimate”, the Texas legislature only extended provisions that already existed for those children.
Texas law did not create two seperate classes of people, the two classes already existed independent of and prior to Texas law.
The issue of “equal protection” in Gomez, like the issue of “privacy” in Roe, was just the tool used to facilitate the “agenda”.
Both “Roe” and “Gomez” are classic examples of courts perverting law to legislate from the bench.
The politics of feminism was in high-gear during the Supreme Court sessions of 1972 - 73, and being sympathetic to the feminist agenda, the Court agreed to hear Roe vs. Wade under the pretext of a violation of an individual’s “right of privacy”.
Now certainly, “privacy” is penumbral to the Constitution, but “privacy” was not really being addressed in Roe, it was just the pretext used to petition the Court to hear the case. The Court accepted the pretext to satisfy the politics of feminism.
The real issue was that the State of Texas had a law that forbade a particular medical proceedure. This law was not a violation of anyone’s “right to privacy” anymore than a state’s law against gambling is not an infringement of one’s right to privately spend their own money as they see fit.
Furthermore, the fact that a second party must be enlisted to perform the proceedure negates the concept of “privacy”.
The Court prostituted itself to an agenda in agreeing to hear “Roe” under the pretext of a “privacy” issue, and prostituted itself again in agreeing to hear “Gomez” under the pretext of a “equal protection” issue.
And that’s just what I am doing.
I admit, my conjecture that the Court monkeyed with the docket to facilitate conflicting decisions is just that, conjecture. Conjecture based on evidence. Circumstancial evidence, but evidence nonetheless. But let’s put that aside for a moment, as it is only secondary to the issue at hand.
You say there is no conflict, I say there is. In “Roe”, the Court essientially ruled that a woman’s pregnancy was her “private” concern. How then, can it be reconciled, that an individual can be held financially responsible for a “private” concern of a second party?
Compelling State Interest:
This Person is a convicted murderer. The State has a compelling interest to keep him in jail.
(Sadly) These people are all Japanese. The State thinks it has a compelling interest to put them in internment camps.
This Person is schizophrenic. The State has a compelling interest to order him to take his medication.
Why? I certainly was not unhappier as a child, lacking in material things. (I was unhappy, but for other reasons.) I don’t think that today’s go-go materialistic suburban lifestyle makes kids any happier.
Support is also controlled by law and your failure to use the system to secure your rights is not a valid excuse for not giving the father visitation rights.
There is a limited amount of resources in this country. Why should the NCP be required to compete with his/her dollars for these limited resources for a child that is no more than a stranger? If a solid middle class NCP provides less than 25% of take home pay to their child, by the law of supply and demand the price of these limited resources will tend to go down, thus providing an opportunity for clothes, education, etc. to the truly needy.
Don’t get me wrong, I want an ideal solution, too, I just cannot see how having better than necessary clothes, food, shelter, and education is a right, when many children not blessed to be born in a family with a decent income cannot have these.
And I have been trying for awhile (even before this thread) to tie it to the abortion issue, but that it even a trickier subject, since it involves the appearance of control over another’s biology. While I can propose solutions to the problem of support after the fact of birth, I haven’t been able to find one that is even acceptable to me when the abortion issue is thrown in.
Yeah, there is no perfect solution, since some parents actively want more custody, whereas others want less (at least to the extent that it is a lot of work). Morally, certainly parents who take more of the “burden” of child-rearing while the other parent does not care about their child deserve more compensation, but how can you tell who is taking on the burden portion involuntarily and who is dominating the custody of the child out of jealousy?
I would agree with this statement, with the caveat that it can do better in its attempt, in making sure that in being as fair as possible to the child, that it is not being unfair to the NCP.
Er, then there’s the possibility Razorsharp may actually be David Roberts. The stylistic differences between board posts and articles may be the result of the articles benefitting from more time for editing/rewrite/looking up sources (I know the stuff I write for my Real Job is much more polished than my SDMB material).
Of course, that in itself does nothing for or against the substance of his position, nor makes it in any way less of a bloody annoyance his apparent intention to bring up the exact same (or virtually exact same) issue yearly, apparently just for the sake of doing so. But this not being the English Comp course, recycling a paper does not in and of itself mandate immediate dismissal. From the earlier thread and this one I have seen adequate enough refutations and counter-arguments so I’ll just remit to the record as to whether, OTOH, simply reiterating his position over and over and over constitutes any real way of advancing it.
Does Razorsharp have a stake in this issue? I tend to think he must or he wouldn’t bring it up every year. (But I could be wrong…)
Do parents with joint custody (where the kid lives at both homes) pay child support? I’ve never known anyone with that set-up, but it seems to be the logical way to avoid cutting that check every week.
[QUOTE=Kimstu]
So to sum up the division of rights and responsibilities from sex to parenthood:
Deciding whether have sex and thereby incur risk of conceiving fetus: shared right/responsibility for man and woman.
Deciding whether to abort conceived embryo/fetus or bear it to term: right/responsibility rests solely with the woman, since it’s her body. Her pregnancy has no biological or medical impact on the man, so he has no say in whether to terminate it. Likewise, he bears no legal responsibility for its costs or risks.
Deciding whether to keep born child or give it up for adoption: shared right/responsibility for man and woman.
Supporting child if both parents do not agree to relinquish it for adoption: shared right/responsibility for man and woman.
So there is nothing unequal about the division of rights and responsibilities in sex or parenting. There is a legal imbalance when it comes to pregnancy, but that’s because there’s a biological imbalance: men don’t get pregnant.
So the “it’s not fair that men have to support an unwanted child, because women don’t have to carry to term an unwanted fetus” argument is fallacious. Supporting an unwanted child (which plenty of women have to do, if they can’t obtain an abortion or change their minds about it too late) is not analogous to continuing an unwanted pregnancy. Sex and parenthood are shared responsibilities; pregnancy is not. Yup, pregnancy is where a woman gets to decide (if she’s lucky) whether the end result of the sex will be parenthood, but that’s because she’s the pregnant one. Blame biology for that unfairness, not women or the courts.
That reasoning is not invalidated by the fact that some women trick men into impregnating them, or conceal pregnancies from them, or any other kind of illegal or dishonest behavior. Neither is a woman’s responsibility to support her child invalidated if the father deceived or lied to her.
QUOTE]Well said.