Except that the double standard is when someone chooses to create a child and then backs out of helping to raise it.
And why should the child be denied support, depending on the wishes of a parent? Child support is a right of the child and is not dependant on anything other than the fact that two people created a child and two people are responsible. Abortion is not a moral option for many people, so they actually have no choice about allowing the pregnancy to continue. I’m having a hard time figuring out why you think a child should suffer economic hardship, simply because he was allowed to be born? There is no double standard. The man and woman both conceived the child. A joint decision that both were aware, sometimes results in a child. He may not have any control over the pregnancy once it has begun, but it would not have happened, had he not allowed it to. If the father did not wish to share this experience, it was totally in his control to prevent it. Why do you think the father deserves more consideration than the child?
Choosing to have sex is not choosing to create a child, or so that’s what has been said in defense of the right to abort.
Because I don’t believe that consent to sex is consent to the financial responsibility of parenthood, not for women and not for men. I don’t believe that a child support has anything whatsoever to actually do with the child; I think it is more appropriately called ‘woman support’. I don’t think a child has a right to the money of its biological parents. Adoptive parents, whether married or single or whatever, do not have any entitlement to support from the biological parents, so why should the biological mother if she chooses to raise the child as a single mother?
Choose to be a single mother, choose to fund it.
Here’s the double standard: The law says that when a woman chooses to have sex, that’s all she’s chosen to do, but when a man chooses to have sex, he’s chosen to give up a substantial part of his income for a couple of decades. Consent to sex is not consent to parenthood.
I think that a man has just as much right to decide he doesn’t want to be a father as a woman has to decide she doesn’t want to be a mother.
No, but it certainly is choosing to risk the fertalization of the egg. And this can lead to the creation of a child. So, it is certainly risking the creation of a child.
Except I don’t think this is how the law is written. IANAL, but I’m pretty sure that the abortion decision did not reference any sort of male opt out principle in order to grant a similar right to women. I understand that you believe that this is the position of some abortion rights advocates, but I do not think you can back up this assertion in a legal sense.
No, but it is certainly consent to the risk of parenthood. I’m not even sure how you can deny this. It is not consent to a certainty, that is there are no guarantees that every sexual encounter will result in children. But it seems the hight of denial to suggest that no such risk exists. Like the pregnancy is some sort of accident which has no relationship to the sex.
Now, on this we can agree. They both have the same rights and responsibilities toward sex, parenthood, and children. I argue that the biological fact that the child must reside inside the woman for a period of time, and that during this time it is not afforded the same rights as when it is born, does nothing to change the rights or responsibilities of the father.
Its like saying that if the child is born with some deformity, then both parents can simply decide to abandon it because the cost of taking care of a deformed child is not what they bargained for.
If one of them can decide after the fact that she does not want to be a parent, then both of them should have that right.
There is absolutely no possible way you’re going to convince me that any other situation is equitable.
They can. If it’s immediately after birth, in 42 out of 50 states, they can ‘abandon’ the kid at hospitals, fire stations and police stations. In all 50 states they can decide to relinquish their child to the state to be placed for adoption.
Yet the unequitable solution in which a woman can force a man to pay for her decision to be a single mother still exists.
If a woman wants to give the child up for adoption and the father does not, assuming custondy is awarded to him in this situation, can he get child support from the mother?
Did you? Your “safe haven” site quite clearly states as follows
So please do try again to provide legal authority for the extraordinary proposition that “safe haven” laws terminate a father’s legal rights.
Yes.
[Go to hell, vBulletin! I don’t want to put ten or more characters in my response!]
Use a little logic, minty.
How the hell are a father’s rights not usurped when a mother can show up and hand over a baby without ever giving her name or any other identifying information to someone at a fire station, police station, EMS station or hospital?
Maybe the law doesn’t say his rights are terminated immediately, but in several of those links you’ll find that there is a thirty day limit for him to contest what she did. How does he do that if he can’t possibly even be notified of her relinquishing the kid? How does he do that if he can’t find out where she took the kid? How?
No, we English teachers have ways of knowing these things. It’s all part of our secret detection kits. The person who posted as David Roberts is not the person who posted the OP here. And the person who wrote the piece originally is not Razorsharp.
The only thing that I don’t know for certain is whether or not David Roberts was the original author. I do have an opinion on it though.
If the man doesn’t understand it is a possibility that he will create a child, then he’s an idiot.
Believing it does not make it true. If you have sex that results in a baby, you are legally and morally responsible. Both of you.
Give me a break, the woman has to kick in her share of the support too. You obviously have no concept of how expensive a child is to raise.
You want the state to be responsible because the parent or parents aren’t? So two people make a baby and only one is responsible for it’s care? That’s fair? If mom doesn’t like it, it’s her own fault. She should have killed it when she had the chance? Adoptive parents release the biological parents from financial responsibility because the actually want the child.
She didn’t necessarily choose it anymore than he did. Shit happens and we’re responsible for our own messes.
The woman has assumed the same risk as the man. She has to support the child, too. Consent to sex is consent to possible parenthood. You assume the risk, when you do it. Your choice.
Yep. It’s called being responsible. It works almost everytime. I know it’s a novel thought, but maybe neither the man nor the woman should have sex without knowing each other well enough to at least understand how the other one feels about the possible outcome. If the man is that concerned, he should make sure she believes in abortion and that he does his part to prevent a pregnancy.
I’d be out about $500 which is what a chemical abortion costs these days.
Because she chose to have and keep the kid. Why doesn’t he get a choice?
Nope. I want the person who chooses to raise the kid to be responsible for the financial end of it, not some guy she uses as a money tree because she wants a life she can’t afford.
If she actually wants the child, and he doesn’t, she should have to sign a legal document giving up any claim to child support because she wanted a kid that nobody else did.
Sure she did. She had the option to continue the pregnancy or not, to give the kid up for adoption or not, and she chose to keep it so she should pay for it.
She chooses to have the kid. She chooses to keep the kid. She chooses to raise the kid. She chooses to financially support the kid.
And what happens when she lies and renegs on her oral contract? It happens quite often. What happens when he does what he can to prevent it and she gets pregnant and then doesn’t keep up her end of the bargain?
Or is legal inequity to men not such a big deal?
Honestly not to me. The child gets first consideration, since it didn’t have the options the man did. The circumstances before birth have nothing to do with the welfare of the child. Since s/he will do better with the support of both parents, that’s what he should have. Spend that $500 on rubbers and make sure the woman is on the pill. Throw in a little spermicide if you really want to be sure. Whatever it takes to avoid the horrors of responsibility and parenthood. :rolleyes:
Well if a woman wants to have a kid absent a father, maybe she ought to figure out whether she can actually support the kid on her own or not attempt to live a life she can’t afford without forcing someone else to finance it.
Well sometimes she doesn’t want to raise a kid without a father, but it’s just a fact. He doesn’t have to support her, just the child. A child he was responsible for creating. I don’t know why you think it’s a choice that only the mother is responsible for. As I said before, abortion is not an option for many people.
This seems to be the central theme to your ranting. The problem with it, again, is that the extra choice for the woman is temporary and a necessary extension of the biological facts of human reproduction. If the male were to be the one to gestate the fetus, then he would have an extra choice.
Consider it this way. Imagine that humans fertalized eggs outside the body. The male and female got toghether for a bit of fun, and sometimes, the female excreted and egg, while the male excreted sperm. Sometimes, the two excrements got together and created a Zygote. Now this zygote is external to both mates. Notice that I have not changed the current situation much. You still have sex with all its attractions, you still have dual contributions to babies, and you still have a gestation period for the baby.
Now, imagine that for gestation to complete, the egg has to spend a couple months inside one or the other of the mates. Perhaps in a pouch sort of arrangement. Imagine further that both sexes has this pouch. In such a situation either partner could exercise a unilateral abortion depending on which mate kept the zygote inside him or her. In this situation, you seem to be saying that whichever parent does not host the zygote gets a free pass to abandon the child. But then you seem to be saying that aborions should be legal until the child can literally survive on its own. Perhaps you are thinking of 18? There is a good comedy skit by Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie about abortion where a farmer aborts his son because the son does not want to work on the farm anymore. He says “If the ain’t votin, they ain’t people.” They meant it as comedy. You seem to hold this idea or something similar seriously.
Uh, way to mischaracterize my point.
My point is that since the woman does have the option to absolve herself of the responsibility of financing the rearing of a child she doesn’t want, she should not be able to force the same on someone else who does not want a child.
If the guy makes it known that he doesn’t want the kid, and she goes and chooses to keep and raise it anyway, she has made the choice to be a single mother, then she can damn well pay for her choice.
Arg. Nonononono. The man and the women were jointly responsible for creating a fertilized egg. The woman is soley responsible for converting said egg into a person. If I work with a friend to make a stick, and my friend goes off and hits people with the stick, I am not cupable, positing that my friend is a moral agent (and the stick is not).
But you guys are still ignoring the situation before sex.
Look. I agree that if a woman were to come up to a stranger and suddenly be able to force him to financially support here child (which she was somehow able to produce without his input) then that would be wrong. You guys would be completely correct if this were the situation.
But it simply is not.
The choice would never arise if both partners did not undertake an activity which had some chance of producing it.
I’ve thought of another example. Imagine a man and a woman write a book together. However, the woman is the only one of the partners with any skill or contacts in the publishing industry. So, she goes out and hunts up a willing publisher essentially without his help. The book is published and has some success. Unfortunately, it turns out that a couple chapters amount to slanderously false statements about a well known celebrity. The celbrity sues and is awarded a substantial judgement. The man argues that the woman could have refused or failed to get the book published. If she had done so, then no harm would have come to the celebrity. Therefore he argues that he should not be required to pay his share of this debt.
What do you think the courts would say about this? What do you think his friends would say if he limited his argument to a moral rather than legal one?
After you remember that the product in question could not have existed in the first place without input from both partners, it becomes more and more difficult to imagine any situation where temporary custody of that product removes the responsibilities from the other partner.
Yes. And if the woman goes off and hits people with a baby, she will be solely responsible for the attack on the third party and the baby. If on the other hand, it is considered bad to create a pointed stick but only the friend is caught with it, you will not be able to avoid prosecution by saying that they only caught you since your friend got caught. That is, if the product in question produces a debt by virtue of its existance rather than because of any use to which it is put you will retain any responsibility you have by helping to create that debt.
Consider it this way. You and a friend grow some illegal weed. You provide the seeds while she provides the hydroponics equipment. Lets say for arguments sake that you did it just for fun. You never intended to sell, smoke, or even harvest the stuff. Lets even say further that you and she agreed that if the weed sprouted, she would dispose of any such tiny plants. Now, you leave and never hear from her again. One day, however, the police come to your door and say they are taking you in for conspiricy to produce an illegal substance. At your door, you argue that:
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You did not actually expect the plants to germinate since she told you the hydroponic equipment was disabled in some way.
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You are not responsible for the weed produced since you had her word before hand that if any did grow she would dispose of it.
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They should not be able to harrass you anyway, since the woman could have flushed the whole thing away if she had wanted to.
You proceed to slam the door in their face since you are sure in your moral rightousness.
Will they slink away in embarassed silence? OR mighten they batter your door down and do nasty things to you while apprehending you?
Oh, must I? :rolleyes:
The same way a mother’s rights are not usurped when a mfather can show up and hand over a baby without ever giving his name or any other identifying information to someone at a fire station, police station, EMS station or hospital.
By fucking well paying attention to whether or not he’s seen his blasted child in the last thirty days or so, then reporting it to the authorities when the kid ups and disappears on him?
Sheesh, it ain’t that damn difficult to tell when your kid’s been taken away from you for the last 30 days. What, you think the baby’s hitchhiking through Europe, or hanging out in New Hampshire passing out pamphlets for Howard Dean?
[Or perhaps you speak of the situation in which the daddy hasn’t even bothered to care whether he’s a daddy. In which case, I have no problem terminating his parental rights on the basis of ignorance. I’m sure he’d agree.]