This cartoon is perfect. Go read the whole thing.
Barry’s BlueSky- Untitled April 24, 2024And there's a written version! https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/24/zionism-seder-protest-new-york-gaza-israel [contains quote post or other embedded content]
- Untitled April 24, 2024Naomi Klein on how Zionism has become a false idol. https://youtu.be/U75KcMUjMyI?si=uZuV_UNZkWXNFYG3&t=198
- Untitled April 24, 2024The Leader of All Manhood has issued his ruling: It's gay for men to love sex with women. Guys: If you hate sex with women, you can do it and be straight. But if you love sex with women, that's gay. If you want to be straight, fuck men instead. Sorry, but that's the rule.
- Untitled April 23, 2024Aaargh it's midnight and I was tired and thinking of going to bed and then I read something that pissed me off because I am stupid.
- Untitled April 24, 2024
Holy crap, that’s hilarious.
Where can I buy one of those?
I love it, hilarious…except for the part where it is more indicitive of pregnancy by rape than by consensual sex by making the prenancy completely one persons doing. Oh, and the part where they leave off a whole string of options…like keeping the baby and making the doctor pay for 18 years. Maybe it would be funnier if we saw the doctor making out a check in a subset frame where the guys parents are raising his kid while he is out drinking…THAT would be funny..huh? Well, I guess only if you find rude generalizations funny…
Bjartmarr, do you want me to ask Kevin about that? I’m suspect he’d be willing to email you a print-quality copy you could print out yourself for a reasonable price, for example.
Anyway, that’s all up to Kevin, but I could give him a head’s up if you’re interested.
Ed, do you really think it’s unfair — in the situation described by the cartoon — if the doctor was forced to pay child support for the resulting child?
I think it misses the point by setting up a non-parallel situation. First off, I think most men are pretty cavalier about the idea of having an abortion — what it actually means simply doesn’t seem real. Secondly, the “impregnator gun” engaged him without notice or consent. It’s more like rape than sex.
A better argument — the one I use — is that a man’s choice is made at the time of intercourse. A contract signed at different times is still valid. Women have an additional “right of rescission” in abortion, but that’s neither here nor there.
Amp, thanks, but no, it was the machine I wanted, not the comic. ;)
Amp,
It is not unfair that men help raise thier children financially. There is definately an unfair list though. I agree with Tom, as I said earlier, that this looks more like a rape than sex situation. I think it is truely wrong to say that men walk away saying “not my problem” and that is the end of it for them. We all know that is not true and there are many legal, moral and personal ramifications no matter how they deal with an unwanted (by them anyway) pregnancy just like there are for women.
I think depicting unwanted pregnancy situations like this cartoon did is wrong and unfair. I think making it seem that this situation is a parrallell for female unwanted pregnancies…like they didnt have a choice to not have sex or use protection…is unfair. I think expecting men to just be wallets and respect a woman’s decision to keep them out of the child’s life without complaint is unfair. I think giving women a way to escape the financial hardships of unwanted pregnancy by choice and not allowing that same freedom to men is unfair. I think expecting men to settle for the argument that his time of choice is at intercourse when a woman’s is basicly infinite is unfair. (if she never discloses who the father is she can put the child up for adoption until age of maturity) I think using the argument that genetics doesnt make a “father” to get men to pay for children they originally thought were biologically thier children that dna tests proved otherwise and then flipping it around and demanding men pay for children because they share genes with them is wrong. But no, in this depiction of a man forcing an unwanted pregnancy onto someone with no input or consent…I don’t think asking for child support in that case would be wrong.
I think giving women a way to escape the financial hardships of unwanted pregnancy by choice and not allowing that same freedom to men is unfair.
I’m not familiar with the law. If a woman gives birth, then gives up custody to the father, is she liable for child-support payments? (Let’s assume that she’s in a better financial position than he is.) If so, that invalidates your argument. If not… hmm, I’d have to think about it.
I think expecting men to settle for the argument that his time of choice is at intercourse when a woman’s is basicly infinite is unfair.
I believe in absolute sovereignty of the body. So your argument is with biology, not law.
Your qualifier, “if she never discloses who the father is…” is a straw man: In that case, *he* wouldn’t be liable for child-support payments, either.
Tom, it is definitely the case that when fathers have sole or primary custody, mothers can be ordered to pay child support to fathers. This isn’t a “in theory, but it would never happen in real life” thing either; one of the employees where I work had her child support payments garnished from all her paychecks.
The problem with the “a man’s time of choice is at intercourse” is that the EXACT SAME argument is used by anti-choicers. Most people can see how it’s repugnant to tell a pregnant woman that she should have kept her legs crossed.
If the man can get custody then yes, the woman pays support. I do not see how it invalidates my argument in any way though. If she has the option to give up the child and never even tell the father he has a child, she has a way out. If she can use safe haven laws or adoption to walk away (abandon) an unwanted child, then she has a choice a man simply is not given, totally seperate from sovereinty over her body.
I love the biology argument because it is so one sided When a woman wants complete control over her pregnancy or custody at birth, it is biology. But when it comes to accepting more responsibility for pregnancy or a child if she is unwed then we should discount the biological truth and pass laws that make men equally responsible. There are a many instances of legislating to overcome biological differences (not just pregnancy/childbirth) but I can’t think of even one that is done to protect/favor the male.
I know my viewpoints are not popular here and I don’t want to jump up on a soapbox. My initial statement was just about how wrong and unaware of the male situation the comic was. It is fun and funny to oversimplify situations and pretend they are easy and incontrovertable, but that doesn’t make it true or insightful. I hate the double standard. Would a comic of a woman laughing and yelling out the door “just a minute” in a burger king bathroom as she gave herself an abortion with a coathanger and mumbled “I hate when this happens on a first date” be funny to you? It is a very crude way to frame women who abort…as the doctor character is a very crude example of how a man acts in an unwanted pregnancy situation.
People are corrupt. If we keep building a system that allows people to play it to their advantage they will, male or female. To pretend females are incorruptable and pure is just being in denial. Right now if child support, custody, or any family court related events were a game of poker, they are handing women an extra deck of cards to keep up a sleeve for the whole game. Not all will use it, but they could.
The problem with the “a man’s time of choice is at intercourse” is that the EXACT SAME argument is used by anti-choicers.
But that’s a completely valid argument!
The debate is whether a woman should have the later “right of rescission” offered by abortion.
Incidentally, unilateral rights of rescission — where one party can take it back but the other can’t — are fairly common. In certain circumstances, a homebuyer or borrower can nullify the contract up to three days after it’s been signed; the seller or lender can’t. (I’m writing a book about foreclosure, can you tell? :) )
Ed: I see your point now — thanks. You’re right that the “right of (financial) abandonment” is allowed women, but not men. It’s unquestionably an unequal situation.
But you know what? I can live with that. It’s an inherently unfair situation, and I’d much rather face the threat of financial inconvenience over pregnancy.
There are a many instances of legislating to overcome biological differences (not just pregnancy/childbirth) but I can’t think of even one that is done to protect/favor the male.
Hmm, that sounds like a challenge. I can’t think of any either. Here’s one in the non-judicial arena, though: Health care for men’s issues long had funding priority over women’s issues. I don’t know the current state.
I love the biology argument because it is so one sided.
Hey, that’s life. :)
Anyway, we agree that it’s a clumsy, poorly written comic. Nice drawing, though — and not far from Amp’s style, coincidentally. :)
Yup – it is funny. Sorry, dude – actions have consequences. If you have sex with a woman, she can get pregnant. Should that happen, she can make choices that you have no say in and that can obligate you for the rest of your life. Don’t like it? Keep your pants on.
I’m told the Porteguese have a saying – “God says ‘Take what you want – and pay for it.'”
Re: Women paying child support.
I know that my mother-in-law was required by PA law to pay child support to my father-in-law because their youngest child was under 18 and living with him. She refused, claiming that child support was something only men should have to pay, and she also claimed that any money she handed over was used not for the child, but for the father (probably true). Though I had sympathy for her specific situation (she’d supported the violent, alcoholic, non-working, husband for several years before the divorce), I had a few arguments with her about how child support is about the CHILD, and her being female didn’t make it inherently unfair that she was required to fork it over.
I think the cartoon is pretty smart, of course it doesn’t cover all the angles or make a PERFECT analogy, but it stirs up conversation and makes the excellent point that unwanted pregnancy is a situation that affects women in ways that men cannot really find a parallel for.
Tom, you say the ‘right of financial abandonment’ is given to women but not men – yet the fact of financial abandonment frequently runs in the other direction. I’m sure we all know families where someone hasn’t been paid the child support they were due, and what hardship that can cause. Some men complain about the unfairness on perfectly reasonable grounds; others do so to justify the abandonment they’ve already made.
Oh, if we’re on the topic, I do know a woman who technically owes child support – she gave up her son to be raised by another member of her family, because she was poor, widowed and struggling with an addiction, and the two of them have amicably agreed that the child support will not be claimed.
I have to say that I think those of you who critique the cartoon becaue the “sex” it depicts resembles rape more than consensual sex are missing the point. The man in the first panel asks a question: Why does the asymmetry he is talking about exist? At issue, in other words, is not how a woman gets pregnant, but what her situation is once she is pregnant. And the fact is that it is possible for men to do precisely what Dr. Mentorr does; the fact that most men don’t do it is not the issue. They could; we could; and so it is not unreasonable for the law to try to account for the resulting asymmetry. Please note: I am not arguing that the law does so as effectively as it might; I am just pointing out that the cartoon is not making a generalization about men’s behavior; it is pointing out the fact that men can walk away from pregnancy and that women ought to have access some protection/redress when a man does.
Tom, you say the ‘right of financial abandonment’ is given to women but not men
Right.
yet the fact of financial abandonment frequently runs in the other direction.
Irrelevant. If what’s been said earlier is correct, it’s *legally* permitted for a woman to stop financial support, but *illegal* for a man to do the same.
But now that I think about it, we weren’t looking at parallel situations there, either. In cases where a man was granted full custody, and the woman disappeared, couldn’t he also abandon the child at a safe haven?
So I take back what I said, but for a reason different from the one you raise. :)
Can’t let this one pass:
What do you mean by “long”? If you mean “last 1000 years” then yes, but if you mean “last 30 years” then no, because in the last decades women’s health care has received several times more funding. I will also argue that if there was any advantage that men had gained as a result of male health research having been prioritized for hundreds of years when medical practice mostly consisted of bloodletting and firecupping, and medical theories were often so incorrect as to recommend therapies that worsened patient’s condition, that advantage is offset a hundred times by the advantages gained by women as a result of female health research being better funded in the era of MRI, SEM, HGP, CABG, IVF, and highly advanced understanding of causes and mechanisms of diseases as well as of how a healthy organism functions.
Neither adoption nor safe havens are examples of child abandonment. If you make sure that the child is cared for by capable, responsible people, in a legal fashion, it’s not abandonment.
And the reason she has that choice is purely biology. There is no way to equalize the fact that women get pregnant and men don’t. Yes, all of that is unfair. It’s also unfair that 100% of people injured or killed giving birth are women; what do you suggest should be done to remedy that unfairness?
Other than ones involving pregnancy and childbirth, or redressing past job discrimination, what ones can you think of? (Also, there’s no legal barrier to laws about redressing past job discrimination being used to assist men.)
For your information, in nearly every state with a “safe haven” law, not only can either fathers or mothers drop off the infant legally, but the state will attempt to locate the other parent before letting the infant be adopted. Women don’t need that protection, of course — there’s no such thing as a woman having a baby but not knowing about it. The main reason for this law is to mitigate the biological inequity involved in mothers, but not fathers, knowing about the birth.
Incidentally, I would happily favor “choice for men” if we can convert to a fully socialized economy, so that no child suffers economically just because daddy refuses to take responsibility. But I don’t believe that we should make children poorer just so that men can have a special right to fuck and run.
Finally, if we do pass “choice for men,” there will be an increase in single mother births, because some men will be less motivated to use birth control. So “choice for men” wouldn’t just mean that the current level of children without fathers would exist; it would actually increase how many fatherless children are born. (Studies have shown that the weaker the child support enforcement in a state, the higher the rate of single-mother births). How are you planning to pay for the social effects of that?
Amp,
Jobs- How about any of the hundreds of jobs/careers in this country that require physical standards tests? When is the last time you argued against reduced standards for women because it is biology not discrimination?
Safe haven- fathers or mothers, but mothers are afforded the natural “right” of custody… if fathers want to give up a child for adoption and a mother doesnt it is always called abandonment. If a mother does the same thing and the father is never informed of the pregnancy she is (your words) making sure that the child is cared for by capable, responsible people, in a legal fashion. As for the “legal fasion”…it is the law that I am disputing. ( I have a whole argument about how when women want a fetus to be inconsiquential it is a mass of cells, but when she wants custody of a born child it suddenly was a child she has been bonding to for 9 months and men could never understand that)
Choice for men (don’t like the phrase, it is yours) – If it follows that men will be less responsible without responibility being thrust upon them, would it not also follow that women would be MORE responsible with the threat of responsibility set squarely on them and balance that out? Again, that goes back to the biology argument and how we afford women biological rights but legislate to relieve biological responsibilities.
I just want to see a more legitimate “equality”. It is too unbalanced as it is now.
A better argument — the one I use — is that a man’s choice is made at the time of intercourse.
An even better argument is that “choice” has nothing whatsoever to do with your obligations toward your born children. Child-support laws do not say “you only have to take care of a kid if you wanted to have sex,” or “if you meant to have a child”. Some states deprive a rapist of all rights (and obligations) towards a child born of an act of rape, but that’s as far as “choice” goes in mattering.
The whine “why should he have to pay for it” is nonsense when you realize that a woman, too, is financially responsible for a child whether or not she made the choice to have that child.
No.
But as Ed pointed out, the position of the doctor is analogous to that of a rapist who deliberately impregnates his victim, not a partner in a consensual act of non-procreative sex.
A woman who has the option of the day-after pill, and declines it, and who has the option of an abortion, and declines it, has unilatterally made the choice to have that child.
It is possible to agree that women should have some protection/redress when a man does that, or tries to, while disagreeing that the actual protections/redress in place are fair to men.
Ampersand (quoting Ed):
Er no. Biology allows the woman to have the child without telling the father. Biology also allows the father to walk away from the pregnant mother. Either or both could walk away from the born child. Nor is there a biological obstacle to the parents flushing the baby down the toilet. Or eating it.
It is society which steps in to deny the parents some of these choices and to give them others. Given that the reason society steps in is to remedy the inherent unfairness of pure biology, it is perfectly legitimate to ask whether the result is fair, and if not, whether it could be made more fair.
If you and I were involved in an accident which left you injured, paraplegic, for example, and it were determined that I was 50% responsible for the accident, then a court would require me to pay you 50% of what it would cost to remedy your loss. If your injury could be remedied by a $10000 operation, then I should pay you $5000. Now I agree that you should not be forced to have that operation. If you prefer to be paraplegic, then fine. But I should not be forced to pay half the cost of the lifelong care you need as a consequence of your decision.
A pregnancy is a 50-50% shared responsibility between two people who had consensual sex. A birth is the 100% responsibility of the woman who declined both the morning after pill, and an abortion.
Even if I were to agree with you that morality is determined by “hot potato” (i.e., the last person to make a decision bears 100% of the responsibility), I’d still think you were wrong.
After all, not everyone finds out about their pregnancy in time for a morning after pill. Not everyone can afford an abortion, or has access to an abortion provider (indeed, in many areas, leading politicians have worked very hard to make abortion inaccessible). So even accepting your premise, you’re simply wrong to assume that if a woman has a baby that means she had and declined reasonable options to stop the pregnancy.
(But I am curious: Under your proposed system, if a father wants to raise a child and the mother wants nothing to do with the child after birth, does she have to pay child support? Assuming that she could have had an abortion but chose not to.)
But your “hot potato” morality is nonsense. If you knowingly sell my cookie shop tainted cookie dough, and I knowingly sell the tainted cookies to customers, you don’t get to avoid liability by saying “Barry could have prevented all those deaths by not selling my tainted cookie dough at all, so it’s all his responsibility, and not at all mine!” When two people’s freely made choices lead to an outcome, and when both of their choices were essential in leading to that outcome, then they share responsibility.
In post #26, you frame your analysis in terms of what’s “fair to men.” But that’s a problematic approach to this issue, because there are three parties here: the father, the mother, and the child. Asking what’s fair to just one party, as if only men (or women, or children) count, inevitably makes the total situation worse.
There is no reasonable solution that’s fair to everyone. The situation is inherently unfair. So the question should be, what solution best distributes unfairness between the three parties? And Choice For Men — by saying that men must be 100% protected from consequences, even if it means increasing the consequences for the other two parties — utterly fails to provide a reasonable response.
Yes, it’s unfair that men have to support children when they’d rather not. But that’s less unfair than children being poor because they have only one parent taking responsibility, or a custodial parent getting no support at all from the other parent.
Often morality isn’t about trying to find a party you can blame everything on (“it’s the mother’s fault! She could have had an abortion!”) so that other folks can be absolved of responsibility. This is such a case. A child is not an auto accident.
I would be willing to accept C4M (and for women) in a really generous welfare state, by the way, where the financial support needed to mitigate the unfairness of a one-parent family is provided by taxes instead of by the non-resident parent, and where society was prepared to take on the increased numbers of single-mother households C4M would bring about. But I don’t see any hope of that happening in the US (where I live), and I suspect it won’t happen in the UK either.
ETA: “A child is not an auto accident.” Of course, you might respond, a child is not tainted cookie dough either. That’s true. My point, however, is that there is no generally agreed on morality that states that “the last decision-maker in a chain of decisions leading to outcome A bears sole responsibility for outcome A.” Since no such general rule exists, you can’t cite it to prove that men should have no responsibility for their children.
Daran:
Why, in comment 26, did you leave out the sentence prior to what you quoted me as saying: “Please note: I am not arguing that the law does so as effectively as it might”?
There is no way to equalize the fact that women get pregnant and men don’t.
Yes, there is. Developing nearly 100% effective, safe, free contraception, for both men and women. If the resources were put to the effort, it could be done. It wouldn’t “equalize” the risk inherent in planned pregnancies, but it would go a long way to help.
Hi,
Best assumption is that any sex with a woman can lead to pregnancy. It used to be so…showing my age…before birth control. Any sane male would have efficient and available BC on hand at all times. No crap about “mood” or “moment”. Condoms are cheap and handy and prevent little “mistakes”.
Coming from a poor area I am familiar with the need for women to have children by men that at least can hold down a job. Not pretty or fair but just the reality of life. I am pudgy, bald and well past 30 and I get phone numbers because I am working steadily. Even teens find me a catch because the “goods are odd”.
Without a helpmeet male, the woman in poverty has few palatable options. That is why the calculation on his fitness for fatherhood or, at the very least, providing income. So, any male from this background would assume that the partner might want a pregnancy and the male should plan accordingly. Fatherhood is the default choice.
Quit whining that she chooses. Duh, so do you and if you can’t stand the thought of kids then find your own self-outlet or make better choices
Ok, short and simple one more time since the core message seems to be lost. A woman can choose (legally) to walk away from a born child…something most here adamently oppose a man’s right to do. A man can choose to walk away from a born child (legally) WITH the womans/mothers permission. That, simply, is unfair and unequal. You say biology doesn’t give her the right to do so unilaterally but use biology to defend her presumption of custody….you simply can not have it both ways. It is a fairly common thing I see here to bounce back and forth between reality and legality using whichever is most convenient toward the argument.
Thanks to all of you for not doing the “go away womanhater” thing and actually considering my viewpoints. By the most base of definitions I am a feminist (no guffaws please), I want equality. I just happen to be an equality of oppertunity over equality of outcome guy.
“A woman can choose (legally) to walk away from a born child”
With the father’s permission, I’m pretty sure. Mythago?
Okay, I’m not going to leap into the fray here. I’m just amused by the symmetry in the cartoon – mostly because, not too long ago, I saw a conservative use the exact same scenario, but in reverse, to justify the “father’s consent for abortion” stuff that was being pushed in the midwest.
His suggestion was: if the father used a ray-gun to kill the unborn foetus, which did not interact with the woman’s body in any way (and thus does not violate her body), how would the mother feel?
Obviously, this is wholly offtopic, I just thought it fascinating that people used ray-guns to argue both sides of the a similar debate.
“His suggestion was: if the father used a ray-gun to kill the unborn foetus, which did not interact with the woman’s body in any way (and thus does not violate her body), how would the mother feel?”
Assaulted. As it’s her fucking body.
Ray guns are cool.
But to the subject at hand. Child support is not about a father’s or mother’s rights – they are about the right of a child to be cared for. Which is why if a child is given to foster care after birth, BOTH the mother and father will be hit up for child support. Because the state certainly does NOT want to pay for the child – that is for the parents to do.
The one unfortunate thing about it is where a parent can be reduced to a paycheck – with no say in how that money is spent in the interest of the child. That is the one thing I’d want to work on in the system, above all others. Some might complain that this unfairly inserts the non-custodial parent into the custodial parent’s life, giving control over how he or she lives it, but then, as I said about, it is about the child, not the parents.
As far as abortion – that is the mother’s choice for the simple reason that it is the mother who has to risk death if she carries to term (or risk complications from an abortion if she has that instead) – either way, no one else should be dictating to her that she have a medical procedure. And keep in mind, if she elects to risk death by giving birth, and she and the baby end up dying, the man is “off the hook” and is not held responsible. Because it is solely her choice to make.
But as Ed pointed out, the position of the doctor is analogous to that of a rapist who deliberately impregnates his victim, not a partner in a consensual act of non-procreative sex.
No it’s not. The man asked a question. The doctor answered it. Just not in a way that the first man had expected or agreed to. Definitely unethical–not giving full informed consent–but not rape. More analogous to “don’t worry, you can’t get pregnant the first time” or “we don’t need a condom, I’ve had a vasectomy” (if the speaker hasn’t).
I also note that the man seems to have ended up about 7 months pregnant. Nice trick–avoids the really nasty parts of pregnancy. And since he’s almost certainly a c-section candidate he also misses labor.
BTW, if there are any men out there who desire a pregnancy, it probably is doable. Implant an embryo on the intestinal lining, maybe give a little progesterone to help it get started properly…should be workable enough. Any volunteers? (Preferably multi-millionaire volunteers: medical experimentation doesn’t come cheap you know.)
Mandolin (“quoting Mythago”):
Ed is talking about safe abandonment legislation which has been enacted in many if not most US jurisdiction.
What these laws provide for, is that the carer in whose immediate physical custody a new born baby is, is not liable for abandoning it if they do so in any designated place, typically hospitals, police stations, and the like. The latter are obliged to receive babies and not to require the abandoner to disclose their identity. There is usually provision for either of the child’s parents to reclaim it within a period of time.
Even if the laws allow either parent to do this, the practical effect is to enable mothers, who are more likely to have physical custody, to walk away than fathers.
A woman who has the option of the day-after pill, and declines it, and who has the option of an abortion, and declines it, has unilatterally made the choice to have that child.
Again, Daran: ‘choice’ has no impact on the parents’ financial responsibility for a born child. A woman who doesn’t have the option of the morning-after pill, or who doesn’t have the option of abortion, is not excused from her financial and legal obligations to her child. “Choice for men” is really giving men a right women don’t have either.
(Daran’s analogy, by the way, is similar to the obsolete “last clear chance” doctrine in tort law.)
I wonder how that would fly in court.
“Yer honour, I didn’t rape her. I just knocked her up without her informed consent.”
Not avoiding the hard questions, but I’ve got to go.
The irony here is that a woman impregnated through rape or deceit is still responsible for her child. “But I didn’t know he slipped off the condom!” or “I didn’t consent to the sex!” doesn’t have a thing to do with alleviating the mother’s obligations to her child.
Daran: If someone came up to you and said, “I really want to know what this sex stuff is all about, can you show me?” and you demonstrated it to her, I doubt that she’d have much of a case for calling it rape. She might be pretty annoyed if you failed to mention that the demonstration might make her pregnant, but that wouldn’t make the sex rape. The guy in the cartoon wanted to know why women have more options concerning a pregnancy than men. His question was answered. He didn’t much like the answer, but there you go. Even though both acts are clearly unethical.
I’m pretty sure most, if not all, safe harbor laws include a provision to ensure that attempts are made to find the parents of the child and make sure that neither parent wants custody before putting the child up for adoption. If I understand the law correctly, any person can leave a child at a “haven”, no questions asked. That person doesn’t have to be either parent. It could be the babysitter. It could be the carjacker who didn’t realize that there was a baby in the back seat. And so on.
Even if the laws allow either parent to do this, the practical effect is to enable mothers, who are more likely to have physical custody, to walk away than fathers.
And this would be because…men are able to walk away from a pregnancy but women aren’t. So they are more likely to be stuck with a child they can’t cope with than men. I’m not sure that makes the point you wanted to make, really.
Mythago,
You are right, it doesn’t alleviate anything, because she has no actual enforcable obligations to a born child. She can disapear and by law the system will never look for her. A man who is saying “she said she was on the pill” on the other hand can be jailed for shirking his obligations to her child. (her is intentional, as most fathers in that situation are given little if any consideration as a parent, just a wallet)
I wasn’t quoting Mythago; I was asking Mythago. I don’t really know how you got “quoting.”
A woman can choose (legally) to walk away from a born child…something most here adamently oppose a man’s right to do.
Unless I’m very mistaken about the law, a non-custodial parent can not walk away from their legal obligation to provide child support if the custodial parent requests it for the child, regardless of gender. If a child is left in a fire station and the other parent claims it, I would expect that the relinquishing parent is still liable for child support payments. As far as I know, except in Oregon, a child can be placed for adoption only if both parents agree to give up their parental rights. In Oregon, a man has parental rights only if he shows some minimal interest during the pregnancy, but if he does then he has full rights. Sorry, I’m not sure where the inequality comes in. Men don’t have the right to control the pregnancy, but it’s not going on in their body.
ed, under “safe haven” laws, a father can abandon his baby and by law the system will never look for him, just as with the mother. A woman on the other hand who says “but he told me he had a vasectomy and then he wouldn’t let me get an abortion” can be jailed for shirking her obligations to their child.
And interesting that you seem to agree that a father ‘in that situation’ really isn’t a parent, because you happily assert that the child is the mother’s, not ‘his’ child as well.
Mandolin, correct. In order for a woman to “walk away”–that is, be freed of all financial and legal obligations to her child–either the father has to agree to give up his obligations and rights too. There are some exceptions where the law has deprived one parent or the other of obligations and rights; for example, it is my understanding that in Oregon, an unmarried father who has nothing to do with the pregnancy loses his right to prevent an adoption. (Which apparently makes Oregon a rather popular state for adoptions, as there is no chance that Dad will show up and prevent or reverse the adoption because his parental rights were never terminated.)
Actually, Mythago’s (and to a lesser extent, Daran’s) arguments here raises a good point: should covert or coercive attempts to induce pregnancy against the will of the sex-partner be illegal?
I mean, we’ve heard the MRA’s complain about mom-traps, and there were the recent feminist-blogged articles about abusive men trying to sabotage birth-control in order to similarly capture their partners, so it seems to be a unifying issue. Why aren’t actions like that considered a crime? Obviously, if a person is having sex they must be aware of the risk of pregnancy, but if the other partner is misrepresenting the situation or is actively sabotaging the birth-control process (either through physical sabotage or through lies) then isn’t that a violation of their sex-partner’s rights?
I suppose it’s a useless point anyways, since that kind of thing is wholly unprovable.
Either way, my opinion on the “choice for men” issue is very simple: the situation is intrinsically unequal. The only way to make it fair would involve science-fiction technology. Attempts to make it fair using laws simply would make it unfair in more complicated ways.
MRAs want the “choice for men” thing because they see it as a way to avoid parenthood. I think the point that they miss is that abortion does not exist to avoid parenthood. Adoption does a fine job of that – and women have no more or less rights to unilaterally adopt out their kid than men do. What abortion avoids is pregnancy. If women didn’t care about the “pregnancy” part, they wouldn’t need abortions in the first place. But pregnancy is really, really rough. And men don’t have pregnancies.
should covert or coercive attempts to induce pregnancy against the will of the sex-partner be illegal?
Whether or not it is illegal is a separate issue from parental obligations to the child. It’s very clear that child support, and parental responsibility, do not depend on whether you choose to become a parent. That’s because of this whole “best interests of the child” focus of the law.
@mythago
No argument from me. Just observing that it’s something that’s come up on both sides.
Again, legally you are right..the father has to give up rights. Unless of course noone knows who the mother OR father is because the baby is left at a firehouse. Or, as recently happened in the UK the mother decides she doesn’t have any obligation to let a father know he is a father. And the “he should know” argument is useless unless you make pre birth genetic testing mandatory (can’t do that because it invades a woman’s body) so she can simply say “it isnt yours”. People lie, it is part of reality. And I am guessing we go back to the, “well that is tough it is biology’s fault” argument. Presumed custody is not the fault of biology though, that is a legal standard we built. If we presumed joint custody in all cases and required actual biological parents identified in all cases we would be taking a huge step toward true equality. Most men are not afraid of fatherhood, as so many seem to think. Most men are hurt/afraid of being held responsible for a child they can not father though… a monthly check is not a replacement for teaching and guiding a child.
The only way to make it fair would involve science-fiction technology
Sigh, no one ever believes my offer to work on how to make a man pregnant…Ok, maybe that offer wasn’t terribly sincere, but getting men pregnant really only presents a few technical problems, and not terribly hard ones at that. The only reason it hasn’t been done is that there’s no demand. Of course, the situation would still be unequal, because men would only become pregnant after a medical procedure which would be essentially impossible to have done to them accidently or against their will. I suppose a situation might arise in which a man wanted to end the pregnancy, for any reason, while the woman who donated the egg for the pregnancy didn’t. In that situation, obviously, it would be the man who would decide whether to terminate or not.
The other problem I have with the “choice for men” thing is that I’ve never really made up my mind on the abortion issue. I mean, the only argument that’s ever really been convincing for me are the scientific ones, and many of those look pretty fuzzy after the first month or so, which is way too late for women who took a bit of time to discover their pregnancy. The privacy/bodily autonomy issue makes it legal and gives women the freedom, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that a she isn’t still killing a human being.
If I were a woman, I don’t know if I could do it. So it’s not too hard to imagine a woman who has a moral problem with aborting her child, left out to dry by a husband who doesn’t have to deal with such terrifying ethical questions using a “man’s right to choose”.
@Diane – actually, the “science fiction technology” I had in mind would be more along the lines of perfect, convenient, and visibly detectable birth-control (so no accidents are possible, even deliberate ones) that is activated by default and must be deliberately deactivated, issued to every teenager on the planet. And mainstream popularity of growing babies in tanks instead of people.
Stuff like that. Really, really science-fiction technology. And a sociological shift towards using that technology as a preference.
So yeah, I’m thinking less “Junior” and more “Star Trek”.
Silenced,
The whole abortion thing is a quagmire… A man who disagrees with it and his wife has one anyway…is he being coersive if he says he will leave because he can’t stand the thought of being married to a murderer (if that is his belief?) I am pro choice, always have been, but I also know I would offer to raise the child if she would carry it to term. I personally don’t believe abortion being illegal is forcing anything on anyone… birth control is prevelent now, and all the same arguments that get thrown out to men about not having sex or getting “fixed” apply to women as well…but you can’t put the cat back in the bag. Abortion exists, you can’t undo that. I also have the benefit of not being religious so I don’t have the complication of worrying about my eternal soul…that is a very real and terrifying threat to many.
I haven’t been here in forever, this place has gotten so civil. This discussion has almost been pleasant. I just can’t get over it.
I’ve got a question for the pro-choice-for-men folks.
Are you seriously advocating that a woman, any time during her pregnancy, should have to choose between abortion, adoption, and raising a kid on a single-parent income, just because the Dad decides he doesn’t want a kid after all?
All the argument for it that I’ve seen involves some situation where the woman claimed she was infertile, or dug a condom out of the trash, or some bizarre situation like that. I want to know if you’re supporting it in the 99% of other cases, where the couple decide to have a baby, get pregnant, then split up. Or where they don’t use BC, or the BC fails.
And, since your argument is based on creating 100% fairness for the guy, why are you not concerned with creating 100% fairness for the woman or the child? Is it fair that a child grow up with financial support from only one parent? Is it fair that a woman have to choose between a morally questionable procedure, or investing 9 months in a baby and then giving it up, solely because she wants to make sure that any child of hers is supported by two parents? Why don’t you analyze fairness for all three parties involved, not just the guy?
If you want to argue that choosing between abortion, adoption, or a single-income-family is the least of evils, then go right ahead. But if you give for-examples, please use the most common kind of situation, and not some bizarre case you heard about once where the guy doesn’t actually consent to sex.
birth control is prevelent now, and all the same arguments that get thrown out to men about not having sex or getting “fixed” apply to women as well
Those arguments have always applied to women. The problem is that the anti-choice crowd sees pregnancy as a just punishment for sex, and therefore think a woman should be denied birth control and abortion. It’s not the case that “I didn’t want a baby!” is an excuse to evade child support for women.
SiF: Hmm…that’s trickier. Although their have been attempts to create artificial uteri, some of which were at least partially successful in animals. They were abandoned for lack of funding which translates socially to lack of interest. Though as far as I can tell, they would have been mostly very early premie rescue devices rather than conception to birth gestation devices. Still, you’d think that the pro-lifers at least would be all over that sort of technology: it would certainly save babies as premature birth is one of the leading causes of infant mortality. Strange that they aren’t interested. (Not but that pro-choicers should also be interested in helping women save the babies they chose to gestate, but “saving babies” isn’t the stated goal of the pro-choice movement as it is for the pro-life movement, which is why I’m harping on the pro-lifers.)
Most men are hurt/afraid of being held responsible for a child they can not father though… a monthly check is not a replacement for teaching and guiding a child.
I don’t know the law, so I could be wrong, but I find it hard to believe that if a man was sued for child support and said something like, “Ok, I’ll help pay but I want to help raise the child too” that a court wouldn’t grant him joint custody or at least visiting rights unless there was strong evidence that it would be against the child’s interest for him to be in contact with the child (i.e. history of abusive behavior). And I agree that in the absence of such evidence that the father of the child should have the right to be involved in that child’s life if he choses to be. (Except in the case of sperm donors who have neither parental rights nor parental obligations.)
Bjartmar,
Ok, the easiest first. Consent to sex is not consent to pregnancy. Unless I miss my mark that was a battle cry in favor of abortion. Why is it different for men?
You are absolutely right about fair for all parties. As it is it is fair to who though? Who has the most rights/control of the situation? I again put forward that we should assume equal custody for biological parents at birth. That then gives a father the choice to say no, I would rather be financially burdened than raise the child, or do his part to raise the child, or if the mother does not want to raise the child either they can decide together to give the child up for adoption.
As for investing 9 months into the child see comment 22. It is consistantly argued that the child is just a part of the woman’s body until birth. She is investing that time into a part of her body, not the child. If that is not so, if it is an autonomous being she is investing time into that truly throws a wrench into the pro-choice argument, as even negligent homicide is still a crime. That would make all high risk behaviors by a pregnant woman punishible. This is another one of those arguments people don’t want associated with one another…like a hologram, they want it to change depending on what angle you look at it.
Fair for the child is always a heart-wrencher… Does that mean you support requiring disclosure by the mother to facilitate positive identification of every biological father? I can think of very few cases where knowing who the father is would not be in the best intrest of the child. For medical and emotional reasons. Or is best intrest completely restricted to financial intrest? In that case do you support an auditing requirement to make sure support money is being spent on the child by the custodial parent?( I would prefer less govt. interference myself)
Mythago, there may be people who feel a pregnancy is a punishment. I am not one of them. That seems a bit barbaric since the one being punished the most would really be the child. But, in the same vein, do I not here that it is his “fault” that he is paying child support because “he got her pregnant”? I think that argument is weak on both sides of the line. It should be about the child, about good parenting, about equal access to both competant parents, and equal access to children BY both competant parents. Shouldn’t it?
@Dianne
1)
I’ve often wondered about one thing – here’s where I get really flamebait and speculative: is our tolerance for abortion simply a legacy of our weak history with birth control?
Imagine a society where everyone’s penis and vagina had an invisible internal “fertility on/off” switch that the person could control. Thus, pregnancy is 100% deliberate on the part of both parties. As such, unwanted pregnancy would be an extremely complicated and rare affair. In that world, do you think the “pro-choice” movement would have any legs? I don’t know that it would. Or would abortion be widely seen as infanticide? I say this, because to me, that’s the default assumption – the pro-choice mindset requires building some complicated logic in one’s head. It’s simpler to look and say “look – you killed a human” and be done with it.
2)
I think the trick is that the man is, by default, the secondary parent. Again, this is created by biology, which is unfair. Birth and breastfeeding put the mother into the driver’s seat, and the functional impossibility of 50/50 custody (outside the bonds of a live-in relationship) means she never gets out of it unless she screws up or chooses to.
This is also why the “safe haven” laws are intrinsically unfair (and unavoidably so). Safe-haven laws are created by what is effectively a thousand little hostage situations. There can be no deterrent to their use, or else the mother suddenly has a rational incentive to kill the baby instead. Searching for the father and then treating him as a parent (and thus putting the mother into a non-custodial parent situation) would create a massive disincentive.
This is why the second pillar of the “men’s right to choose” – safe haven laws – is also so messy. The safe haven laws are only run as unilateral adoption because of fear for the baby’s life. But in doing so, they give a woman an opt-out that a man doesn’t have.
What’s important to remember is that safe haven drop-offs only work when none of the parents who are aware of the child want it. Otherwise, it’s trivial for the other parent to say “where the fark is the baby???” and then track it down, as is their right. This still works for preventing infanticide, since you’ve got somebody who notices the baby is missing that way, too.
Which is why “father’s right to choose” misses a second stroke – safe-have drop-offs only happen in a unanimous situation. The trick is that, by concealing the pregnancy and birth from the father (which is pretty easy if you haven’t seen him since conception), it’s pretty simple to make sure he abstains from the “vote”.
SiF: Abortions would still happen because pregnancies would still go wrong, but they would be rarer and more likely to be necessary due to maternal illness or fetal non-viability. Elective abortion might still have a place depending on just how hard it was to nullify the birth control. People could still lie and say, for example, “of course I’ll marry you when the baby is born” when they have no intention of doing so. However, I can’t really think of a reason why anyone would do such a thing, except maybe because they were abusive sorts who wanted to play mind games. But those sorts do exist (in both male and female varieties) and so I don’t think that you could assume that even theoretically perfect birth control gets rid of the need for non-medical abortion entirely.
Ed,
The questions I asked basically boiled down to two things.
1) Are you actually serious? I want to hear you say that you support this, even outside of bizarre situations where the man didn’t consent to sex.
2) Why are you so concerned about fairness for men, but not fairness for the woman or kid?
I’ve read your response three times, and I really can’t see any clear answer to these questions. There’s a bunch of stuff about what other people think, and how about some other people are being inconsistent, but I really don’t see anything about what YOU think.
You are, of course, under no obligation to answer my questions. But sidestepping them is unlikely to get me to change my mind.
In the interest of quid-pro-quo, though, I’ll answer your questions. I’m not going to respond again if you don’t answer mine, though.
Consent to sex is indeed consent to the chance of pregnancy. This isn’t a political position, this is biological fact. In our laws, we have decided that consent to sex is consent to raise any progeny that result from that sex — this is a political position, which I support on the least-unfair principle. It is my understanding that you do not support it, under the everything-must-be-100%-fair-for-the-guy-and-screw-everyone-else principle. If I’m wrong on that, I’m open to being corrected, but so far you haven’t taken the opportunity to do so.
In answer to your question, “To whom is it fair”, I reiterate that it is fair to nobody, but the current is least unfair to all.
Next paragraph: The fetus is not part of the woman’s body. Her uterus is, and she gets to decide what to keep in there.
Next paragraph: In the vast majority of cases, there is no need to force the woman to identify the father. In certain bizarre situations, the rights of the child must be balanced against the rights of the mother…but those are the vast minority of situations, and if that’s the only way you can support your argument, you’re not going to change many minds.
As for an “auditing requirement”, no, I don’t think that an “auditing requirement” is necessary, because I think that in the vast majority of cases the custodial parent does spend CS money on supporting the kid. If they’re not, then that needs to be dealt with, but I don’t support an “auditing requirement” that presumes all custodial parents are guilty until proven innocent.
OK, I answered your questions. Your turn.
This is a great cartoon.
If there is one thing the men’s rights movement has achieved is making us all believe that men, in particular strait white men are now the victims of evil feminism.
Thanks to the MRAs one would think that women and more specifically feminism is to blame for all problems and men do not have to take responsibility for anything especially if they are strait white men. Because clearly they are the ones been wronged.
I think this cartoon covers that pretty well
In response to the 2 questions.
1 Support this? You mean a more fair and equitable solution to parenting custody and parental responsibility. Absolutely. Men opting out? Absolutely again, After they opt out the woman still has the right/ability to opt out, as we have discussed time and again. Even more so as she doesn’t now need to lie as she is the only legal parent remaining. If she chooses to raise the child on her own she is accepting responibility for raising the child as a single unsupported parent. Don’t say it is any more unfair to the child than a mother who voluntarily excludes a father from the childs life by not revealing his identity or not revealing the existance of the child to that man. I have yet to see laws that prosecute that.
2 I don’t think you read a large part of my post. Unless you define fairness for the mother and child as fairness DEFINED by the mother for the mother and child I am very much concerned with it. What is unfair about wanting equal legal access to both parents for the child and equal legal access to the child for both parents. What is unfair about wanting the parents to be on equal footing?
As for the uterus argument, fair enough. As I said, reckless endangerment/ negligent homicide are still crimes. If you neglect a child by throwing it out of your womb/uterus it is absolutely your choice…the same as dropping a baby out of my arms is a choice. I do have soverignty over my arms don’ t I? Again, I am on weak footing in this argument because I am pro-choice…but saying the child is both part of the mothers body AND autonomous is unrealistic.
As for treating the custodial parent as if they are guilty, in most states non custodial parents are treated exactly like that. They have wages garnished from their paychecks by law as if they would refuse to pay the support. They then submit these garnishments to the federal gov’t. as “collected monies” to get federal assistance. I see no difference in the intrusion of privacy between those 2.
To turn it around on you just a bit, why are you so concerned with protecting the rights and privacy of women and not of men or children?
My first thought on reading this cartoon was to picture my father, who abandoned 7 children by 3 different wives. I’ve been reading the different articles on here about men’s rights and reproductive choice and it interests me that these discussion always focus on casual sex resulting in unplanned pregnancy. Child support laws are principally written to address the situation of long term relationships/marriages where children result and one parent then decides that they no longer want to participate in the family.
Back to my father, who left my mother and I when i was two and she was eight months pregnant with my brother. Do MRA’s suggest that in this instance my father would have the option of not bearing any responsibility for his children simply because he decided to leave and it was my mother’s choice to raise us rather than put us up for adoption? Are you really seriously proposing this?
Child support is part of an obligation parents have to provide for the welfare of their children. We as a society have chosen individual responsibility for children’s welfare over collective responsibility for people’s welfare. That means that the many choices made by BOTH parents that result in a child, regardless of who has more or less choice, mean that BOTH parents are responsible for the child. To put it succinctly, child support is not a payment to the custodial parent for services rendered in raising your child, but rather your obligation to support the welfare of your child
Finally, the last panel of the cartoon really resonated with me. I’ve known women who got pregnant in all kinds of relationships from casual to committed where the father was all excited and supportive of the pregnancy until late in the pregnancy only to waltz merrily away leaving the mother holding the bag, as it were. How come these MRA discussion never talk about this guy? Why do they always focus on the poor man who just wanted to get off with a pretty girl and then finds out she’s gone and gotten pregnant without his consent and there’s nothing he can do about it?
“I don’t know the law, so I could be wrong, but I find it hard to believe that if a man was sued for child support and said something like, “Ok, I’ll help pay but I want to help raise the child too” that a court wouldn’t grant him joint custody….”
If you don’t believe this exact thing happens all the time, both for mothers and fathers, you are just not paying attention. This stuff is family law lawyers ‘ bread and butter.
Support this? You mean a more fair and equitable solution to parenting custody and parental responsibility.
No. I mean “that a woman, any time during her pregnancy, should have to choose between abortion, adoption, and raising a kid on a single-parent income, just because the Dad decides he doesn’t want a kid after all?”, as I asked in #56. But, although you haven’t come out and said it, I’m thinking that the answer is yes. And I think that that’s repugnant. And I am beginning to suspect that you’re avoiding couching it in the terms that I used, because you also recognize that it’s a repugnant to force women to make that choice. If I’m wrong, feel free to correct me.
Don’t say it is any more unfair to the child than a mother who voluntarily excludes a father from the childs life by not revealing his identity or not revealing the existance of the child to that man.
OK, I won’t say that. Actually, I specifically said that I wasn’t going to talk about that weird shit, because it’s, you know, weird shit. I have no idea why you’re telling me not to talk about it.
I did in fact read your post many times, however I had a hard time understanding parts of it because you kept bringing in straw men about fetuses being parts of a woman’s body and bizarre cases involving women who won’t identify the father and auditing requirements and crap like that.
If you neglect a child by throwing it out of your womb/uterus
It’s not a child. It’s a fetus. Once it’s born, then it’s a child.
And yes, if you happen for some bizarre reason to have a fetus in your arms, then unless you are a surgeon of some sort you should feel free to drop it. (ugh)
Noncustodial parents who refuse to pay support ARE guilty. So I see no reason not to treat them as such. The custodial parents whom you propose to subject to auditing, on the other hand, haven’t done anything wrong, so treating them as guilty would also be wrong. Is this so hard to understand? What’s the controversy here? I don’t get it.
To turn it around on you just a bit, why are you so concerned with protecting the rights and privacy of women and not of men or children?
Oh. My. God. Are you serious? I support LEAST UNFAIRNESS. I think it’s LEAST UNFAIR that a man financially support his biological children, even if he would rather not do so. I know you disagree, but that doesn’t mean that you have to pretend that I have no concern for fairness for the father.
As for my not supporting the rights of the child, I have no idea where you’re even coming from with that. The child’s rights deserve the MOST consideration. That’s why the child should be financially supported by BOTH parents, despite the burden on squirt-and-run dads. Because it’s LEAST UNFAIR.
I just wanted to pause and give Bjartmarr a box of internet cookies, for his rocking so very much.
We will simply have to disagree. I think it is least unfair to presume equal custody upon birth and work from there. If you minimize the value of a man as a parent outside of finance then we are simply too far apart.
By the way you are using that exact split argument I mentioned way up in comment 22. She invested 9 months into the “child”…until you want the child to be a fetus, then it is a fetus and inconsequential as a person. Please, pick one. That topic only came up because you mentioned the “child” she invested 9 months into in your comment 56.
As for mothers lying about who the father is or keeping the father out of the childs life, I hope it is as rare and “wierd” as you seem to believe.
Why, if I can ask, are you so obsessed with the finance part of raising a child? Do you truly believe that is the most important part of child rearing? If so shouldnt we simply award custody, ALWAYS, to the parent that is most financially secure?
If you minimize the value of a man as a parent outside of finance then we are simply too far apart.
Oh, cut it out. My position has absolutely nothing to do with minimizing the value of a man as a parent outside of finance and you know it. Argue your position in good faith, and I’ll participate, but I’m done with these childish straw men.
I haven’t raised a single straw man. I am stating a position and you keep throwing up statements and arguments that conflict your own position. You have yet to mention a single thing about fatherhood that was outside of the context of “pay the support”. I was off for the night but thought about something you said and wanted to address it.
“that a woman, any time during her pregnancy, should have to choose between abortion, adoption, and raising a kid on a single-parent income, just because the Dad decides he doesn’t want a kid after all?”
What choices are you allowing men faced with an unwanted pregnancy? Do you want to equalize the choices? Right now the man has the choice to do what the woman tells him and get the scraps she allows…or bankrupt himself fighting her in court because he made her angry. (and go to jail after the bankruptcy for being unable to pay support). Or walk away, as you say, and again, go to jail for not paying support. She can at least choose to raise the child as a single parent. He needs her permission to do that. It is repugnant to limit a womans choices…and nearly as deplorable to you, it seems, to give a man any.
I am off for a bit now. Thank you for the discussion.
Right now the man has the choice to do what the woman tells him and get the scraps she allows…or bankrupt himself fighting her in court because he made her angry. (and go to jail after the bankruptcy for being unable to pay support).
Hey, ed, your slip is showing.
I am against “choice for men” because it is ridiculous for many reasons.
If choice for men were to be implemented, it would have to be done in such a way that recognizes that a man’s choice results in another child in the world, needing alimentation, while a woman’s choice does not. One way to recognize that would be by taxing men extra, to support social structures and mothers parenting alone. But somehow that never comes up…
Let someone who just walked into the discussion explain this with a cool head.
Men and women have the same rights on how to deal with instances of unwanted parenthood. Let’s call these Case A rights. Either or both can sign away custody of the child, but would be liable for child support if the other parent wants to keep her.
Men and women don’t have the same rights regarding unwanted pregnancies, because they don’t both *get* unwanted pregnancies. Let’s call these Case B rights. To “equalize” men’s Case B rights with women’s naturally entails giving a man and a woman an “equal” stake on her body and livelihood. We’re not going to do this. There is to be no such “equity” here; a person’s body is entirely their own, and the notion that we need to give up the concept of bodily sovereignty in the name of equality is just about the weirdest perversion of the concept you could come up with.
Naturally, then, women have A and B rights, while men only really receive A rights. In a perverse example of placing equality of outcome over equality of opportunity, Choice For Men proposes to give men special case A rights that even women don’t have, so that somewhere a point by point T-chart has columns of equal length. The ability to force the other parent to raise the child with no support or prior agreement whatsoever isn’t a right that women have.
Now, I’m not so by the book that I’ll never agree with special or unequal treatment if real world circumstances call for them, but I don’t think they do in this case. In fact, Choice For Men usually argues exclusively on abstract, moral grounds, which will continue to be a huge strategic blunder for them from now until the time fathers who want nothing to do with their children become one of the beloved mascots of society.
I don’t see it that way at all. Abortion appears to be tradeoff of two, possibly three people’s rights: the mother’s, the fetus’, and the father’s. That a messy clump of cells sans nervous system is a full human being is not a position that I can credit a reasonable person to take. Even if no pregnancies were accidental, abortions should be accessible before viability, and for any reason whatsoever. If the woman is getting it just for fun, that may unnerve me a bit, the same way kids burning ants with a magnifying glass unnerves me, but the two situations would evince the same amount of concern from me at day’s end. Which is to say, not much.
At some point, I think the fetus gains rights. The mother still retains her rights to bodily autonomy, but I consider the conscious fetus’ right to life to be more important at this point, and the only place where the mother’s autonomy rights comes into play would be is if there are medical complications with pregnancy or delivery. The father’s rights during pregnancy are hard to work in, but I do believe that they aren’t exactly nonexistent. In a society where babies can be painlessly, instantaneously moved out of the mother’s womb and into an artificial surrogate uterus of some sort, should a father be able to insist on keeping a child that the mother wants to abort? Yes, I think he should. But as of now, doing anything like this would require a dangerous, possibly life-threatening surgery to be undertaken on the mother, so I cede the balance in favour of women’s bodily autonomy.
“Men and women don’t have the same rights regarding unwanted pregnancies, because they don’t both *get* unwanted pregnancies. Let’s call these Case B rights. To “equalize” men’s Case B rights with women’s naturally entails giving a man and a woman an “equal” stake on her body and livelihood. We’re not going to do this. There is to be no such “equity” here; a person’s body is entirely their own, and the notion that we need to give up the concept of bodily sovereignty in the name of equality is just about the weirdest perversion of the concept you could come up with.”
Men don’t get unwanted pregnancies they get unwanted children that they are %50 responsible for.
Equal stake on her body and livelihood? you are kidding right?
She still decides if the child goes to term or not. Unless you are somehow arguing that single parent’s can’t raise children on their own how is this impinging on her own body or livelihood?
Iv always believed choice goes along with responsibility. Responsibility with no choice is slavery? right?
Um, isn’t the morning-after pill alwaystaken before you find out about your pregnancy?
I’m not assuming that women have practical access to post-coital birth control. I am conditioning my advocacy of choice for men on women having such access which in my opinion should be a human right.
I think it should be women’s responsibility to ensure that any children they give birth to, are adequately provided for, and, conversely, to not give birth to children who aren’t adequately provided for. The answer to your question depends upon whether the father is willing and able to take on the entirety of that burden.
If I sell you engine oil, in the expectation that you are going to put it into engines, and instead you use it to fry chips which poison people, then it is 100% your responsibility.
It is also their parents’ choice to have them, the mutual friend that introduced them, The college who admitted both him and the mutual friend, resulting in their becoming friends, and so on, whose choices in lead to that outcome. However only one person’s choice guaranteed that a child would be born.
Observing that a particular situation is unfair to one of the parties, does not imply that fairness to that party is the only consideration.
The feminist solution puts women first, born children second, and men last. (Now there’s a surprise.) Since there will be some cases in which the child cannot be provided for, a “born children first” approach would demand that pregnant women abort in such circumstances. Feminists do not do this.
My solution is 1. provide women with practical access to post-coital birth control at every feasible stage of pregnancy, and 2. Attach to that choice the responsibility to ensure than any born child is provided for. Mothers can discharge that responsibility by entering into binding contracts with fathers or other willing parties. If she cannot find willing parties, and cannot provide for the child herself, then she should not bear it. The state would be the provider of last resort for the child, as it is now.
There will always be poor children. There would be fewer of them if fewer women gave birth to inadequately provide-for children. Perhaps in addition to demanding abortion rights for women, feminists should start demanding that women take responsibility for their reproductive choices, not the choice to have sex, but the choice to have a baby.
If she chooses to have a baby it’s her choice.
Strangely enough, I’ve used the word responsibility several time, but not either of the words “blame” or “fault”.
That increase would not necessarily come about if there was a cultural shift toward women taking responsibility for their choice to give birth.
I agree that there is little hope of such a shift.
The tainted cookie dough analogy is inapposite because the purpose of the transaction between you and me is that you end up with tainted cookie dough. However a pregnancy is not the purpose of recreational sex.
If a man who has fathered a child and wants to be part of the child’s life, then yes he should have some rights. But when a man has fathered a child and wants no part of the child’s life then he should have no rights.
I have not read much of this blog so I am not too sure what most contributors’ feelings are towards MRAs. So I hope I wont offend anyone when I say that they are a total menace.
If you look at the make-up of MRAs they are predominantly white men. As the corporate world, judiciary, military and government are controlled by white men one can only assume that an MRAs understanding of protecting men’s rights is the protection of male privilege and domination despite history proving how disastrous this is.
When a woman falls pregnant, she is the one who must carry the child for nine months, go through the pain of child birth, bring the child up and put the child through college etc.
Once a man has had sex with a woman and she falls pregnant he can just walk away. The worst that can happen to the man is that the court can order him to make a financial contribution.
To the MRAs this is a complete attack on a man’s rights. After all pregnancy is the woman’s fault, it can never be a man’s fault.
MRAs have done a really great job of making white men look like the biggest victims on the face of the earth. If you believe white men are victims then you believe men need not take responsibility for anything as women and more specifically feminists are the cause off all the grief. And you firmly believe male privilege and domination is the right way to move.
By understanding the MRAs you can understand why some men believe their rights are been attacked if they are been forced to contribute financial to a child they did not want.
The nice thing about this cartoon is it forces the man to see things from the woman’s point of view by suddenly making him have to experience everything that the woman must experience. Maybe if MRAs tried a bit harder to see things from the woman’s point of view instead of their own privileged point of view they would not be so quick to make a scene each time a law or article or a speech etc showed empathy to a women or a female cause.
I know this is a derail – I’m not going to say it more than once – but the initial post does give a little leeway for making criticisms of the cartoon that aren’t related to the parentage/pregnancy/child support debate.
This Kevin Moore fellow never draws people of color – at least not as far back as the beginning of September 2007. The two maybe-exceptions are one depiction of Musharraf and one of a bearded, bespectacled, turbaned “average Iraqi.”
I am really tired of reading this man’s cartoons here and no one acting like there’s anything wrong with that. Amp makes an effort to include all different sorts of folks, at least. I don’t think it’s too much to ask that he do the same.
Hi,
Not all white men are Bushies with wealth, position, and freedom. Many are working proles that have not even a glimmer of the world of the elite. They might have actually had the golddigger experience and now are sadder and much poorer.
Do women use pregnancy to gain money? Yes. Especially in impoverished areas. The choice is simple. Mom, whore, or factory slave. Of those three, Mom is the least restrictive and most valued. I am not upset because the male could have used methods to avoid pregnancy and decided not to. Some women do entice men into being fathers. Just as some men are deadbeats.
Daran, you keep avoiding the point that the woman’s choice, or lack of choice, has no effect on her parental rights and obligations.
If you rape your wife, and then lock her in your basement for nine months so she can’t abort, she is still responsible for the child. Period. If you refuse to agree to sign away your rights to your child, she can’t exercise some kind of ‘choice for women’ and wash her hands of the kid. She would have to hope that her state has a statute that would allow the law to sever your parental rights because you fathered the child through rape; but “I didn’t choose this” is not a get-out-of-parenthood-free card for women.
What you are really advocating is destroying the concept of parental obligations in favor of giving men a unilateral right that women don’t and won’t possess.
Men and women have the same rights on how to deal with instances of unwanted parenthood. Let’s call these Case A rights. Either or both can sign away custody of the child, but would be liable for child support if the other parent wants to keep her.
Or, more accurately, that both parents have legal obligations to the children that include financial obligations, and while one parent can choose not to exercise their right to spend time with the child as long as that doesn’t result in neglect (what happens if *both* parents say “Go live with the other one”?), neither can jettison their obligations unilaterally.
Katie, that’s obviously a legitimate critique. I’ll tell Kevin about your comment.
How important is the bolded language?
Seems like there’s an enormous difference between, say:
-Agreeing to this demand before pregnancy, just in case the BC doesn’t work
– Making the decision in the early first trimester, and
– Making the decision in month 8.
“I am really tired of reading this man’s cartoons here and no one acting like there’s anything wrong with that. ”
There have only been two cartoons posted here, right? So while this is a legitimate complaint about the cartoons themselves, I don’t think it’s a legitimate complaint about the commentariat. Most of us haven’t read much of Kevin Moore’s work.
Actually, I have a couple other comments related to the Kevin Moore cartoons:
1) Would Mr. Moore give us permission to post the whole things? I would prefer that, if he’s okay with it.
2) As I mentioned to Amp, I’m not enormously fond of these cartoons as political or artistic pieces. They’re too sledge-hammery for me. I do like them being posted on Alas, though. I like the new content and new idea generation; I like the pieces as conversation starters. I’d like them more if Mr. Moore starts to address the issue of showing people of color.
Before sex both men and women have equal rights – the right to use contraception and the right to abstain. If both forgo the right to abstain…
Men’s choices in contraception are:
1) condoms (cheap, sometimes free, extremely easy to get, no side effects unless one has a latex allergy, and they’re as effective as the pill),
2) withdrawal (we all know how effective this one is), and
3) a vasectomy (surgery but there is a possibility of reversal)
Women’s choices are:
1) the pill and other hormonal contraceptives (expensive, can be hard to get, many side effects, effectiveness can be diminished by common life events like getting sick or by forgetting a pill)
2) Inserted contraceptives (expensive, can be hard to get, messy, could cause an infection, etc)
3) Morning after pill (expensive, if you can even find a place that carries it good luck finding a pharmacist who will dispense it, many side effects)
4) Abortion (expensive, invasive, side effects, not everyone has access to one so they can be very hard to get)
If both the man and woman decide to have sex and they both decide not to use protection then they must accept that they’re putting themselves at risk for pregnancy.
If a woman gets pregnant she can use her last option of contraception – abortion. If she can’t or won’t obtain one for any reason (religious beliefs, personal beliefs, money issues, no clinic in her area and no transportation or time to drive to another, protesters scaring her away from the clinic, being promised by her mate that he’ll help if she doesn’t get one, etc) then she’ll keep the pregnancy.
Once the baby is born both the man and woman have equal rights regarding parenting:
1) They can both sign away their parental rights and put the baby up for adoption.
2) Both men and women can be the custodial parent while the other pays child support. Both men and women can choose to pay child support and they can both choose what role, if any, they want in the child’s life.
3) Both can share custody.
4) Both have the option to leave the baby at a safe haven.
5)Both are responsible for the care of the child and neither have the right to abandon the child.
So there you have it, everything is as fair as it can be.
“So there you have it, everything is as fair as it can be.”
Unless of course if one parent wants the child and the other doesn’t. Then the guy has no choice. She has choice he has no choice but he shares 50% of the responsibility for the child.
Responsibility without choice is wrong regardless of gender.
He has choice regarding all reproductive decisions that involve his own body.
but doesn’t have choice regarding reproductive decisions that involve his own money?
You do realise some guys have had to re enlist in the army to pay child support or face jail?
It was the only way to maintain the same income they had before.
Not paying child support doesn’t affect her body. Why doesn’t he have a choice to not pay child support if he didn’t want children?
Why doesn’t he have a choice to not pay child support if he didn’t want children?
Because the focus of the law and of policy is what is best for the child.
the law is an ass.
Women and men should both be held accountable for the choices they make. It was her choice to allow pregnancy to term if he had no choice he shouldn’t be held accountable. If she can’t afford to raise her children that she decided to have it was her own choice. Just because he happened to be the sperm provider and one time sex partner is hardly an ethical reason to tax him for 18 years. If he backed out before the child was born she knew he wasn’t going to be there. Holding someone else accountable for the decisions of another is morally bankrupt.
Holding someone else accountable for the decisions of another is morally bankrupt.
Not in this context. The child needs financial support. The law will look to available parents before looking to the government to provide that support.
Would you say not financially supporting a child, walking away from it, is less morally bankrupt?
A “yes” answer is, to me, morally bankrupt.
Anne:
These are not contraceptives, but forms of post-coital birth control. Your framing these as equivalent to men’s choices (all pre-coital) is an attempt to obfuscate the distinction that is at the heart of the issue.
It is birth, not pregnancy, which gives rise to a need for child support. If she gets pregnant, and if post-coital birth control is available, then she and she alone has the choice to avail herself of these options, or to decline to, which means that it is her choice and her choice alone which determines whether a baby will be born or not
If she can’t obtain an abortion, then he should not be entitled to C4M. I have already said that choice for him should be contingent upon the practical availability of post-coital birth control to her.
If he will enter into a binding contract with her to “help” which spells out exactly what help he will provide, then of course he has renounced his right to not provide that help. If he won’t, then she should think twice about placing trust in any informal “promise” he might make.
If she doesn’t want an abortion for personal or religious reasons, then she is willing to bring up the child on her own (or can find another person/people willing to help her) then she has to choice to do so. Note that if he is opposed to abortion for personal or religious reasons, and is willing to bring up the child on her own, then she could still have an abortion against his wishes. C4M still leaves her with more choice than him.
The man does not have the right to even know that the baby exists.
Only the person in whose physical custody the baby lies at the time has the option to do this. In practice this is far more likely to be the mother.
If you walk away from the child before it is born it is the same morally as having an abortion. She was the one who decided against the potential fathers wishes to become a parent.
If the child is born against his wishes he should have the same rights and responsibilities as an anonymous sperm donor.
Mandolin:
Leta:
In what way does being forced into the army or go to jail not “involve his own body”?
No it is not. And just so that everybody is clear: My argument in favour of choice for men does not depend upon this false equivalence.
similar morally?
to proclaim a desire for the child not to be brought to term is equivalent to an abortion?
Is that more appropriate?
So the law forces drug addicted pregnant mothers into cold turkey for the duration of their pregnancy, in order to prevent the newborn child being drug addicted? No of course it doesn’t, and feminists would be horrified if it did.
The focus of the law is what is best for government funds. The focus of feminists is women’s autonomy. Children’s interests come second, and men’s (including the interests of baby boys, who will grow up to become men) come nowhere.
No. To proclaim a desire to see something happen is not morally equivalent or even similar to causing it to happen. If I were to proclaim my desire to see George Bush choke on a pretzel it would not be morally equivalent to choking him with a pretzel.