Yes, in our just society, women have rights, men have responsibilities. I doubt that the system can continue as is for much longer.
Two wrongs don’t make a right. Of course males should not be held financially responsible for children they do not have parental authority and responsibility for, nor forced to retain the latter if they wish to relinquish it.
I don’t see abortion or unfair child-support ceasing to be a major issue until their is a non-invasive, “default-position”, reversible, convenient, affordable male birth control modality. Right now the best we’ve got is vasectomy, which fails on the “reversible” front rather spectaculary (although it can be done you sure can’t count on it, nor can you reverse it at will or with ease, or cheaply).
Custody, also, should by default always be joint, with no Primary Custodial Parent. And therefore no child support payment should exist barring substantial differences in income. (His child-support payments to her for the days she has the kids would be offset by her child-support payments to him for the days he has the kids).
Males who resent, hate, and are politically offended by unfair child-support and child-custody legal and judicial practices should get their act together. Call feminism on its own clauses and either get feminists to ally with them (in reciprocity for their support for abortion rights and domestic violence measures that women want) or else hoist them on their own petard, loudly and in public, w/regards to equality under the law on the basis of sex.
People — male and otherwise — who just like to toss this out in abortion-rights debates as an excuse for opposing abortion are irritating as hell. You sound like someone arguing that it’s good that she’s in chains because you’re in a different set of chains. Grow up.
Actually, I’m not entirely sure that’s true. Let’s say I do get pregnant by a hypothetical rapist or hypothetical one night stand, for that matter, and abortion is illegal. Unless I get the guy’s name and some way of contacting him, I’m not going to be able to name a father to hit up for child support. It is possible for the man to walk away free and clear. On the other hand, I’m left facing nine months of pregnancy and at least a few weeks of being unable to work, even if I choose to give the child up for adoption. If the child I bear is handicapped or less than perfect in any way, or of mixed race, that child faces much lower odds of being adopted.
I agree that we’ve had some custody cases in this country which are seriously fouled up, including cases in which a child has been adopted only to have one or both birth parents turn around a year later and file for custody. I’d also be willing to consider a measure which would allow men to be freed from all parental obligations if they also give up all parental rights during a woman’s pregnancy or if the woman doesn’t tell him she’s pregnant with his child. Quite frankly, if I were to get pregnant by a fellow only to have him vanish for the duration of the pregnancy, I wouldn’t want the guy hanging around after I gave birth, let alone coming back into my life after babyhood is over.
The thing is, if abortion becomes illegal, whether I become pregnant because I was making love with my husband when I became the 0.001% chance of birth control failing or I had a fling with a guy and didn’t think for a moment before jumping into the sack with neither hesitation nor birth control, I face a nine month long obligation which ultimately falls on me alone. My husband’s body won’t be affected; mine will. My husband theoretically doesn’t have to take a minute off work for the birth; I’m out for at least a few weeks, and all my employer is required to provide is unpaid leave. Since, in real life, I don’t have a husband and until recently, I had a rather low-paying job, this presents a real problem.
Yes, the law as it’s applied in the United States can make fathering a child dead hard on men and I happen to agree that it’s unfairly applied in some cases. That doesn’t change the fact that it’s the woman’s body that the child inhabits for nine months.
Let me kick out one other thing. The people I go to church with know I’m single. If I walk into church visibly pregnant, liberal though my congregation is, there’s going to be comment. If a single man walks into church having impregnated a woman, how’s anyone going to tell? Yes, that is a lousy argument for ending a pregnancy, and I’d hope any church would offer support to a woman who chose to carry a baby to term rather than have an abortion, but I’m afraid I’m cynical about human nature, and I can see some people offering support while others make rude remarks, especially having grown up in a small town.
I came out of a somewhat abusive family and a very abusive social situation. That’s one reason why I don’t want a child, not one who would take after me. I don’t want to do to a child what my family did to me; I don’t want a child to go through what I went through. When I was in my twenties, I would have considered it downright cruel for a child to have the likes of me for a parent. I have grown some since then, and even then I realized adoption was an option. The thing is, given my age, my diet, my personality, and what I suspect are some genetic quirks, I’m still reasonably sure it’s not a good idea for me to have a child. A friend of mine doesn’t want a child because of the genetic quirks she and her husband have. Both of us are conscientious about birth control and are doing everything we reasonably can not to get pregnant, however, the only completely sure methods of avoiding pregnancy are hysterectomy and abstinence. The latter would not be fair to my friend’s husband, and the former is a reasonably big, expensive operation which, I think, basically induces premature menopause. It’s also not all that easy to get, especially if you’re in your twenties or thirties, and non-reversible. I pray I never find myself in a position where I need to consider an abortion, but, if it comes to that, I want it safe and legal, regardless of how I got into that position.
Respectfully,
CJ
OK, but it is possible to see the above as “I am frightened enough of unwanted pregnancy to consider suicide - but not to give up intercourse”. If you consider a fetus to be a separate human life, those seem like pretty screwed up priorities.
Which is sort of my point about “kiling people who interefere with my right to have intercourse”. If you assume the fetus as a human life, and assert a right to kill it as an alternative to celibacy, the same logic could be applied to someone like Susan Smith (sic?) - whoever it was who drowned her children to keep a boyfriend who only wanted unencumbered women.
But that is, as always, the point at which no compromise seems possible. If you grant that a fetus is a separate human life, the pro-life case follows almost inescapably. If you deny this, the pro-choice position follows almost equally inescapably.
Regards,
Shodan
Sex — while it is not quite like food or water, where not only is there a compelling appetite for it built into us, it tends to build in intensity the longer you go without, and if you still abstain from it you die — is also not like watching a football game, listening to a nice music CD, or even browsing & posting to the Straight Dope, i.e., highly enjoyable activities that are enjoyable for socially acquired and cerebrally processed reasons, and for which our decision to participate is not among the tiny handful of human behaviors that can be called “instinctive”.
We are, all of us, hard-wired not only to have an appetite for sex, but to respond affirmatively, under conditions we don’t consciously assess as well as those we do, to its availability with enthusiastic consent.
For reasons that can be derived from evolutionary considerations, the conditions we don’t consciously assess, to the extent that they include the prospects for pregnancy occurring, probably tend on balance to push towards enthusiastic consent when there is a chance of (healthy) baby-making, rather than to avoid that.
Now in light of that observation go back and read what Siege just said.
Shodan, the “such a situation” I was thinking of was, specifically, rape. How being raped is equivalent to “not giving up intercourse” is something I’d like to hear. Choosing celibacy alone isn’t enough to guarantee I’ll never have an unwanted pregnancy. I admit the odds of me getting raped are low and I do what I can to keep them low, but remember, I’m the daughter of an engineer, which means I know full well that even if the odds of something occuring 100 to 1 or even 1000 to 1 against it, it can still happen.
I’ve read people objecting to the morning after pill being made available to rape victims because it might cause a fertilized egg not to implant, thus inducing an abortion, even though there’s no way of knowing whether there was an egg available to be fertilized in the first place. To me, that’s where the fundamental divide is.
I don’t obsess about this; it doesn’t paralyze me every moment of my waking hours, but, just as when I get into my car and drive somewhere, I’m aware that I could get into an accident because of someone else’s actions, no matter how careful I am, so I’m aware that, until I reach menopause, the possibility that I could have an unwanted pregnancy, remote though that is, does exist.
You spoke of my not wanting to give up intercourse. To me, intercourse is part of marriage and, in a good marriage, a vital part of it. Because I don’t want to become a parent, should I therefore never marry or, if I do, remain celibate within my marriage? If you were my husband, would you want me to do that? I know we’re talking about long shots. I also know that last Friday, while the fellow I’ve been seeing and I were on seperate 600 mile plus journeys, he wound up about 4 miles ahead of me on the one 30 mile stretch of interstate we had in common right around the time I’d planned on stopping for the night anyway. For me, long shots have been known to pay off. While this is one I hope never does, I’d rather not have you decide what I should do.
Still respectfully,
CJ
AHunter3, we’ve got to stop meeting like this! 
CJ
Interesting. Let me call out especially this:
No - I’m not suggesting that someone other than the mother gets to have a say. She should have that say. You’re the one making that decision for her - by not allowing her that choice at all. You seem horrified that a woman would be able to come to terms with and admit that she’d be an abusive mother. You think that makes her a horrible human being. I don’t. What’s the greater crime? That she decides to abort because she knows she’d be abusive or that she’s forced to have the child, abuses it, and is prosecuted later, to the ruination of both lives?
I’ve decided not to have children. Among many others, one of the reasons I don’t want to have children is that I think I’d be a bad mom - I accept this about myself and have dealt with that reality. Apparently I’m a bad person.
I’m absolutely not condoning any sort of group think - that “the powers that be” or that anyone has the ability to legislate when and if people could have children, regardless of circumstances. I’m condoning that the mothers having those children have that choice. Because, like it or not, those mothers have direct influence on quality of life. On the other hand, you’d be condoning legislation of when and if women could have children by making abortion illegal.
If no one gets to play God, this means you, too. You don’t get to force a woman to have a child, either.
Abortion due to rape is relatively uncommon in the US (did you need a cite?). And most pro-lifers allow for exceptions in the case of rape, or danger to the life of the mother.
Perhaps the confusion came in because you talk about cases like this:
but then want to limit the justification for abortion to cases of rape.
If you are saying that abortion should be available in cases of rape, then even a lot of pro-lifers will agree with you. If you are saying that abortion should be available because you want to have a sex life including intercourse, and that this outweighs someone else’s right to life, that is a different position.
I agree with you - here is the fundamental divide. If you believe that a fetus is a separate human life, then killing it as a matter of convenience, or because you gambled that contraception would work every time, is wrong. If you do not consider it a separate human life, then it can be destroyed for any reason or no reason.
I’m sure you wouldn’t. Unless your actions are going to harm some innocent third party, in which case, I had better decide for you.
Which is, as I mentioned earlier, the fundamental divide. Is someone else involved in your decision, who will be harmed by it? If not, then your reasons for aborting are none of my concern. If so, then they are fundamentally part of my concern as a member of a civil society.
Same analogy as always. Is a black man a fully human person? If not, then he has no rights I am bound to respect, and it is none of my concern how you treat your property. If he is, then it doesn’t matter how much you paid for him - I am morally bound to interfere in your attempts at owning him and his labor.
We fought a war over just that issue. I doubt it will come to that on this issue, but it might.
Regards,
Shodan
Calling a first- or second-trimester fetus or embryo a “baby” or a “child” is like calling a blank sheet of paper “the collected works of Charles Dickens.”
Shodan, I have never said I want to limit abortion to only being legal in case of rape. I have repeatedly said I want it kept legal regardless of the situation and over the years I have used examples covering a wide range of situations, including one night stands. I’m aware of the extreme pro-life position which says that abortion should be illegal even in the case of rape, which is why I mentioned that business about the morning after pill, just as I’m aware that there are people who have multiple abortions.
There’s one problem with your analogy. A black man is not going to be solely dependent on another person’s body for nine months. You and I have had very different lives and come to very different conclusions. I respect your beliefs, and I won’t interfere with them. Quite frankly, I don’t think abortion is moral or a good thing, and I’m not in favor of it as a rule for myself or others. As I think I said earlier in this thread, however, I am aware that sometimes it may be the least bad choice, even though sometimes “least bad” amounts to very bad indeed. I’d love to see a day when no one ever has to consider an abortion. Until that day, I want it kept legal. Perhaps that’s a point of view you can understand better than the ones you’ve represented me as having?
Respectfully,
CJ
I’d say the fundamental divide is this: Should a person ever be forced to give up control over his/her body so that someone else may live?
My answer is no, and therefore my position on abortion stands whether or not the fetus is considered a person.