I suspect in cases like that the mother would not choose to have a third trimester abortion. However, there are other cases. And where money is concerned people will do just about anything. I know a woman currently stuck with a child she hates because she wasn’t able to get a late a abortion. The child’s father would love to take custody because it would mean he would be able to get child support checks from his much wealthier ex-wife. A pre-nuptial agreement limited him in the divorce. The kid is of course a mess psychologically, but smart enough to know that it’s either life with mommy who wished he didn’t exist or life with daddy who only wants to get money out of him. More situations like that are exactly what I see happening when we limit women’s reproductive freedom.
[quote=“Damuri_Ajashi, post:636, topic:549037”]
If the father takes custody of the child then good for him but he’s on his own.
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No he isn’t. Not in America. The custodial father can sue for custody and bankrupt the mother.
That’s correct but your view seems pretty cynical. I think at some point the feelings of the father deserves some consideration but since it’s the woman’s body, ultimately it’s up to her.
I’m wondering if legally a woman can give a father custody with a legal document relieving her of any financial responsibility.
No, she can’t. And I know that from being in that position myself and having consulted multiple attorneys about the problem. The only way a woman can be relieved of potential child support obligations is if both parents surrender custody and the child is adopted by someone else. Even if the father doesn’t want child support, if he has to go on public assistance, the state will go after the mother for money.
That makes sense. I was thinking if the father was able to support the child without public assistance.
My point is: If the woman had a choice between having an abortion and an early delivery,it would not be an abortion because the father would then have the responsibility of paying and caring for the incubation until the birth of the child, she would not be burdened with the carrying to full term, the father would take on the expenses of incubation. I personally cannot think of a reason,if the woman was pregnant and waited until the fetus was viable,but if it were for health reasons, then if the fetus is able to survive and she was able to have a Caesarean section with out harm to her, or the fetus, maybe it would solve a lot of problems for all concerned. Since the fetus would survive then it could not be called an abortion.
What if(as in many cases) the woman would also have to go on public assistance?
Extreme poverty might be the only way a non-custodial mother could avoid paying child support, but 1.) she may not have this option if she has other relatives who need her financial support and 2.) it’s extremely shoddy to expect a woman to tank her career and live in poverty because her ex is a gready layabout.
In many cases it was just a one night stand,so it wouldn’t be considered her ex, not as if the woman was married.
In cases like in some third world countries when a couple has 4 or 5 children that are starving to death already, even if the parents want another child, I think they should have the right to use birth control, and to expect a couple to have a lot of children because of religious beliefs because they cannot care for them Physically, emotionally, or financially is a worse sin than using birth control
Everything. The Courts already respects the right of the parents to end life support for a baby that has been born. That is certainly precedent that the parents not the courts and not total strangers should be the ones deciding whether or not to remove life support (i.e., the literal body of the mother) from a fetus.
The state has an interest and the fetus. That’s at least part of the argument. As you point out, this sort of logic would argue in favor of legalized infanticide so we aren’t really going to get very far with that line of reasoning. But in furtherance of this tangent…Ask anyone you meet on the street if they would have minded being aborted, they might not have had an opinion when they were a fetus but they certainly do now. This may be an argument against abortion generally, and I guess it is, until you introduce the mother’s rights.
“It’s not like any women actually get abortions while in labor, after all, so it’s silly to object to it being allowed, the same way it’s silly to make laws preventing people from running on foot faster than the speed limit.”
You said that it is silly to pass a law for something that just doesn’t actually happen and you say that because it doesn’t actually happen we don’t really need laws against it. You point out that for the same reason there are no laws against running faster than the speed limit. Now you point out that people do in fact run faster than the speed limit, so now I have to wonder what you meant by your original statement analogizing outlawing abortions during labor with outlawing running faster than the speed limit.
Neither am I. I’ve voted for pro-choice Democrats in every election since we invaded Iraq and for most elections before that.
Yeah, I did the same thing and I came out with the opposite result. And I am going to assume the “making laws against” comments is a reference to constitutional rights. I think it important to remember that abortion rights stand on very flimsy constitutional grounds. There is nothing in the constitution that prohibits a state’s ability to regulate abortion and abortion was in fact illegal in several places before, during and after (for like centuries after) the constitution was ratified. Roe relies on "penumbra’ privacy rights that the court inferrred from the OTHER rights we see in the bill of rights. It seems like the correct result as long as we remember that the absolute right to abortions only exists during the first trimester.
Well if the woman wanted an abortion and the state forced her to deliver or carry, I would not force the man to support the unwanted child any more than I would force the woman to do so.
If the woman has the child and wants to raise the child then I feel differently. I think the man must support the child to the extent that he can.
I don’t think we can impose a requirement for a woman to carry or deliver a baby very lightly. In those cases where we do, I don’t think we can force her to support the child (in fact this may be the very reason she wanted the abortion in the first place).
I don’t feel the same way about a father that (for example) divorces the mother and wants to have nothing to do with his former family.
Or in the case of a man who has gotten a woman pregnant, telling the pregnant woman "hey babe, have the kid if you want but you’re on your own because:
A) I have a family already and I can’t have them finding out that I am sending child support payments to my lovechild;
B) I didn’t sign on for this when I fucked you; or
C) It will seriously reduce my disposable income.
The principle of self determination doesn’t diminish by one iota. The state interest in the life of the fetus increases as the pregnancy deelops.
You may not agree with my position but at leat my position has the virtue of recognizing your main argument that the woman has rights. Your position totally discounts any rights of the fetus or the state. You don’t even balance the the woman’s rights against other concerns you simply discount out of hand that anything could possibly trump the woman’s right to choose. Establishing her right to choose is not the end of the debate as much as you want it to be.
And the alternative is better, is it? For the sake of getting the elective case, you’ll intrude on other cases where the situation is more dire. I’m okay with leaving these decisions up to patients and their doctors, myself.
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I thought my position was a bit clearer than that. I am proposing that we outlaw third trimester abortions and replacing them with inducing early delivery (or ceasarians) UNLESS the fetus is horribly deformed or the life or physical health of the mother is at stake. So tell me what dire situations doesn’t this cover because right now I am pretty comfortable with this formulation.
The welfare system was never intended to be “that much” but it is supposed to keep you from dying.
I hadn’t thought of the whole “I have to send money back to my family so they don’t die” aspect but once again you can put a kid up for adoption.
Why specifically do you think adoption isn’t the answer? Because you seem to think that killing the fetus is better than letting it be adopted by some middle class family.
We are ONLY talking about third trimester abortions. The poor don’t have to be the incubators for the middle class if they get an abortion at any time in the first 6 months of pregnancy.
So… this kid who realizes his mother doesn’t want him and his father only wants him for the money. Would he be better off dead? Maybe we should let the mother abort him now.
[quote=“ZPG_Zealot, post:642, topic:549037”]
[quote=“Damuri_Ajashi, post:636, topic:549037”]
If the father takes custody of the child then good for him but he’s on his own.
Not in my world he can’t. We are talking policy hypotheticals. If we want to talk actual law then the debate is over before it starts. A state can actually force a woman to carry a pregnancy to term during the last trimester and can impose much more significant regulation during the second trimester than what I propose.
In the case of removing life support for disabled babies, you are not talking about viable children, are you?
If so can yo please provide a cite to a case where a baby with a good prognosis but needs life support fo get past premature birth or something like that gets the plug pulled. I don’t think there are very many hosptials that will pull the plug on an otherwise healthy baby just because the parents say so, I think a court would have to tell them to do so.
Most people on the street are idiots. And most of the ones who are not idiots would misinterpret the question as you state it. Succinctly this is crap argument that merits no further response than to point out its crapitude.
And I think it’s quite clearly not the case that the state has an interest in the fetus. Which pretty much QEDs the tangent.
I meant, as I thought I had made clear, that the state sees a cost-benefit return on laws. When it is functioning rationally (as opposed to being twitted by popularity politics), the state assesses the cost of the “proposed crime” to society, and compares that with the cost of the proposed solution.
It is possible for people to run on foot faster than the automobile speed limit of a posted road. However, it is not clear that any olympians are doing any of their running there, and even if they are, it’s so infrequent that the cost to society is extremely low. So no law is made, nor should a law be made.
It is possible for women to frivolously choose to get an abortion in the last couple of months of their pregnancies. However, it is not clear that any women are causelessly waiting this long to frivolously decide this, and even if they are, it’s so infrequent that the cost to society is extremely low. So no law is made, nor should a law be made.
That’s the argument. If you want to make a law, there should be a reason for making the law - and not one based in hysterics or political posturing to satisfy the populace’s ill-thought-out emotional arguments, either.
There is no rational argument, prenumbral or otherwise, for creating an absolute right that suddenly ceases to be absolute after three (or fewer) months of known pregnancy. I’m not going to bother to accept or remember something that is based on nothing but your unsupported emotional impulse.
And you are incorrect in your assumption about what I meant by putting “making laws against” in there. The point was, there are things that are bad ideas, in some cases unambiguously bad ideas, that we still don’t make laws prohibiting. Like, for example, buying a car when you know you will soon be losing your job and will become unable to make the payments. Dumb - but legal. There are countless other examples, especially if you don’t need unanimous agreement on their stupidity. (Voting for Bush a second time? :p) The government is simply not the Bad Idea police - not unless your bad ideas have discernably bad consequences for society as a whole.
Choosing to have an abortion while you’re in your third trimester is one of those possibly Bad Ideas that doesn’t have bad consequences for society as a whole. Society doesn’t need more babies (espcially not unwanted babies), and the existence of abortions doesn’t destabilize society in the way that murder of adults or even adolescent children does. Impartially speaking, the government simply doesn’t have any legitimate interest in the matter.
So, based on that alone and transcending all other factors, there shouldn’t be a law preventing third trimester abortions. And if you do look at other factors, you have to admit that there are various complicating factors in the situation: medical necessities, detected fetal disease, etc, which make the situation inherently suited to case-by-case analysis, rather than blanket bans. Which provides a second compelling argument for leaving the determiniations to those on the scene.
Even if that means that in a handful of cases you can’t be 100% sure they’d make the decision you think with all your beliefs and emotions is best.
Why are you letting the woman tell that to the man, then?
Currently, the situation is this, regarding the ability to relinquish one’s rights and responsibilities as a parent of a (young? infant?) child:
Scenario A: the current scenario
Case 1: The man and woman both want out. They may both get out; neither remain parents.
Case 2: The man wants out and woman doesn’t. The man is stuck; both remain parents.
Case 3: The woman wants out and man doesn’t. The woman is stuck; both remain parents.
Case 4: Neither want out. Both remain parents.
You apparently want to change things to this new scenario B:
Case 1: The man and woman both want out. They may both get out; neither remain parents. (unchanged)
Case 2: The man wants out and woman doesn’t. The man is stuck; both remain parents. (unchanged)
Case 3: The woman wants out and man doesn’t. The woman gets out; only the man remains a parent.
Case 4: Neither want out. Both remain parents. (unchanged)
You apparently do not want this scenario C:
Case 1: The man and woman both want out. They may both get out; neither remain parents. (unchanged)
Case 2: The man wants out and woman doesn’t. The man gets out; only the woman remains a parent.
Case 3: The woman wants out and man doesn’t. The woman gets out; only the man remains a parent.
Case 4: Neither want out. Both remain parents. (unchanged)
So: why do you want scenario B, specifically? It’s clearly worse for the child and the man than scenario A, in the relevent case. And it’s clearly in brazen defiance of gender rights, such that you need a justification for it that stands up to intermediate scrutiny. Which you have not provided.
Scenario C is also no great shakes for the child in the changed cases - though no worse so for the children effected by the changes than Scenario B is. And Scenario C has the bonus of being clear of protected class issues.
So. Why do you want scenario B? It can’t be for the kid’s benefit; it can’t be for the men’s benefit; it must be for the women’s benefit, axiomatically. And peculiarly, the only thing I can think of that you might be basing it on is that the woman has the inherent right not to be the parent, more than the man does. This is peculiar because the only source I can see for such a belief is the notion that this is an aspect of abortion, and so to hold your position you must believe that the woman has the inherent right to an abortion until birth. And not because she control over her womb - just because she has an inherent right to ‘kill’ her parental rights, period. Even if it’s at the expense of the child’s well-being.
I think you can understand why this seems like a very self-contradictory position for you to take. So what are your thought processes here?
But in many cases it isn’t enough to keep someone from dying, if not from physical starvation, but from the psychological effects of constant deprivation.
You obviously are not aware of my opinion on adoption. I consider adoption as practiced in Western culture where babies are taken away from their families and cultures and given to alien people the most vile practice on earth below even cannibalism for sport (after all that would only be killing a body, not killing a spirit). Yes, I do think it is better to kill a fetus that let it be gestated to birth, stolen away from its true culture and ancestory, and raised to call kidnappers mother and father.
And the poor would be used as incubatiors by the middle class and wealthy. Nobody pays birth mothers for gestating fetuses or for risking their lives in delivery though when at least working class women are smart enough to sign surrogacy contracts no one seems to resent giving them their wages. There are plenty of circumstances such as the need to raise money for the precedure (abortions aren’t free) or even ignorance of pregnancy (poor women don’t have the best of health care) which could lead to a poor woman not being able to get an abortion until rather late. And as I have said before a poor woman may think she is able to continue the pregnancy and later in the pregnancy realizes it is not financially possibility making an abortion a necessity.
Given that the kid already shows signs of anti-social personality disorder, I imagine the state will eventually do just that. Of course, by then he will have done a great deal of damage and harmed many people, all of which could have been avoided if his mother had been allowed to choose to give him lethal injection in the womb.
Abortion is morally wrong. It takes away the life of an innocent child.