At Unequally Yoked, a reader writes in:
As a pro-choicer do you believe a man should have the right to opt out of parental responsibilities? It seems that if a woman has the right to choose whether or not she is to become a parent then a man should have that same right as well. Not trying to be a jerk just wondering if any pro-choicers have thought about this. Why should a man be held responsible for a choice he didn’t make?
He didn’t ask me, but I’ll respond anyway. :-)
I think that men and women should both have the absolute, non-negotiable right to do whatever they want with their own bodies to prevent pregnancy. So men and women both have the right to abstain from sex, to have sex but abstain from penis-in-vagina sex, to use whatever birth control on their own body that they want, etc.. Absolutely equal.
I also believe that once a child is born, both parents, regardless of sex, are responsible for that child. If they both agree to give the child up for adoption, then that’s fine; if either one of them wants to raise the child, then the other one should pay child support. Again, absolutely equal.
The inequality that exists is that women can get pregnant and men can’t; but that inequality is created by biology, not by biased laws. Arguably, this gives women an advantage (they can choose an abortion, and because they can keep a pregnancy secret from the father). But it also gives women a lot of disadvantages — even a pregnancy that goes well is physically and mentally stressful for most women, and if the pregnancy doesn’t go well it can be many months of suffering, and possibly even permanent injury or death. Men don’t face that problem.
So there is a biological inequality there; but it disadvantages women and men both.
The “choice for men” position also causes practical problems that legal abortion does not.
1) Studies have found that the weaker a state’s child support laws, the higher the number of single mothers.
If weak child support laws lead to an increase in single motherhood, then what would a law saying that men bear absolutely no responsibility do? We’d have an explosion of single motherhood, way worse than what we’ve already seen. That’s not a problem caused by legal abortion, but it is a problem that would be caused by giving men a “get out parental responsibility free” card.
2) When a woman has an abortion, the fetus dies before ever becoming a person (in virtually all abortions, including most late-term abortions, the brain’s cerebral cortex isn’t even functioning yet, due to the lack of dendritic spines). In contrast, deadbeat parents cause deprivation and suffering to existing, real people with functioning brains.
To sum up:
The pro-choice status quo is one in which women and men are legally equal, when it comes to reproduction. The inequality that exists is caused by biology, not unequal laws, and disadvantages both sexes, not only men. And unlike legal abortion, so-called “choice for men” would have very bad consequences for both society and for children.
@Mythago
That last reply of yours was an incredibly insightful, well-worded and fully developed comment. It has so profoundly changed my perspective on the matter that I find myself unable to respond with any words relevant to my previous comments here or in relation to any of the positions on C4M that I have espoused in the past few days. I must take some time to digest your summation and will hopefully return with a more well-rounded and fair opinion on choice for men.
Two small points:
1) I never accused you of using the “well you should’ve kept your pants on, then” argument. That was some other commenters here and I, personally, don’t find it relevant or a useful avenue for discussion that will bear fruit here.
2) I can only hope that this discussion becomes moot once birth control for men becomes available. Personally, I have had a very high incidence of condom breakage in my lifetime – I have always felt that effective birth control options have been out of my hands. When and if reliable, reversible and non-prophylactic birth control can make its way into the hands of responsible men in this world – my concerns over the fairness of C4M will become a forgotten issue of the past. I can only hope.
This is a bit off-topic, but hopefully, there will be better male birth control sometime soon. (Well, soon measured in years, not months.)
Male birth control pill soon a reality – msnbc.com
Also: Over 200 comments? Geez.
I do agree with EasilyEnthused there.
But haven’t they been saying stuff about the male pill being out soon since 15 years ago?
I’m not sure the consequences/results distinction clarifies much here. If a single parent child could be supported by Warren Buffet, that would be a great result, but we don’t make Warren Buffet pay child support to all the people he could afford to pay child support to.
We don’t because of a consequences outlook. Your version just obscures that by putting it one step further away in the analysis.
That last reply of yours was an incredibly insightful, well-worded and fully developed comment. It has so profoundly changed my perspective on the matter that I find myself unable to respond with any words relevant to my previous comments here or in relation to any of the positions on C4M that I have espoused in the past few days.
Has higher praise ever been heaped on a blog comment in the history of the Internet?
I’m not sure the consequences/results distinction clarifies much here.
Nevermind. Maybe we should go another 200 comments and see if we can budge it any further.
@Mythago: Whether you ignore my posts or not (though it does seem petty), it doesn’t matter because they are still available for everyone else to read. My goal isn’t to convince you, but rather to convince the audience.
So to respond to your comment for everyone else to read, yes in most cases both parents care for the child after it is born, and yes only women can get pregnant, but it is not a “fair trade” to say that that means that in return the man should get no choice in his reproduction if the birth control should fail while the woman gets complete choice in pro-choice states. Yes first trimester abortion can be a trial for some, but spending the energy, time, and resourses raising a child you aren’t ready for is a huge issue as well (as is often noted in regard to women in abortion debates) and shouldn’t be dismissed lightly when refering to men. I feel that you have to take the effects on both genders into account and try to develop a fair solution. Those who stick to the dogmatic “abortion only affects women” line aren’t being honest about that.
Also, good job scientists with the (potential) male birth control pills. It took you half a century to figure out how to do it for the other gender, but all will be forgiven if it works.
chingona @183: Yes, we are. But some of these arguments for C4M fall apart when you acknowledge that a pregnancy is not the same as having a born child, and that the responsibilities of both parents to a born child are identical (unlike with pregnancy). So you have to just ignore them. Rinse, repeat.
EasilyEnthused @197: I’m happy to go into the reasons we allow sperm banks and treat them differently than fathers, if you care. But I think I’ve finally figured out one reason this is going in circles: there are really two separate approaches here.
That’s the simplistic consequences view.
The more relevant consequences view would be “if you don’t want to have the consequences of having a child, what steps should you take and what incentives should you use?
No. it is SMART to avoid the consequences of sex. And you should do everything you can (including certain limited contract rights, and incentives to abort) to avoid unwanted consequuences for all parties who might bear them.
but that’s not necessarily a requirment of the results view. It’s simply the application of the results view to our current messed-up system, complete with limited abortion access, limited social support, and a hell of a lot of stigma and legal interference re abortion as a viable solution to pregnancy.
you want to change that. I know you do, I’ve read your posts. So why are you stuck on an outcome which depends for its conclusion on society NOT changing?
Nobody can really “choose to conceive,” though they can try (or try to avoid it.)
You’re familiar with the doctrine of mitigation, I’m sure. For the laypeople: it’s a doctrine that says that if I damage you (break a 5-year lease after 1 year, fail to sell you some wood, whatever) you have some duth to try to reduce the effects of my screwup. You can’t refuse to rent the house for 5 years and collect rent from me. You can’t refuse to buy wood somewhere else, and sue me when your pipes freeze. you have to at least make an effort.
The reality is that the woman is the only one with the ability to mitigate the effects of a screwup. She’s like the victim in the above scenarios. But just like those victims, there’s still some understanding of the rights of the person who made the mistake.
you seem to have those right be zero, at least for men, at least here.
There is one context where I would be willing to see society have less expectation of a man’s duty to raise the children of his body, and that is a context where the man pre-announces and publishes his intentions of non-parenthood so thoroughly that there’s no question any woman sleeping with him knows his strongly-expressed preference.
I would even be willing to have that publication amount to some kind of non-support rule, IF there’s some other fair provision of resources. Maybe an insurance-type plan where the man pays a premium and, in the case of accidental pregnancy, has his support obligations covered by the insurance company at a pre-negotiated (and adequate) amount. Women could also subscribe to such a program but I suspect men would be the big customers.
Maybe an insurance-type plan where the man pays a premium and, in the case of accidental pregnancy, has his support obligations covered by the insurance company at a pre-negotiated (and adequate) amount.
Ahem.
Though, the more I think about it, to make such an insurance scheme viable, we’d have to mandate that all men buy an individual policy. ;-)
That seems like a tricky insurance scheme to run, given the potential for fraudulent “accidental” pregnancy and no real way to check whether it was accidental or not. I suppose you could eliminate a lot of fraud by conditioning payout on the man having no further contact with the woman and/or child, but you’ve then set up a rather morally dubious financial incentive.
Ah, didn’t see that you used time travel to see my suggestion then go back and make it earlier, chingona. Clever of you…
Why would it have to be mandatory? The default is you are responsible if you get someone pregnant. Only the “but I want worry-free sex” folks would need coverage.
Jebedee, there would be a lot of tricky aspects, many of which would be covered simply by having very high premiums.
@Mythago: If I’m understanding your reasoning correctly then, you believe that a woman who took sperm from a condom and used it to impregnate herself and gave birth to a baby – that baby would be entitled to child support from both parents equally?
As I see it – responsibility works on a sliding scale. The extreme ends of the “responsibility” gradient could look something like this:
At one end, we have a man who has unprotected sex with a woman who is not on birth control of any sort and has no reason to doubt her fertility.
At the other end, we could imagine a man who masturbates into a condom, leaves it in the trash – and a woman takes that used condom and uses it to impregnate herself.
Based on your “result” thinking – the baby that results from both of these equations is equally entitled to support from the biological parents, correct?
Sorry Robert. That was a joke. I was kind of trying to make it parallel to the health insurance mandate, about which we all know you have strong feelings.
Chingona,
You asked for an advocate to explain what they wanted.
I did @182. In fact, I may well be the only person who has tried to set out what they want (I have a feeling that C4M is otherwise being presented as a straw man, FWIW. Some folks seem to think it’s a free release for men at any time; I don’t think anyone here is suggesting that.)
But anyway: since you asked, and i answered, it’d be courteous to address the post.
“Everyone here arguing for “choice for men”: Please give me a convincing explanation of why children are better off under your policy than under the status quo”
First, we don’t use this standard for anything else. If we reinstated parental financial support for adopted kids or donor children, they’d be better off under the new policy – but we don’t, we consider other things too.
Second, I don’t think the uptake would be huge: there wouldn’t be mass child abandonment. The number of fathers who want no contact with their children at birth is very small. If you could increase support schedules slightly to reflect greater implied committment and political support under an opt-in/out system rather than a blanket policy, there could even be a net benefit to kids.
Third, many of these children’s caregivers aren’t getting much money anyway: so the effect in many cases would be to let people who aren’t paying continue to not pay, but without a huge notional debt and the law at their back. Essentially it would free them to do something slightly more productive with their lives than cash-in-hand work, let them get driving and professional licenses etc.
Fourth, most these children will still be legal heirs – so they will get their father’s assets eventually. It’s just maintained in an estate they will get access to when they’re older – rather than being spent on their behalf when they are young. In lots of cases, that might be the best financial decision.
Fifth, plenty of support is just netted off welfare. So we take $100 from a dad, give it to a mom, and give her $100 less welfare than she would otherwise get. If the dad has his own family, this reduces the total amount available to children by $100. It’s a saving in government spending and net reduction to the amount of money available to children.
Lastly, much of the child support system – like the rest of the justice and prison system – is massively wasteful and counter productive. With many deadbeats, huge amounts of money in administrative fees and court time is spent in order to get very small sums of money handed over by guys who are dirt poor. Freeing up that money for direct subsidy would be a huge benefit.
g&w
I do appreciate that you actually tried to answer, but you accused me of interrogating you 8 minutes after your post at 182 went up. That’s not a lot of time to think about something complicated and respond.
I’m not sure what you mean by C4m as presented being a strawman. I’m not sure which side you think is strawmanning. One reason I asked my question was that each commenter advocating C4M seemed to have a different scenario in mind.
As for 1) free BC/abortions/vasectomies but no free pregnancy care. I’m a good liberal, and I’d like to see more and better and cheaper access to BC and abortion. I’d also like to see better, more thorough sex ed, because most studies I’ve seen indicate that access and cost are not always the main issues when people don’t use BC. Not providing affordable prenatal care would be cutting off your nose to spite your face. States that are really stingy about letting pregnant women onto Medicaid find they have much higher unreimbursed medical costs. Babies born sick and premature end up costing everyone A LOT of money. Unless we’re going to start leaving our sick newborns to die of exposure, we’re better off also paying for prenatal care for poor women, regardless of what we think of their parents’ decision-making. I also really don’t see the availability of prenatal care as a major factor in deciding to have a kid. Paying out of pocket for birth care is expensive if you don’t have insurance, but it’s really the least of it when it comes to what kids cost.
2) Let anybody contract for anything? Hmmm … It’s been said repeatedly that a woman can’t sign away her kid’s right to support from the other parent. That said, we do have other situations where people voluntarily become single parents, so personally, I wouldn’t have a huge problem with a couple agreeing that the parent who wanted the kid wouldn’t seek any money and the parent who didn’t wouldn’t seek any parental rights.
My question would be … to me, contract implies a mutual agreement. That’s not the same as a man, after he’s gotten a woman pregnant, unilaterally deciding that he’s not going to support the kid. Again, I’m not sure which C4M proposal you think is a strawman, but several people on this thread have said the man should be able to say unilaterally, at least early in the pregnancy, that he won’t support a child, the same way a woman can unilaterally decide to have an abortion.
A number of commenters also have brought up the scenario of finding out after the fact that kid had already been born. That seems to be a major concern, and it doesn’t seem like it would be addressed directly by your proposal. In the absence of any pre-existing contract, would you just revert to the way we do it now, with the biological father presumed to be responsible?
One concern I have is that if men can unilaterally sever their rights (which you didn’t explicitly propose, so I’m not sure what your position is, but others have), they have even less incentive to use any form of contraception than they do now. As it stands, men claim to be really worried about being on the hook for a kid, yet they still put their naked penises right up against women’s naked vaginas and wait for her to stop him and make him put on a condom. We have men on this thread saying women lie about being on BC (which I’m sure happens sometimes) with no acknowledgement that condoms, while not perfect, provide pretty decent birth control when used consistently and correctly.
So … in summary … if we’re only talking about mutually agreed upon contracts and not unilateral severing of responsibilities, I think that would affect such a small percentage of the population that it would not really change the current system that we have, but I guess I would be okay with it.
(Other caveat or condition … as a society, we’d have to be okay with providing public assistance for those single parents who need it without going after the other parent. In your negligence example, the house isn’t harmed by sitting empty. A child, on the other hand, is.)
@ james … I suspect that a lot of what you’re saying about administrative costs and netting child support off welfare is true. However, I’ve always been under the impression that the majority of child support is paid/owed by men who were in relationships with their children’s mothers and were involved in parenting at least somewhat in the beginning. That is … men who would not be affected at all by any of the “paper abortion” type C4M proposals. They would really only be helped by a system that says men only have to pay child support if they feel like it.
chingona,
i wrote a long reply. but i’m having such a horrible and nasty week that my posts are becoming equally nasty, which doesn’t make sense since it’s obviously not your fault.
i’ll reply in a while.
gin-and-whiskey @207: You may not wish to address this right away, but how do you propose that the child mitigate the damages to its parents? (As well, I’m sure you know we don’t require mitigation for all damages; if I cause the wrongful death of your spouse, I cannot demand that you immediately go to intense grief counseling and find a new spouse in order to reduce your noneconomic damages.)
chingona @217: We also have women, right here on this thread, observing that there are men who are reckless or outright dishonest in their use of birth control, and in their behavior regarding pregnancy, but that’s ignored because it doesn’t fit in with the narrative of The Sperm Rustlers. (One of the issues with a male birth control pill or other method is whether women will trust their male partners to truthfully say “I’m on the Pill”.)
EasilyEnthused @213: If by “child support” you mean “the legal and obligations that include, but are not limited to, financial support”, then yes. Do I believe that the woman in your example behaved reprehensibly? Also yes. Would my answer have been the same if your example had reversed the genders? Again, yes. (For example, if a man ejaculated onto his sleeping partner, and then put obstacles in the way of her obtaining an abortion so that she couldn’t terminate the pregnancy.)
Moral responsibility may be on a sliding scale, but legal responsibility isn’t, and as a practical matter I don’t understand how it could be.
james @216: As has been pointed out over and over, the ‘other things’ that we consider are the fact that strangers have no obligation to other people’s children (at least, not in the sense that you mean). A biological parent is, legally, a stranger if somebody adopts their child. Ditto for gamete donors. I don’t know why you persist in ignoring that point.
Surely there is as much mutual agreement with a ‘unilateral’ decision as there is now? If the man states (within whatever framework there would be) that he is there for purely recreational sex then the woman has the options to (1) agree and continue the pregnancy, (2) agree and terminate the pregnancy, she has the option to agree or not. If she objects to the potential risks of either plan B, a first trimester abortion, failure in birth control (1 in 1 million with a barrier + oral contraceptive?), then there is always the option of presenting a contract pre-sex that both parties agree to be responsible.
The system would seem to have to be put into place post-inform (since the likelyhood of drunken hook-ups etc where people have impaired ability to consent would affect their ability to consent to a contract / information). If that is assumed then pre/post birth is irrelevant – the other party is given say 12 weeks from the date of being informed (standard letter via registered mail or similar?) to make their decision.
In terms of birth control surely that is a choice between both partners being aware of the risks? Again women bear a higher risk of STDs than men (due to biology) so really the weight is on them to say no if they don’t want sex without a barrier method (in the same way a guy that doesn’t want skin on skin contact should insist on it even if that means no sex). The law does of course support charging people (at least in Canada) with sexual assault for not using / delibrately compromising birth control.
In terms of birth control surely that is a choice between both partners being aware of the risks?
Sure it’s a choice. I’ve never doubled up on birth control in a relationship. I don’t particularly care for condoms and will forgo them whenever it seems reasonable to do so. But I’m the one who gets to decide whether I have a baby or not. I’m the one who has access to the safety net – Plan B, or, failing that, abortion. (I’ve never been sure what I’d do, but I’ve been lucky and never had to make that decision.)
This whole issue involves men complaining that they don’t have a choice, that they don’t have a safety net, yet many, many, many men fail to take advantage of the choices they do have. Easily Enthused, I know this doesn’t describe you, but I and my female friends who have sex with men all have numerous stories of guys being stopped at the gate and saying “What? You aren’t on the pill?” They just want to stick it in and assume every woman is on the pill all the time. They’re trying to stick it in without even asking questions! And that’s a choice, but when you make that choice, it’s a lot harder to take your complaints seriously.
Again women bear a higher risk of STDs than men (due to biology) so really the weight is on them to say no if they don’t want sex without a barrier method.
This is kind of sad and kind of funny. We have 200 plus comments about how women LIE about being on the pill and women SCAM men into being fathers against their will, but it’s unreasonable to expect a man to voluntarily put a condom on if he doesn’t want kids. Unbelievable.
Condoms correctly used are something like 99% effective, however the problem is that they are often badly used so aren’t nearly as effective as they should be in reality. The men taking a risk and going ‘bare back’ should really lose their opt-out (unless this is pre-negotiated, but then comes back to the contracts, inebriation, ability to consent etc) however for practical implementability it would need to remain an option to those guys. As usual you need to protect the worst aspects in order to cover the good.
It isn’t unreasonable to expect a man to put on a condom if he doesn’t want to have kids however that comes back to the accountability factor. How would a man prove or disprove that he took appropriate steps to prevent a pregnancy if there was a ‘feasible contraception used’ tick box? It would come down generally to his word / her word (and what about incidents where the condom fails?), so in the end it either comes down to some kind of pre-sex contract defining what will and won’t occur or some kind of post-sex option. The closest female analogy I can draw is something like the father going to court to stop an abortion because ‘she wasn’t on the pill so should have expected to become pregnant’.
I find it kindof worrying that you find it ‘sad and funny’ especially when condoms aren’t always available, or are inappropriate for the user.
I find it kindof worrying that you find it ‘sad and funny’ especially when condoms aren’t always available, or are inappropriate for the user.
I’m sorry (no, I’m not, it’s just an expression), but this statement …
Again women bear a higher risk of STDs than men (due to biology) so really the weight is on them to say no if they don’t want sex without a barrier method.
… is funny and sad. And only moreso in the context of this conversation.
No, condoms aren’t always available, but they are the only form of birth control that can be obtained OTC and without seeing a doctor or NP. And while I don’t really consider “just don’t have sex” to be a reasonable long-term solution, it’s certainly a reasonable short-term solution. I wouldn’t want to not have sex for the rest of my life, but I can live without having sex tonight.
Chingona, given that under the current system and under any of the proposed C4M schemes women still bear a higher risk of STD infections than men and the risks of pregnancy it would seem that they are the party with the higher interest in using a barrier method as well as other contraceptives. Given this it doesn’t seem inappropriate to suggest that the weight is really on them to say no since the other party has no real incentive to utilise one. If you find reality funny more power to you, there is little enough humour in this world.
C4M in that sense makes it easier for women (and any resulting children) because there is no ambiguity in the terms – either the man is willing to take the risk and sign up in advance (either voiding a pre-sex no, or vetoing a post-sex no), or they aren’t. This should make it easier for women to actually make that decision on barrier methods or not. Also in this, at current, women are typically seen as sexual gatekeepers (whether that is a valid or reasonable choice is a different discussion) in that there are (at least anecdotally, and by some research) more men willing to have unattached sex than women.
I am glad that you can put off having sex tonight however your standards are not applicable to everyone I mean personally I don’t find ‘don’t have sex’ a bad long term solution. In contrast to pre/during sex contraceptives there are a multitude of options available for post-sex contraception that cover both your, my, and likely most other people’s considerations of when they need sex.
In the context of the C4M discussion is there really a point in discussing the use of a condom when we don’t even agree that if it is used / he had a vasectomy he has a potentially valid case? If it fails – he is on the line, if it is used incorrectly – he is on the line, if it is sabotaged – he is on the line, that isn’t a good argument for him using one when he ‘loses’ in each of these cases.
2ndnon @225: What chingona is talking about is that you are arguing a double standard. You argue that women are at greater risk of STDs so should be more vigilant about barriers. However, despite the fact that (as set forth in this thread) men are at greater risk of unwilling fatherhood, you still argue that women, not men, should be more barriers.
In other words, you’re not really arguing “the group with the most at risk should take the most precautions”; you’re just arguing that it’s women’s problem. O-kay.
C4M makes nothing easier for women. As has been pointed out ad nauseum) gives men rights women do not have.
Yes, I read articles about it, about not trusting men to be on the pill, and conspiracy theories about why the male pill doesn’t exist yet is because men (as a class) want all women to be forced to bear children. Or something equally dubious.
The thing though, is that if it’s as effective for the trade-off of as-minor effects as female birth control pills (and I’m taking something much much worse every day of my life, to not go all menopausal – and yet I’ll only have liver failure in 20+ years probably), then it’s a good thing. And then both can be on the pill (I wouldn’t treat it as an either/or except for health reasons) to heighten the prevention even – and if one lies, you’re not stuck.
Apparently, an artifact of having a very high rate of circumcising (especially newborns) has resulted in desensitization of the glans penis, absence of the prepuce and it’s nerves, and thus, MUCH less incentive to add a condom on top, which makes it even less sensitive.
So for people’s reluctance to use condoms, you can blame circumcision partly, because it’s probably largely responsible for the meme of “but I can’t feel a thing”.
If it fails – he is on the line, if it is used incorrectly – he is on the line, if it is sabotaged – he is on the line, that isn’t a good argument for him using one when he ‘loses’ in each of these cases.
Well, except that if he bothers to use it correctly (the directions are on the box), he’s far less likely to “lose” at all. If being stuck with child support is so awful as to necessitate upending our laws in ways that are likely to result in more children living in poverty in the interest of “fairness” to men, why is not so awful that it motivates men to do the one thing that can greatly reduce their risk of having to deal with it at all?
Given this it doesn’t seem inappropriate to suggest that the weight is really on them to say no since the other party has no real incentive to utilise one.
I don’t really have anything to say in response to this. I just want to draw attention to it for anyone who thinks the C4M position is being strawmanned. You heard it here, and not from the feminists: Men have no incentive to do anything to prevent pregnancy or transmission of STDs.
So for people’s reluctance to use condoms, you can blame circumcision partly, because it’s probably largely responsible for the meme of “but I can’t feel a thing”.
Is that right? In countries where rates of circumcision are low, men are totally cool with condoms? Whatever. Every man I’ve had sex with or talked to about this topic agrees that sex with a condom is way better than no sex. As one friend put it, “If that’s what taking a shower in a raincoat felt like, I’d take all my showers in a raincoat.”
And if men have no incentive to prevent pregnancy or disease, why are we supposed to be all excited about the male pill?
Chingona wrote:
And just a day ago, I happened to come across an article called Condom Piercing Leads to Sex Assault Conviction that I can’t help linking to here, if only because it is a counterexample to the women-scamming-men theme. I have not thought deeply enough to decide what I think about the conviction.
Mythago@226
In terms of physical health women are the group with the most risk, and the most benefit from both barrier methods and other forms of contraception. In terms of financial risk yes men bear a risk however under current laws they have no recourse. If they wear a condom and it is later used to inseminate someone they are still responsible. Until that changes men do not have as large an incentive to be the responsible party. Personally I think that means it does need to change so it is BOTH parties responsibilities.
Given it would be included in any of our Nations laws as a gender neutral law yes it would. It would legalise the ‘safe harbour’ option or allow the other parent to take responsibility without ‘risk’ to the pregnant party. The only option C4M would change is the pregnant party enforcing child support on the other party without consent. Given other threads here that say child support is apparently not enough to raise 1/2 a child on it’s a minor inconvenience surely?
Chingona:
Upending, it’s really a small alteration which should result in less poverty as fewer children should occur who don’t have the support of both parents. Again the laws we currently have mean a man who is raped or sexually assaulted is still liable for child support – if you are on the line anyway it isn’t a big motivator to have a reduced chance at something.
Barring the fact that I would qualify as a feminist I don’t think that fact strawmans C4M. Men have a reduced risk of STDs compared to women, and no risk of pregnancy. According to this and other threads the ‘risk’ of child support is minimal so please find me the incentive? If I am wrong and child support is a major issue or men have a major STD issue then surely C4M would be a good idea since it should reduce the number of children and the volume of sex.
You’re using strawman wrong.
Okay, I see where you’re having trouble. The law books say that these people don’t pay support because they’re not legal parents. You think this is some impartial fact handed down on tablets of stone that we ‘consider’ when deciding who pays what – LOL, that’s cute.
In reality law gets made by people. People did not agree that parents have an obligation to support children, and then suddenly realise that in the case of donation and adoption these people aren’t legal parents – wow, they don’t have to pay – doesn’t that work out well for everyone, what a coincidence. They decided they did not want these people paying support, and they then made sure these people weren’t legal parents in order to get that to happen.
james @235: No, you really don’t see. It’s kind of a pattern. Suggest you read the prior comments, and especially get over the idea that the only obligation between parent and child is paying child support. (Hint: sarcasm does not, in fact, make you sound like you know what you’re talking about. “The law books”? Rly?)
Parents are responsible for their children. In the case of adoption, we have transferred the legal status of ‘parent’ from the child’s biological parent(s) to somebody else. In the case of gamete donors, we have declared that a person who is the biological parent of the child is not and never was the child’s parent if they donated gametes and the conception happened in a particular manner specified strictly by law. We do these things not to embrace C4whoever, but to facilitate adoption and natural childbearing for infertile people, respectively.
Now, what you may be fumbling around after is the idea that since the law can change, that we can change it to include C4M. We sure could. Of course, since we’d be tossing out the central principle that children have a right to support from their parents, we could make lots of changes in the law. Opt-in, for example. Or we could totally simplify everything and declare that only women are parents, and men have neither rights nor responsibilities towards their biological offspring, completely cutting off any reason for women to “entrap” men under any circumstances.
Schala @227: I’ve never heard the conspiracy theories, but what I have read are concerns that the male Pill would be less popular for social reasons: birth control is still seen as ‘women’s problem’, using 2ndnin there as an example; men are less willing than women to accept some of the side effects; women may be more reluctant to believe a man who says he’s on the Pill. I would like to think, though, that we all believe it would be a good thing to have a male Pill as an option.
2ndnin @233: You’re repeating a lot of points that have already been addressed. And yeah, you’re using ‘strawman’ wrong.
Hey :), don’t use me as an example of birth control being a male issue, I don’t believe I’m in a situation to have a kid so I make choices to make sure I don’t have that risk. I am however defending C4M since I believe both sides should have a choice and that unfortunately means I have to defend the worst case.
I don’t think I am straw manning – the worst case scenario for a man under current law is being responsible (or even not having sex) and this resulting in him being responsible for a child. I believe that C4M would be better with a responsibility clause however I don’t see how you can include that realistically, and it should be gender neutral.
You don’t understand what strawmanning means, or at least, not in this context. g&w said he suspected that C4M was being strawmanned. I suspect that he means those here opposing it are presenting as more extreme and worse than it is – that is, we are constructing a version of C4M that any reasonable person would oppose but which the proponents aren’t actually proposing.
That’s generally what strawmanning means.
I said that anyone who thinks the opponents are strawmanning should read your post. You are advocating that men have literally no responsibility for pregnancy or for preventing it, that prevention of pregnancy and disease is only a woman’s responsibility. I couldn’t construct a more stereotypical caricature of C4M if I tried. You did it for me.
So no, you are not strawmanning. You are just stating your opinion. And your opinion is so ridiculous that it would be impossible for me to construct a strawman that was more ridiculous than the position you are putting forward in all sincerity.
Saying that a man has no incentive to use condoms because, if they fail, he’s still on the hook, is like saying that someone who can’t afford to go to the dentist has no incentive to brush his teeth because he still might get a cavity.
I think that a pre-contracted agreement (in writing, because with a verbal agreement, each person can claim whatever the heck they want) about who’s responsible for what if pregnancy occurs would be fine. With the understanding that a parent can’t sign away a kid’s right to be taken care of at a basic level. So, if the mom can take care of the kid without child support, great. But that only forgoes her right to help, not the kid’s right to food and shelter–if she’s ever in poverty, the father should still be held responsible to make sure his kid doesn’t starve.
The idea of a father being able to just unilaterally decide (since C4M fans are fond of that word), “Nope, I don’t want to support a kid, so I’m not gonna. Guess you better have an abortion.” is pretty abhorrent.
Why should the mother be obligated to choose the option that’s most convenient for him, when it’s a medical decision for her? Especially when you consider those women who feel abortion is wrong. Have surgery she doesn’t want *and* compromise her ethics, so he doesn’t ever have to be burdened? Yeahno. Especially if he knew her feelings on the subject going in.
People don’t get to make medical decisions for others because they’re convenient to the person who isn’t the patient, or to skirt their existing responsibilities because the patient made a choice that’s less beneficial to them.
Say two people get in an auto accident, and only the woman is seriously injured, but they’re both 50% responsible. The man (or his insurance company, which may drop him if the bill gets too high, so he’s still interested in the cost) therefore has to pay for half her medical bills. If her hand or foot is horribly mangled and needs a crap-ton of expensive surgery and PT, he doesn’t get to say, “Just amputate; that’s all I’m going to be financially responsible for.”*
I know that analogy is a little weak–it’s the only one I can figure where one person has a financial responsibility that might, if they thought they were the center of the universe, let them think they should get to control someone else’s medical decisions, or else be off the hook for a responsibility that was legitimately theirs.
(I’m really not making a pro-lifey argument that having an abortion is as dreadful as having something amputated–though if it were a wanted pregnancy, it could certainly seem that way.)
Chingona@238: I understand what straw manning is and rather I think you misunderstand me, I didn’t mention responsibility (nor do I believe men have none) what I said is that men have less incentive to utilise condoms, not less responsibility.
KellyK @239: Fine for whom?
We’re not talking about two people. We’re talking about three people, and the third person (the child) is the one who has the rights. You’re proposing that the two people be allowed to agree to set aside the third person’s rights.
2ndnin @240: Now you’re just backpedaling. You don’t think that responsibility is an incentive?
2ndin … I never said that C4M would be okay if the guy was wearing a condom and certainly proving what kind of BC was or wasn’t used would be pretty difficult – including in the case of a woman who supposedly sabotaged birth control. I’m not making any sort of hypothetical legal argument. I said I think it’s awfully precious that men want to make this radical change that would negatively affect other people to “protect” themselves when they can’t be bothered to put on a condom.
Then she can do the same thing men have been told in this thread: Don’t have sex. Let’s all do abstinence and non-PIV sex exclusively, until and unless you want a child now I guess.
Good idea, Schala! We should take away from women their ability to have an abortion, so that men can have equality. Then we’ll all finally be equal.
I’m being sarcastic, but as as been pointed at 178 by G&W – we wouldn’t tell women “don’t have sex” (even if it is to avoid pregnancy), so why is it fine to tell men “don’t have sex”?
I don’t want to remove abortion rights, I want equivalent rights for men that give them more support than “just don’t have sex, or pray condom usage is 100% effective with ALL your sexual encounters*”.
*Being drunk impairs aim and manual dexterity, by the way – and many people depend on (or often in conjunction with) alcohol intake to be up for sex libido-wise.
Schala, both men and women have the absolute right to do anything they want to their own bodies to prevent pregnancy. And both men and women are legally responsible for providing for a baby if a baby is born (although they can fulfill that responsibility through adoption). And neither men nor women have the right to sign away a born child’s right to parental support before it’s born.
No one’s saying “don’t have sex.” What we are saying — to both women and men — is that “do have sex if that’s what you want, but be aware that sometimes sex has consequences.” (Including consequences faced only by women — even having an abortion isn’t free or risk-free.).
That said, if we can have a society in which C4M wouldn’t have negative consequences for children, I’d stop opposing C4M. But in this society, C4M isn’t worth the harm it would do to children.
Yes, Safe Haven laws do not attempt to prevent that. They don’t care because they value “the kid is alive” more than “the kid is in a toilet dead” – but it can very much be (abandoning the kid, attempting to kill it if impossible) about financial reasons.
Also, financial support. Give the kid the same support as an adoptee. There, case closed. The child is not financially harmed (and the father would probably be absent either way in those cases).
The second sentence is only a round-about way of saying “don’t have sex”.
We also say don’t murder, because we mean “don’t murder, because there are consequences to murder (including the murdered person)”. We want people to not do it, not to do it while aware of the risks.
To me, it’s like telling someone “you could potentially commit a crime every time you have sex, but sure, have sex”, and if you ‘commit a crime’, it means you’ll have to suffer the consequences. You were in the wrong place at the wrong time, like Bruce Willis.
If you go out and your car gets rear-ended by someone else’s car, no one goes saying you had it coming by being outside in a car.
Give the kid the same support as an adoptee. There, case closed. The child is not financially harmed (and the father would probably be absent either way in those cases).
Schala, support for adopted children doesn’t come from the state. It comes from the new parents. So sure, if the biological father can find someone to take over his role and pay the support for him, more power to him.
Who or what funds orphan’s places? I’m not sure how they’re even called in English, but isn’t that where kids given to adoption go until they are adopted, especially if older than a newborn (but they eventually get older than a newborn, too)?
Those funds.
Foster care is paid for by the state, but that’s in cases where children are being abused or neglected. It’s not the same as voluntary infant adoption. In most infant adoption in the U.S., the baby is going home from the hospital with the adoptive parents.
ETA: To clarify, foster care is 1) meant to be temporary and 2) only paid because the people caring for the child are not its legal parents. If a foster parent adopts a foster child, they don’t get paid anymore.
Not foster care, orphanage care. Those funds that go for non-neglected/abused, but maybe abandoned kids. They could be very young, or not. Sometimes the parents are just dead.
Mythago, in what way am I back-pedalling? I made clear that I was talking about incentives in terms of birth control not responsibilities. I wouldn’t think most people would consider responsibility an incentive. Of course there is the responsibility to a child but prior posters have stated that it is easy to get out of that so it comes down to other risks.
Chingona, isn’t that the point really here. We are discussing a hypothetical legal amendment and the conditions under which it could be implemented. Ampersand for example has made it clear that he doesn’t support C4M because he doesn’t feel there is an adequate social safety net for women who decide to carry to term. The case I put forward that covers those men who “can’t even be bothered to use a condom” is necessary because of the issues I noted in terms of pre-sex contracts and the ability to consent to signing that document. Unless you can find a way to get around that in the hypothetical I outlined those guys have to be included in the post-sex version.
I think that if even under the worst case scenario you can’t even see a glimmer of a reason for C4M then there is no point in this discussion. We could pull each other’s statements apart and bicker like children waiting for our parents (or Amp / another mod) to step in and break us up but really that wastes both our time. If you want to do that though I have no objection to playing the contentious side in almost any debate :).
“If you drive, there is a chance that, even if you are very very careful, some moron will rear-end you” the same thing as “don’t drive” or “if you drive and get rear-ended, you had it coming”?
We do, in fact, tell women that there are risks to sex.
I don’t think that really exists anymore. Abandoned kids are put in foster homes until they can be adopted. But again, the money is only there for short-term care for children until they are either returned to their families or put up for adoption.
2ndnin @253: If responsibility is not an incentive, then we don’t need C4M at all. Since it is “easy to get out of” any obligation to the child, in your view, we already have de facto C4M. In fact, implementing C4M would be worse for men, because instead of being able to easily get out of obligations whenever, men would be limited to a particular time frame of choosing to opt out.
You’re right that there is no point in continuing this discussion if your entire position is going to be that you get off on being contrarian. I’d prefer to discuss the issue with grownups who really give a shit about the subject of the debate. If, in fact, you do want to discuss C4M, please re-read my comment at @199.
You can give a shit and still not take a position yourself.
I always try to have debates in an objective way, that is, even if I’m not concerned at all, even especially if I’m not. If I am concerned, I am more likely to have emotions take over.
I don’t have a dog in this, because I can’t get pregnant, and I can’t get someone pregnant. And my trans status probably disqualifies me from adopting, if I wanted that (which I don’t). So no kids in this existence, unless a partner brings them in. No legal obligation to any kid at least.
I debate in the hope of having fairness, and justice, for all. I’m an egalitarian. That’s what I do. I’d have said feminist if it hadn’t been tainted, and masculism is just as tainted. Most organized religions also are tainted. Because power corrupts.
And the government, corrupted too. I mean representation means nothing nowadays, it’s all about the party line. We vote parties in, no longer the people’s ideas. We have the party impose their ideas on the people…
Schala @257: You have an odd habit of assuming that people are talking about you when they’re clearly not talking about you.I was responding to 2ndnin’s repeated comments that s/he doesn’t really care much about C4M and that s/he is simply happy to take “the contrarian position in any debate”.
That is very different than ‘although this doesn’t harm me personally I care about others, and about fairness and justice’, which I absolutely agree is a legitimate interest. Unlike ‘I don’t give a shit and it’s no skin off my nose but I’m bored and like to argue, so let’s treat a serious subject that affects real people as an amusing diversion’.
Mythago, you really do like reading into my words what isn’t there don’t you.
I care about C4M because I don’t take a results orientated view as you define it in 199. I have proposed at least 2 variants of C4M that could be applied in a gender neutral fashion and hopefully get some of the legal aspects around contracts. I even state that I am defending the worst case scenario which I don’t particularly agree with because that is the weakest edge.
I offered to continue playing the game with Chingona because I don’t mind taking a contrary view. S/he like you takes a results orientated view which means the discussion is pointless. If you view the world from that way then C4M is wrong because there is a child that should have support. This view point seems rather narrow though because it doesn’t account for the fact that the child is only there because one person with 100% (effectively) chance to stop that result didn’t.
It is clear that Schala was supporting me in the first sentence, then moved on to offer a personal example of why you could not have a dog in the race and still care about the result. Personally I pretty much don’t have a dog in this race for a variety of reasons but I do care. My point was though that the discussion is pointless if the other side can’t see any good in your proposal.
2ndnin @259: I read what you’ve actually said. You seem to forget that your comments are still up there, so when you backtrack or claim you never meant such a thing, it’s easy to look back and confirm.
If you read my comment in @199, it’s not pointless to continue the discussion. But it is going to be unproductive if you don’t understand why the other person is disagreeing with you.
BTW, the idea that a woman has a “100% chance” to end a pregnancy is hilarious. Perhaps you live in a nation where women have free access to abortion throughout their pregnancies; I don’t.
mythago @199:
No state to my knowledge has taken that view in cases where an adult woman rapes a minor boy (I presume you mean general statutory rape there) that the woman loses parental rights and that the boy is not liable for support.
The most complete look at the law on this topic
US law (which is what I presume you’re arguing about) is fairly clear that the act of ejaculating under any circumstances can result in a support obligation (the only exception is in the case of sperm banks, but if the sperm bank fails to follow any of a set of requirements for any reason then the sperm donors for artificial insemination do then have a support obligation)
You mean Canada?
That weird lump of land north of America (the US really are selfish-centric in that they don’t see other people as being anything but external and little) – American is all of North AND Central AND South America, not just the US.
Canada, the second biggest (but not by far, the US are really close) in land mass, behind Russia as the biggest country (land wise) in the world. But hey, we come after Europe in same-sex marriage examples, and low rate circumcision, too
I think it is probably a given that the more fetuses who, when born, would not be in a joint custody-type arrangement are aborted, the better.
Thinking about this in the context of the Coase Theorem leads to some interesting potential conclusions as regards the current system.
Consider a one-night stand or other casual cis- and hetero-sexual encounter wherein the woman becomes pregnant. At this point, she has a choice whether or not to get an abortion (exercising such choice may include travelling a great distance, of course). If she chooses not to abort, she will give birth and presumably the baby will live, placing a support obligation onto the man. The woman of course is also under an obligation to support the child. The difference between the amount of financial support received from the father and what was actually spent on supporting the child is, effectively, profit for the mother (this “profit” is almost certainly in most cases negative, corresponding to financial support from the mother).
An efficient outcome of this is for the pregnancy to be aborted, as that removes the support obligations (or more properly, prevents them from ever occurring). An agreement to abort can be reached at a given price (assuming that both parties have no moral objection to abortion, nor the woman has a medical condition which would make the abortion particularly risky which would prevent them from bargaining) as long as that price is:
* less than the present value of the man’s child support obligation (if this doesn’t hold, then the father’s better off with the obligation)
* greater than the (likely negative) profit plus the (obviously positive) cost of getting the abortion (including travel, time off work, etc.)
I would suggest that in the vast majority of these cases his child support obligation is a positive value of high magnitude (on the order of $100,000), her profit is at least somewhat negative, and the cost of the abortion (including travel, time off work, etc.) is on the order of $1,000 (Guttmacher puts the typical price at around $400 for the procedure). It’s readily apparent that there should be a lot of these trades occurring. If his child support obligation’s present value is $100,000, the present value of her net financial contribution to support (negative profit) is $40,000 and the abortion costs $1,000, then any price from her paying him $39,001 to him paying her $99,999 fits the constraint and makes both parties better off aborting than they were becoming parents.
Obviously, she’s not going to pay him so she can get an abortion: she’s even better off just getting it and, effectively pocketing the $39,000 she gains from doing so. Still, that leaves plenty of cases where he can pay her, e.g. $30,500 to get the abortion and both parties are $69,500 better off. There aren’t many trades that have the potential to make you $70,000 richer, are there? Even for men who don’t have $30,000 lying around, if there was demand, one could see banks specializing in lending on this or maybe even insurers who would cover this. Hell, in some cases you might even have him and her agree that he’ll pay her 30% of what his weekly child support obligation would be for the next 18 years.
Yet there aren’t many of these trades occurring. What could cause so many efficient trades to not get made?
Enforceability of the trade isn’t necessarily that difficult. His paying for the cost of the abortion followed by the balance upon verification that she’s no longer pregnant is sufficient. Negotiations could be difficult: not enough relationships, it seems, really engage in sexual negotiation and it’s undoubtedly orders of magnitude worse to negotiate this with someone you had sex with once a few months ago. This could be addressed then, by, setting a general standard of civil liability for impregnating a woman who gets an abortion: a standard based on the rough calculations shown above could be used to determine damages based on equal net financial improvement.
It is also quite possible that he’s dramatically underestimating his potential liability, either because he’s planning to fulfill the obligation but figures he’s not going to owe that much or because he’s planning to not fulfill the obligation and figures he can get away with it. Conversely, she may be dramatically overestimating the profit that she’ll get from child support, perhaps because she underestimates the cost of a child, plans to only do enough to prevent a neglect charge from costing her custody, or is overestimating the chances of him paying. There’s also the distinct possibility that one or both parties decides that they really want to have the baby.
The enforcement related issues can be dealt with (and with a presumably smaller CS caseload, enforcement effectiveness can be expected to increase). The issue of unrealistic estimates can be dealt with by education (sex ed courses in school should at minimum go through the realities of the situation… to the boys: you’re almost certainly not going to escape the judgment, and each time you impregnate a woman that’s like an instant $30,000 down the drain; to the girls: the child support is not going to cover the costs of being a custodial parent, and that’s assuming that collection is perfect). A reduced caseload would also probably allow for greater monitoring of custodial parents.
Somewhat inspired by a post by Tamen at NSWATM tonight:
Agreements can be made beforehand (what “hand” means isn’t that important, but almost surely pre-birth). Such agreements do not affect the obligation to support the child if one should be born, but if a child is born contrary to such agreement a civil tort results. The judgment of the civil tort in this case will be continued until the child is of majority and the judgment will not affect in any way the child support order (and nonpayment of support for reason other than reasonably extreme financial hardship may void the judgment). In cases where it may reasonably be construed that the woman raped the man (including statutory rape) in the act of conception, that will per se create the civil tort and set the damages at the entirety of his child support contribution plus a suitably punitive interest rate.
To my mind, this sidesteps the “it’s a child, support it” objection (especially if requirements that the support judgment be used to support the child are enforced) because the effective loan would not be repaid until after the obligation passes (and the repayment schedule could be based on an inversion of the CS guidelines, so it shouldn’t present a financial hardship to the one committing the tort). It would allow for an effective counter to scams, and allow for prior agreements to be respected.
From NSWATM
http://www.tampabay.com/news/courts/article1183449.ece
Mythago: Where did I back-pedal if you please? Also yeah abortion is pretty available on my country as is Plan B, free birth control is also generally available if you want it. Most abortions are also free (if you discount the <£5 bus / train fair to get there) here.
mythago says:
September 30, 2011 at 6:19 am
gin-and-whiskey @207: You may not wish to address this right away, but how do you propose that the child mitigate the damages to its parents?
Levi @261: The article you linked to states that it is reprinted from a 1999 text and states that it was last modified in 2002. I would not call that a complete and current summary of the child-support law in the US.
As has been mentioned upthread, “rape doesn’t excuse child support” is correct but is only part of the story. Cutting off all parental rights between a convicted rapist and a child conceived of that rape means that the sexual assault survivor and other parent of the child is free to, for example, place the child for adoption.
(I do hope the people arguing about these injustices at NSWATM are not the same ones complaining about the unfairness of statutory rape laws, btw.)
As for the Coase Theorem, you’re making the same mistakes made over and over in the thread, which is to assume that a) the only relationship between parent and child is writing a check, b) there are no significant opportunity costs, c) there are no significant non-economic costs, and d) abortion and ‘opting out’ can be easily done on a fixed time schedule with no ambiguity.
As for a “general standard of civil liability”, let’s set aside the fact that (again) the liability is really to the child, not the custodial parent, who isn’t always male. Are you really saying that it would be a more efficient system to throw the whole area of child support into the civil-litigation arena? I mean, look, I’m a civil litigator, and on behalf of my colleagues I thank you for your looking out for our financial well-being, but it just doesn’t strike me as efficient.
And it really gets away from the original issue in the debate: On the one hand, we have this kid who is entitled to support, and on the other hand, we have people (male and female) who may not have wanted to be parents. How do we balance those interests? I agree with the current system that places the “results” view above the “choice” view. And part of the reason for that is that every single “choice” proposal is, to be blunt, insane and impossible to implement.
Mythago @241 wrote: We’re not talking about two people. We’re talking about three people, and the third person (the child) is the one who has the rights. You’re proposing that the two people be allowed to agree to set aside the third person’s rights.
That’s why I included the caveat that the child’s right to be taken care of at a basic level supersedes any agreement made by the parents. Kids have an inherent right to food, clothing, shelter, an education, and medical care, but not necessarily an inherent right to designer jeans or an Xbox or even a nice house. Even if they have parents who can afford those things, the parents can choose how much to spend on their kids and how much to spend on themselves.
If I had a kid and my husband died, neither the child nor I would have a right to the standard of living we’d enjoyed with two incomes. Same thing for my husband and hypothetical kid if I die. If a woman has a one-night stand with someone who isn’t from this country (I’m in the US) and who is leaving the next day and not coming back, a child resulting from that wouldn’t have a legal right to be taken care of by their father*.
Even when a kid is entitled to financial support from both parents, what they actually get is based on the parents’ income. (A divorced friend of mine, for example, has been unemployed for a couple years now, and her child support obligations are on hold until she either gets disability, or gets her medical issues under control to the point where she can work, and actually finds a job in this crappy market.) If a non-custodial parent gets laid off from a good job and finds a low-paying one, their child support is supposed to be adjusted accordingly.
Similarly, if you have both parents living together, they aren’t obligated to maximize their income for the child’s sake. A parent may not have a paying job, or may only work part time, or may turn down a promotion because they actually want to spend time with the kid. A parent might give up a job to start a business, or write a novel.
So, if parents are allowed to make decisions that affect their kids, and might result in a lower standard of living for them, I can see it being acceptable for one parent to take on total responsibility for a child, as long as that only results in denying the child luxuries, not necessities.
I’m putting that out there because it seems to be about the only version of C4M that would be at all reasonable, and I’m curious whether the C4M advocates on this list would accept that. Like I said, the idea of a right to walk away after pregnancy already has occurred, or the right to dictate another person’s medical choices, isn’t a real right.
On another side note for this conversation, the fact that people have a right to choose their own jobs (based on who will hire them and what they can actually do) is also why I don’t think trying to equate child support with “slavery” is at all fair. A judge says, “Your income is X. You need to pay Y% of X to support your child.” not “You must go work in a coal mine to support your child. Good luck with that.”
*I’m assuming that’s not the sort of thing someone would be extradited for. If I’m wrong, then assume they’re from a country the US doesn’t have an extradition treaty with.
2ndnin @266: Yes, I’ve seen that article at NSWATM. It’s been discussed here at Alas, if I’m not mistaken. Here’s the problem: The mother wasn’t charged with, or convicted of, rape. We have Mom who says it was consensual and Dad who says it wasn’t. We have one of Dad’s parents saying that Mom confessed which Mom denies (which she also does in her text message).
To illustrate, let’s flip it around: Kris wants to be involved with his son and wants to be a dad. He’s willing to pay child support and he wants shared custody. Jessica won’t let him see their child, because, according to her, Kris raped her. In her state, a rapist is not the legal parent of any child conceived of that rape; therefore, she says, he should lose his custody case. Jessica says they had sex and that he forced himself into her even though she said no. Her parents say that he admitted it. Kris says this isn’t true, that they were having voluntary sex and that Jessica stopped him halfway through – without getting off him or telling him to pull out – to talk about whether it was a good idea. She has never reported the rape to the police and Kris has never been charged with a crime. There’s no indication that the police discouraged her from reporting her case or treated it as bullshit.
So in our example, should the judge in example-Kris’s custody case tell him that because Jessica says he is a rapist, he is, and therefore is not the legal parent of his son? (I find it hard to believe that father’s-rights activists would be cheered at the idea that mothers can potential cut fathers completely out of the picture by saying “Oh yeah, the conception was rape, even if he says it wasn’t.”) Because that’s exactly what we’ve got here: one parent says it was rape, the other denies it, and the accuser says that the family court should make a decision based on that accusation.
(Crossposting like a BOSS today.)
KellyK @269: I’m not understanding your point about the Xbox. The fact that parents have discretion about Xboxes doesn’t mean that one parent may unilaterally and forever excuse the other’s legal obligations to the child. C4M isn’t “you don’t have to pay until you get a job”. It’s “you’re no longer this child’s legal parent in any sense.” No, one parent can’t get disability so the other has to make sure the kid eats every day. No, if the kid is living on the street we’re going to go back to the opt-out parent and ask why they aren’t providing supervision.
Seriously, this is the part of the conversation that I think is fucking insane. I keep saying that, look, child support is far from the only, or even the most important, legal and moral obligation between parent and child, and I keep hearing back “Yeah yeah yeah, entire life changes, brand new human life, responsibility of a parent, whatever, could we skip all that bullshit and talk about the money?”
As Ampersand already said, that’s not what we’ve been saying. “Don’t have sex” is an instruction, a moral judgment. “Hey, birth control isn’t 100% effective and kids require an awful lot of care,” are pure statements of fact. What an individual wants to do with them is up to them. For some people that might be abstinence, or something close to it. For others, they might choose to accept the risks.
If your life would be ruined by having a child, it would be a really good idea to use multiple methods of birth control at all times. That’s not a judgment or an instruction–it’s just my assessment of the risks involved in sex.
Why should women be obligated to release men from the consequences of both people’s actions, and take all responsibility on themselves? Explain to me how that in any way resembles fair.
My comment at 272 is a response to Schala’s comment at 243, by the way. I managed to mess up the blockquotes.
[I attempted to fix the blockquotes, hope I got it right! –Amp]
No state to my knowledge has taken that view in cases where an adult woman rapes a minor boy (I presume you mean general statutory rape there) that the woman loses parental rights and that the boy is not liable for support.
Which is deeply wrong, but it’s better to fix this issue and cut off parental rights and responsibilities for rapists of either sex than to try to use C4M as a solution. Once the rapist (of either sex) has no parental rights, the rape victim can choose whether they want to raise the child or give it up for adoption, and will therefore not have to support the child.
Mythago @ 271
First thing I should make clear is that I don’t like the idea of C4M. I’m trying to figure out the most limited version of it that would be fair to all three people involved, if such a compromise is possible.
That’s why it shouldn’t be able to be excused completely and totally. The only way that would be acceptable is if the child’s needs are met without the “opted-out” parent’s support.
C4M isn’t “you don’t have to pay until you get a job”. It’s “you’re no longer this child’s legal parent in any sense.” No, one parent can’t get disability so the other has to make sure the kid eats every day. No, if the kid is living on the street we’re going to go back to the opt-out parent and ask why they aren’t providing supervision.
Which is why C4M is f*d up. I’m not in favor of it. But if you could limit the hell out of it so that it becomes a very limited right to not support a child whose needs can be met by the other parent, it might become reasonable.
I also think that if the “opting out” parent has to have a written agreement before they have any ability to opt out, it would take some of the wind out of the “But she triiiiiicked me,” whining. (The whining would continue, of course, but the argument of, “Hey, if you wanted worry-free sex, you had a legal option you chose not to use,” pretty much renders it invalid.)
Seriously, this is the part of the conversation that I think is fucking insane. I keep saying that, look, child support is far from the only, or even the most important, legal and moral obligation between parent and child, and I keep hearing back “Yeah yeah yeah, entire life changes, brand new human life, responsibility of a parent, whatever, could we skip all that bullshit and talk about the money?”
You’re totally right about that. I’m not trying to ignore all the more important concerns, and I think it’s pretty petty for someone who’s covering less than half of the kid’s financial needs, and absolutely none of their physical or emotional or mental ones, to whine about “slavery.”
But the monetary obligation seems to be the only enforceable one. If one parent wants to ditch the other, no one drags them back and makes them care for their child, they just end up paying child support (at least in theory).
Mythago, I put it up for interest as somewhat relevant to the discussion. I deliberately didn’t comment.
KellyK @275: Again, I don’t see how it’s workable. Shifting financial obligations is something that can already be done based on agreement of the parents, or by order of the court (say, if one person makes tons of money and the other is disabled). That’s different for C4M, which is based on the idea that because women may have the ability to abort a pregnancy, men have to have some kind of corresponding ability even though they don’t get pregnant. That’s why C4M supporters use the idiotic term “paper abortion”.
2ndnin @276: It is relevant to the discussion. It just doesn’t tell us much, other than we should probably think very carefully if “one parent says it was rape” should be sufficient to re-arrange rights and responsibilities.
Yes, Amp, that did it. Thank you!
mythago @ 268: did you read my comment or just skim it?
That’s the only time I used general standard of civil liability, and it’s in the context where there is no child because there’s been an abortion, ergo there’s no child support.
This whole situation is generally crappy for everyone involved. The best thing to do is to reduce the number of these situations, and the easiest way to do that is to encourage abortions.
Allowing a woman who gets an abortion to obtain damages from the man who impregnated her removes the cost of abortion from the equation. She doesn’t need his approval: she gets the abortion and sues. If the law is structured so that paternity of an aborted fetus is liability per se, then it’s not that difficult. At no point do issues of child support enter into it, except in the case where the equalization of financial benefit method is used to value that liability (equalization of financial benefit to value the liability is not the only way, another way would be to set the liability at some multiple of (price_of_abortion + travel_costs + time_cost)).
A side effect of this is that it will in all probability increase abortion availability in the US, likely dramatically so (abortion being one of the less commonly third-party-paid medical procedures, the price for an abortion has basically tracked CPI for the past three decades; virtually every other medical procedure out there has seen its price increase faster: it’s not surprising then to see that fewer younger doctors going in that direction… by introducing an effective third-party payor, the price can be expected to increase and thus performing abortions (and enduring the pro-life bullshit) becomes more appealing to doctors).
Levi @279: Actually, the easiest way to reduce the crappy situations is to encourage people to use contraception, and to widen the field of safe, available contraception (such as the ‘male Pill’ mentioned earlier). Abortions are a pretty distant second to that.
How does the woman who can’t afford the abortion get the abortion? If she does get the abortion, how does she sue? What attorney will take her case, given that the damages are very small and that the costs of the lawsuit will be much higher? (Paternity testing is going to put this out of the reach of small-claims court.) Are we expecting that she will pay an attorney thousands of dollars for perhaps a few hundred dollars in costs – or perhaps only the co-pay if she has medical insurance?
“Why should women be obligated to release men from the consequences of both people’s actions, and take all responsibility on themselves? Explain to me how that in any way resembles fair.”
Because she unilaterally decides to continue the pregnancy, and to keep the child once born. He has no say, he should have no obligation. Something about Boston’s Tea Party (the original one, no tax without representation deal).
“by introducing an effective third-party payor, the price can be expected to increase and thus performing abortions (and enduring the pro-life bullshit) becomes more appealing to doctors).”
A solution to increasing healthcare costs in the US is not to make them ALL high to appeal to doctors…it’s to lower them across the board to make them affordable to patients. Not like doctors are starving and paid little. 6 digits wages and all.
Schala @281: As has been pointed out umpteen times, if she doesn’t make a unilateral decision, she is not freed from her obligation. If she tried to obtain an abortion and could not, if she was unable to obtain an abortion, if the father was 100% responsible for the fact that she didn’t abort, it doesn’t matter – the mother does not magically get the right to walk away from the child and leave it in the father’s hands.
Groundhog Day indeed.
@mythago:
I think the C4M argument has to be discussed in the context of a more progressive United States where abortions are single payer funded and not subject to the harassment of the pro-life movement. In that setting ‘Choice for Women’ would also cover women who could not reasonably detect pregnancy within the abortion window, or could not undergo the procedure for medical or other reasons not within their control (e.g. enters a coma and is unable to request an abortion, or unreasonable coercion from the father/family).
I don’t think any of the C4M advocates on this thread would say C4M is fair under the prevailing anti-abortion climate, but it may become more workable in the future.
Solo @284: In other words, we’d allow either parent to instantly abandon all rights and responsibilities to their child within a fixed window.
It’s not really about abortion, it’s about whether a mother can unilaterally decide to raise a kid and demand co-parenting from its father. Mainly it’s about a lack of symmetry of options between women and men . . . It seems that there are two different stages in pregnancy/birth in which there’s an asymmetry of legal options for men and women:
1. After pregnancy, before viability – a woman can unilaterally choose to end the pregnancy.
2. After viability and after birth – typically in modern western cultures a woman can choose to raise the child and demand co-parenting from the man or choose to give the child up for adoption. A man cannot unilaterally decide to give the child up for adoption or take custody and demand support. If she chooses to raise the child, then each parent has co-equal responsibility for material support.
(Before pregnancy the choices are generally symmetrical: each partner can limit fertility through birth control and/or het-sex abstinence, although biological impacts of birth control differ between women and men.)
I think most of us here would agree that the 1st asymmetry in choice is unavoidable. It’s caused by biology – it’s her body on the line, and therefore she gets the choice to terminate or continue the pregnancy. He does not get a choice to be a genetic father to a kid or not. He has co-responsibility for a fetus but not co-equal decision-making power over whether that fetus becomes a kid. Biology.
However, the 2nd choice-asymmetry is part biology and part social. Our society could resolve the 2nd asymmetry this way . . . after viability a court could decide (completely without bias in this fantasy, of course) to place the newborn with either the mother or the father and require child support from the non-custodial parent. The custodial parent could then decide to give up primary custody to the other parent and instead pay partial child support. OR if neither parent wanted responsibility the child would be given up for adoption.
Biology favors placing a newborn with its mother but that’s not an absolute biological requirement. Also, the court could require the infant to remain with its mother for some limited duration immediately following birth to satisfy biology, with the understanding that primary custody would eventually revert to the father with the mother providing non-custodial parenting and support.
Of course this wouldn’t be easy at all . . . because of ingrained social tradition it would be really hard for judges to look at two prospective parents and award primary custody of an infant to a father. I’d argue that this is largely due to biology – human newborns are not really designed to be cared for by single dads (well, kids are not really designed to be raised by single parents at all) – but of course the judge would also be heavily biased by culture norms (and to change the real barriers for single dads of infants, and not just rich yuppie dads, it’ll take a lot more work than just changes in custody and child support law).
I don’t think that any sizable proportion of the prospective fathers we’re talking about would even WANT the kids (although a big part of that is social bias, I imagine). I’ll bet these fathers would not want to raise their infants on child support, while probably also working at least one job to keep a roof over everyone’s heads.
But, I think this is the only way we could truly resolve that 2nd choice-asymmetry issue and provide fairness for each adult* while still making sure the kid gets cared for by biological or adopted parents.
I agree that women’s option to raise a kid and demand support – when men generally do not get a reasonable chance to do the same – is really unfair. But I’d bet that most of the entire argument in this thread comes from some men wanting parental responsibility as a potential consequence of het-sex to just go away completely . . . and they’re unhappy that women appear to have a get-out-of-jail-free card (ofc, abortion is not consequence free) and they don’t.
But we can resolve the parental-responsibility fairness issue without talking about abortion at all.
*Other potential solutions:
Others posting here have proposed resolving the issue by just requiring society to provide financial support for all children without willing co-parent supporters. But that just shifts the unfairness to other people (society at large and the fatherless kid). So, no resolution.
Still others posting here have proposed to resolve the by just requiring women to bear all of the responsibility for the joint action of these two adults (first by enduring either a pregnancy or abortion, and second by potentially bearing all the responsibility of raising the kid). That just shifts the second fairness problem from men to mothers – who have much lower earning power btw – and children (and society). So, no resolution.
Another solution: we could require all mothers without willing co-parents to give up the kids for adoption. That solution is not completely clean on creating fairness, as it forces a woman to give up an important biological bond against her will, and separates a kid from its biological mother. But perhaps it’d be more fair than the status quo (requiring a man to co-parent against his will), I dunno. However, I think that’s even less-feasible than my court-mandated fairness solution. So, probably no resolution.
This time WITH the post :D
mythago says:
September 30, 2011 at 6:19 am
gin-and-whiskey @207: You may not wish to address this right away, but how do you propose that the child mitigate the damages to its parents?
The argument that the mother has to have the baby at birth (possibly to breastfeed the kid) is wrong. I was fed on artificial milk, as were all my brothers. It’s safe. It’s legal. And it doesn’t require someone being there or pumping milk.
And my mother was still there. It’s not “oh she’s absent, then let’s use this”. It’s a “don’t need to breastfeed / it’s aggravating to wake up at 4 am all nights, and only me (because my husband doesn’t have the breast milk)” choice.
Well, I’m back, and after dwelling on Mythago’s “You are This Way and We are That Way” comment, I think I’m ready to respond.
First off, I want to say that I found Mythago’s “causation” dichotomy to be compelling, but that doesn’t mean she changed my mind or made me rethink my position – she only made me rethink my REASONS for my position, which is still profound, and I appreciate the ideas presented in it.
Secondly, I’d like to thank most of the commenters here (and especially the anti-C4M folks here) for keeping this discussion’s head above water – particularly I appreciate that notion inherent in Mythago’s 199 comment that advocates for C4M aren’t simply putting hypothetical men’s “rights” over that of children (you don’t care about kids!) and advocates of C4M aren’t claiming folks like Amp and Mythago simply want to give women power over men.
That said, I’m a little disappointed at the tone of things lately. Between claims of strawmanning (which I think neither side actually did) and “law book” snark, I think the reason we are disagreeing has gotten off topic.
I’m going to state this (again?) in terms that are simple and clear and hopefully we can move on: We, as a society, allow a pregnant woman the ability to chose for her future child the assets and parents that will be made available for it. She may chose to give birth to a baby whose father is deceased, dirt poor, missing, mentally ill, terminally ill, etc. It is this “freedom” we give women over the care of their future child that implores me to attempt to defend C4M. Summed up: A woman may chose to give birth to a child where support from the father is not possible.
Opponents of C4M claim this to be the ideal legal standard: “A child is due support from its biological parents.”
But that standard doesn’t jive with the way that we treat adopted children, the children of sperm donors, the children of terminally ill parents, the children of missing parents, the children of rape victims and the perpetrators. Therefore, I say we need a new standard – and thus:
“A child is due support from parents who have willingly accepted that responsibility.”
Thus, we take care of all the issues above, and conveniently enough, C4M becomes a possibility.
Lastly, I’d like to ask folks to come to my blog and read and think about a hypothetical situation that I think exposes the misandric double-standard behind child support and us seeing men as “success objects.”
Please check it out and leave comments – you may respond here if you wish, but I don’t want to sidetrack Amp’s post.
(I guess I can’t embed links here, but the blog post I’m talking about is the most recent one at my blog – click my name.)
EasilyEnthused @289: The problem with your argument is that your assumptions on which it is based are wrong. (And for purposes of this discussion I’m talking about the US and countries with similar laws.)
We do not ‘allow’ women to give birth. Pregnancy and childbirth are biological functions. A woman does not assemble a baby manually. In fact, she doesn’t have to do anything at all; her body will go through the process without her taking any action to keep it going. It will do so whether or not she wants to remain pregnant.
You are confusing this with two things: the right to privacy, which under certain circumstances means the government cannot forbid her to abort, and the fundamental right of reproduction, which means that the government also cannot force the mother to abort nor deprive parents of their children without due process of law.
You are also treating pregnancy and childbearing as something women do all on their own. Nowhere do you say “a man may choose to impregnate a woman when no support from the mother is possible”, or “a man may choose to father a child when he knows he does not and will not have any means of supporting that child”, although both of these are true.
The ‘ideal legal standard’ you disparage is not quite as you state it. More accurately, it is “biological parents have legal and financial obligations toward their children.” You don’t explain why that doesn’t jibe with the list of exceptions you mention, possibly because those exceptions are all very different. Adoptive parents step into the shoes of biological parents; gamete donors are never ‘biological parents’ in the first place. Unless you are arguing the standard must be 100% either-or instead of the presumptive default, this is not a valid counterargument.
You have not explained why C4M is a superior standard that should replace the current legal standard, or why it will lead to better results.
I apologize for the length of this comment, but I’ve been carrying some of these thoughts around for a while and have only now gotten the time to put them down.
Easily Enthused, you wrote:
While I think I understand that you are trying here to focus on children, independently of how or when they were conceived, I’m not so sure that logic holds up. With the exception of the children of rape victims and the children of sperm donors, all of the other examples you give are children who have unambiguously already been born. By definition, then, their legal status is different than a fetus that has not yet been born and so, therefore, is the legal stance we take as a society towards their right to certain kinds of support. You may want to change that status, but, while that make your argument for C4M more workable, that argument(s) for or against that change of status is/are very different from arguing for C4M–at least that’s how it appears to me.
This seems to me very cold. If we are not as a culture on some level communally responsible for the children born to us, I do think we are in trouble. And I am talking here not about a legal responsibility or a legally established means of providing non-parental support; I am talking simply about a basic level of personal commitment on the part of each and every one of us to the welfare of the children who are born in our society. And, yes, to me that means a bottom-line assumption that when a man and a woman conceive a child, the man accepts responsibility for that child should the woman choose to give birth to it. There may be all kinds of perfectly acceptable reasons why that principle should not apply in given cases–like sperm donation and rape–but those exceptions, for me, do not invalidate the underlying assumption.
Also, one of the most frustrating things about reading this thread, for me, has been the consistent way in which people arguing for C4M consistently sidestep the question of heterosexual responsibility. If a man–and I’m only going to speak about men here, because we’re talking about C4M–does not under any circumstances want to become a father, there is only one, 100% reliable way to avoid that happening: don’t engage in sexual activity that might result in the conception of a child. Is it hard to follow that principle? Sure. Can it cause difficulties if you make that decision with a woman with whom you are already in a relationship? Sure. But if not becoming a father is that important to you, then it ought to be more important than whether or not you get to fuck the woman you want to fuck and who may very well want with all her heart, soul and body to fuck you. But if you are willing to gamble that conception might take place–and everyone here knows that even double and triple methods of birth control can fail, so even that is a gamble–then trying to figure out a way to get out of paying for the consequences should you lose that gamble seems to me not only profoundly irresponsible, both downright cowardly.
I am, honestly, a little uncomfortable with the gambling metaphor, because we are after all talking about human lives here, but it just seems to me that the way C4M advocates tend to shy away from the implications of taking the sexual side of the responsibility question as seriously as they should suggests that they understand on some level that this gambling metaphor is not so far off and that what they are trying to do is find a way of not having to pay up when they “lose.”
We easily forget that the conception of a child is not something that happens because of anyone’s conscious volition. PIV sex creates an environment in which conception is possible. Couples can do things to increase or decrease that possibility based on what they decide at the time, but the moment of conception through PIV sex is something beyond anyone’s immediate control. In other words, no matter what a man and woman agree on before they have sex, no matter what and how many kinds of birth control they use, neither of them can do anything to prevent conception at the moment it happens; more, once it happens, the fact that it has happened is such a profound thing–because we are, after all, talking about a human life–that it seems to me unrealistic to expect either partner to be legally bound by what they thought they would do before conception took place.
Regardless of what she felt before the child was conceived, the fact that conception happens in a woman’s body gives her certain rights, obligations and responsibilities towards the fetus growing in her body and the child that fetus will become if she gives birth to it; and while the man involved might not have wanted to conceive a child, once conception happens, he also has rights, obligations and responsibilities towards towards the fetus that is growing in his partner’s body and towards the child it will become. That those rights, obligations and responsibilities don’t always “line up” in a perfectly fair way might suck, and I am very sympathetic–look at my comment up at #95–to all the ways in which it might suck, but then I return to the principle I started with, that we all should feel a communal responsibility towards the children born in our culture; and if you are 100% not yet ready and willing to bear that responsibility in your own life–and I am talking here about men–then I return to the question of sexual responsibility that I raised above. There are plenty of ways to have a satisfying sexual relationship without PIV intercourse; and if a woman you are with is unwilling to respect the fact that you are unwilling to gamble with fatherhood, then that is a problem in your relationship with her (and this applies to one night stands as much as to long term relationships) and, to me, ought to raise questions about whether you should be having sex with her in the first place.
Richard @291: I am also frustrated with the part of this discussion that pretends women do not face a similar “gamble”. Any woman who chooses to have sex is taking the risk that she may become pregnant, and she may not be able to do anything about being pregnancy.
Where the anti-choice arguments gets thrown into this is that anti-choicers see abortion as exactly the same moral evasion of responsibility as abandoning a newborn.
@Mythago:
You’re obscuring the issue. Sure, “birth” is a biological process – but we “allow” parents to keep custody of their children. There are cases where women who have abused their children, had their children taken by Social Services and then gotten pregnant again have had their children seized immediately after birth.
No one here is under the impression that pregnant women are actively putting together a Lego set in their wombs. Why bring it up?
Go back to my “broken window – ruined rug” analogy I made above. “But I didn’t WANT it to rain – so the rain that came in and ruined my rug isn’t my fault” is an insane position to take. A woman may not WANT a baby to form inside of her – and she has the option to make efforts to prevent it before and end it after the fact.
Regarding privacy, etc. – I don’t accept that “privacy” was the real reason for Roe V. Wade’s decision. But I really don’t want to go into that here and now.
I have never argued here, or elsewhere, that a man who intentionally impregnates a woman should not be responsible for support a child that develops from that action – so OF COURSE “no where do I say.” What are you even trying to accomplish here? I really don’t know.
You’re side-stepping the issue. If we were living in a culture where polygamy was the default, how many parent’s support would be necessary? Also, please explain why single people are allowed to adopt children who had two biological parents and sperm banks allow single people to undergo in-vitro fertilization.
I don’t think you’ll be able to explain that – because the mandate that children get support from TWO BIOLOGICAL PARENTS is not universally applied.
You want to know why C4M is a superior standard and/or will lead to better results: the answer is so simple (to me) that I fear I may come across as contemptuous of the question – I’m fighting that urge.
A society that rewards the creation of a child born to the love, money, attention, affection and culture of TWO WILLING parents is superior to a society that rewards the creation of a child born to the money of TWO parents.
You can’t force someone to give love, attention, affection and culture to an unwanted child. Therefore, a system that would discourage the creation of a child who (preemptively) would not receive these things from one parent would be the superior one.
My desire would be to create a society where when a woman gets pregnant, she may chose to abort the child based on the knowledge that the father will be unwilling to support the child in all the ways a child needs to be supported. She would then abort the child and try again with a man who wants to father a child biologically, and be a father emotionally.
A parent who do not want their own children makes for a shitty parent. And that child would have been better off if they were not born in the first place – hence we discourage the mother to continue with the pregnancy.
@Richard:
Regardless of what she felt before the child was conceived, the fact that conception happens in a woman’s body gives her certain rights, obligations and responsibilities towards the fetus growing in her body and the child that fetus will become if she gives birth to it;
Yes, and included in that list of her responsibilities is to procure a person who wishes to be a parent to that child to help raise the child. If she cannot find one, she may raise the child herself or abort.
Realistically speaking, the vast, vast majority of men who father children want to support them in financial and emotional ways. We are only talking about the group of men who want the same legal guarantee that women have – to not be parents just because somehow sperm met egg.
@Mythago:
Any woman who chooses to have sex is taking the risk that she may become pregnant, and she may not be able to do anything about being pregnancy.
I thought we were talking about the U.S. and Canada. Whatever country you’re talking about there – I would agree with you in full that the risk is equal.
But we’re not – so why bring it up? Just because there isn’t an abortion clinic on every streetcorner in no way means a woman “may not be able to do anything.”
Easily Enthused:
What does this even mean? It is her responsibility to procure someone? Where is that written? Who has said this is her responsibility? And what precisely do you mean by procure, because I think it means something other than what you intend it here.
Two things: first, if this is true, then it seems to me this whole thread, or at least the part of it that involves you, has been a whole lot of sturm un drang over nothing. Second, respectfully, I return you again to what I said in my comment about sexual responsibility.
EasilyEnthused @293: It is appropriate that you put “allow” in quotes. The legal default is that parents have responsibilities and rights toward their children. The government can sever those rights through due process of law. That’s why the woman whose newborn was seized at birth is not simply prohibited from giving birth. And when the state takes her baby away, it still must go through the legal process of limiting her rights and then permitting the child to be adopted (or to be cared for by the state). I’m not sure what your point is with this example.
I’m not side-stepping any issues. You’re coming across as extremely frustrated and contemptuous, which you claim is not your intent. By the way, if I’m coming across as frustrated and contemptuous, it’s probably because we’re right back to support alone, i.e., “yeah, yeah, what about the money?”
The problem is that you are presenting a false dilemma: either children are always supported by their biological parents 100% of the time in all circumstances or we should discard this approach completely. This makes no sense, and from a legal perspective it’s bizarre. All kinds of laws have a presumption or default that can be set aside in certain circumstances.
Let me give you a non-child-related example: the right to freedom of religion. In the US, that is the law. Does this mean that everybody may practice their religion in any way their beliefs dictate, no matter the circumstances? Of course not. We take that right as the default, but we can limit that right when there are strong interests on the other side of the scale. (For example, the state’s interest in protecting its citizens outweighs a sincere religious belief in human sacrifice. Prisoners may not engage in religious practices that endanger the security of the prison.)
Similarly, the fact that the law makes parents responsible for their biological children does not mean those rights and obligations can never be set aside. That’s why we allow adoption, for example. (As for sperm donation, again, if you really want the long explanation I’m happy to go into it, but the short version is “so married couples where the husband is infertile can have babies”.) The existence of adoption, or CPS, or gamete donation, doesn’t mean that the default stance of ‘you are responsible for your offspring’ is false. It means that the law has balanced the rights and interests of the child (who is totally blameless in this situation, yes?) against countervailing rights and interests, and decided that those other rights and interests are strong enough to outweigh the default to some extent.
So the question I’m not getting an answer to is why should a person’s desire not to be a parent outweigh their obligation to their born child? The closest I’ve gotten to an answer is “because otherwise they’d be a shitty parent”, which (see below) is not much of an answer.
If we were living in a culture where polygamy was the default, how many parent’s support would be necessary?
If we were living in a culture where polygamy was the default, children would in all likelihood be solely raised by their mothers until coming of age, at which time the boys would go live with the adult men. Fathers’ involvement would be limited to financial support of the mothers, and there would be complicated social structures addressing those obligations. That’s how most polygamous societies handle it, along with a heaping pile of problems for children born out of wedlock and their mothers. Is that the approach you’re suggesting?
You can’t force someone to give love, attention, affection and culture to an unwanted child.
Interesting that you have changed your basis for C4M. Originally it was the right of people to choose whether or not to be parents, with C4M analogous to abortion. Now you’re arguing that C4M is really about the best interests of the child. (I suspect rather a lot of people who had an uninvolved or absent parent would be surprised to hear that they’d have been better off dead.) Here’s the thing: the law does not require you to show love, attention, affection or culture to your child. There is no federal standard of hugs per week. You will not be jailed for failing to teach your kid how to throw a baseball. Parents have legal obligations to provide for their children, they have legal duties towards those children that they don’t towards strangers, but not to love them. So you’re arguing that we should exempt people from parenthood based on a legal standard that doesn’t exist.
BTW, I don’t believe you really want to apply the “if you don’t love your kid they’re better off without you” argument. If this is the standard, then we should allow parents to unilaterally walk away after the birth of a deliberately-conceived, planned and wanted child if they aren’t going to be able to give that child love, attention, affection and culture. Is that really what you believe should be the standard? If Dad was expecting a Junior and he gets a girl, should he be allowed to cut all ties and never pay a dime of child support? If Mom is upset because her baby had a cleft palate and so won’t ever be a model, should she be able to hand the baby off to Dad without ever paying him a dime of child support?
Women do not have this legal guarantee.
I realize this is an inconvenient fact, and that repeating it one more time is probably not going to prevent it from being ignored. Again. But women do not have this legal guarantee.
What women do have is this: if they become pregnant, for a particular segment of early pregnancy, the government may not forbid them by law from having an abortion. It may impose requirements that do not constitute an ‘undue burden’ (whatever that means).
Bluntly, it is delusional to pretend that this is a “legal guarantee” of not having to become a parent. Women do not have the right, in the US, to demand that the government pay for or provide an elective abortion. They do not have the right to require any physician or clinic to provide them with an abortion should they want one. If their male partner prevents them from obtaining an abortion by anything short of criminal means (like theft or false imprisonment), they have no redress.
After the birth, women do not have the unilateral right to allow adoptive parents to assume her obligations to the child. The sole exception is in Utah and Oregon, where an unmarried father is, under certain circumstances, prevented from asserting parental rights. If the mother is married, or if she’s in any of the other 48 states, she does not have a “legal guarantee” that she can place the child for adoption.
I’m tempted to just put this in a macro, but I’m not sure it would help.
Richard,
Procure? Find?
It doesn’t have to be “written” anywhere. I’m saying it now. If you want to get into the ethics of my stance – so be it.
@Mythago:
I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up. I’ve already explained why I think the world would be a better place for everyone if C4M was implemented.
I’ll even throw you a bone here – I have serious misgivings about C4M for men who “opt-out” and then attempt to “op-in” later in life.
And you’re right – we can’t guarantee that two parents of a wanted child will give them the all the types of support that the child deserves to thrive – but at the very least we will be starting with two people who are making the promise to provide those things.
Also, “changed my basis?” There are multiple reasons why I argue that C4M would be a better option than the system we currently have.
Lastly, you are interchanging “fetus” with “child.” A CHILD will be better off with the support of two parents. A person making the decision to convert a “fetus” into a “child” has the responsibility to make an evaluation of the situation that the CHILD will be borne into. If there is no other willing parent to help you support that child – you have an ethical duty to abort the fetus before it becomes a child.
If a FETUS is not wanted by both parents, an abortion should happen. I do not think people should be able to give up their children for adoption after birth unless they have found a willing couple to take responsibility for the child.