My daughter was named before my ex-wife and I got engaged and long before she was conceived; we both liked the name “Katherine,” and the middle name was a tradition for daughters in my ex’s family — and one that worked well with Katie. Had my daughter been instead a son, we might have had more trouble deciding. But we would have decided together, with the same focus we did with our daughter’s name — focusing on a meaningful name that would also be a good name, one that our child could bear happily through life.I cannot imagine instead choosing to name my child as a publicity stunt. And I sure as hell can’t imagine doing so over her mother’s objection:
A new father has named his baby girl Sarah McCain Palin as an endorsement for Republican ticket…and without his wife’s consent. Mark Ciptak of Tennessee says he picked the name to “get the word out” for McCain-Palin because he can’t give a lot of money to the campaign. “I took one for the cause,” he said. He wrote the name on the documents for his daughter’s birth certificate, ignoring the name his wife picked, Ava Grace.
You took one for the cause? You took one for the cause? Seriously? Dude, you chose to ignore your wife’s wishes and name your child for a sputtering campaign. Your daughter took one for the cause. Your wife took one for the cause. You are a douchebag nonpareil, one who views your wife as a subordinate and a daughter as property to do with as you please. Which does explain why you’re a McCain-Palin supporter.
Seriously, I’m not sure who’s most aggrieved here. Sarah is a perfectly cromulent name (at least daddy didn’t name her “McCain”), but her middle names are “McCain Palin,” which is going to be almost as popular a middle name pair as “Dukakis Bentsen” when she’s five. One suspects at some point she’ll want to change those to something more normal, like, say, “Grace.”
And his daughter will also know from press clippings that her name was a cheap stunt, not a name picked for her to bear through life, but a name designed to throw support to a campaign. She’ll also know that her dad did so of his own accord — and did so without consulting her mom. Which will tell her exactly how much she’s valued, and how much her dad values women.
And of course, mom now knows that even after going through one of the most arduous tasks a human can endure, her husband will ignore her wishes and do as he pleases.
Amanda is surprised that a father can sign off on a name without input from a mother; having been through it, I’m not — the form for the birth certificate is presented after a long and stressful day, and while I vaguely remember signing it and turning it in, I think it’s just assumed that a family wouldn’t name a child without talking it over. (IIRC, my ex could have signed and turned it in too, but at the time she was on a morphine drip after an emergency ceasarean. It seemed only fair that I could walk down the hall to the nurse’s station.)
Maybe that should change, or maybe the cure would be worse than the disease; regardless, the real solution is that men learn to respect their wives and daughters — and sons, for that matter. If you view your child as property, you can name them however you want, treat them however you want, and do with them as you please. If your view your children as people, you realize that your responsibilities to them far outweigh anything you can possibly imagine, and that you owe it to them, from the first day of their life, to treat them as a human who will grow up to some day be an adult. I never forget that I’m not caring for a child; I’m raising a future woman. And as such, I know damn well that my daughter is better off growing up as Katherine Marie Fecke than Obama Biden Fecke.
I assume the man will name the next child Major Major
Or (for Airplane fans) Roger Roger
fantastic blog. I esp like the part where you state I never forget that I’m not caring for a child; I’m raising a future woman
I’m sure I’m not the only one who immediately thought of Ronald-Ann, the little girl from the Bloom County comics:
“I was born on Election Day, 1980. And in a fit of pure, unbridled patriotism, my mother named me after him.”
I predict that the kid’ll change her name to Hillary Obama the minute she legally can.
Something like this just adds to the growing impression that the Republican Party has been reduced to a coterie of ranting nutburgers. And, man, do I feel sorry for that little girl.
Actually, his wife didn’t pick the original name, he and his wife chose Ava Grace together. (at least according to this)
Which makes him an even bigger asshole at least in my mind.
You left out possibly the most awful part of the story — the mother was the last to know. The father was talking to the press and to friends and family before he disclosed it to the woman who had just spent 9 months growing a sperm-egg combo into a human being.
Some people think they can do any darn thing they want with their kids, just because the kid’s body came out of theirs, like the waste that comes out of their bowels. My mom swelled up like the proverbial poisoned pup when I announced dissatisfaction with the name she gave me, but she was accepting enough a few years later when I got it legally changed to one of my own invention that just suited me better. [Not Angiportus, that’s my nom de mouse.] But at least she didn’t name me after a politician, and at least she didn’t have the choice taken away from her without her even knowing it.
I think anyone who names a child ought to consider that name provisional–I have always been surprised that more people don’t name themselves when they grow up. But that still doesn’t mean the parents shouldn’t choose it with care and consideration for everyone involved–the kid and both parents.
I really have nothing to add, other than I enjoyed seeing the word cromulent in “print.”
Well, the political is the personal… :)
” You are a douchebag nonpareil, one who views your wife as a subordinate and a daughter as property to do with as you please. Which does explain why you’re a McCain-Palin supporter. ”
” Something like this just adds to the growing impression that the Republican Party has been reduced to a coterie of ranting nutburgers. ”
” Bill Clinton is a douchebag, sexist ass which explains why he is an Obama-Biden supporter and just adds to the growing impression that the Democratic Party has been reduced to a mob of godless, degenerate moonbats. ”
tell me how these three comments are not equally irrational and idiotic.
Bill Clinton named his daughter for political reasons and without telling Hillary until he had first informed the press? You’re right, he IS a d-bag who treats his daughter as property and his wife as a nonentity.
Sarah is a nice enough name… hope she can bury the rest of it ASAP! Poor thing.
Is this really any worse than name your child apple, or Zowie Bowie? Really many people do not think when they name their kids, or we wouldn’t have so many running around with names from soap operas.
This mans only real fault was not consulting with the mother of the child before he unilaterally decided on a name.
Roger, the problem with declaring it ‘irrational and idiotic’ to note that the Republican party has gone crazy is that it leaves us at sort of loose ends in the event that it’s true, doesn’t it?
—Myca
There HAS to be a bag of rocks somewhere that we can all throw at this guy.
Does he not realize that the decision he has made for his daughter will tag along with her for the rest of her life, or until she is old enough and decides to change her name.
Parents have the right to name their child whatever they would like, but not only did he do it for an idiotic reason, but he completely disregarded his wife’s input as if her thoughts on the decision didn’t count.
Last two paragraphs from PG’s link:
…in other words, this is most likely a provisional name rather than the child’s future. It’s a publicity stunt which has successfully highlighted how absurd these people are. Thanks?
” Roger, the problem with declaring it ‘irrational and idiotic’ to note that the Republican party has gone crazy is that it leaves us at sort of loose ends in the event that it’s true, doesn’t it? ”
setting aside questions as to whether either political party deserves the support of any of its citizens, washington being full of thieves and fools as it is, it seems to me irrational and idiotic to declare any large entity as ” coterie of ranting nutburgers ” based upon the stupid actions of one person.
i am fairly active at the local level and have attended party caucuses and observed first hand crazy and delusional conservatives. do i paint the entire political party as crazy based on these observations. to me it appears that we have no more evidence in this case either.
This is a bit sad. There are serious issues here and a distinct hint of 1950s revanchism going on beneath the supposedly feminist commentary. There’s no reason why a father shouldn’t be able to sign an birth certificate, and no reason why the father ignoring the mothers wishes is any more terrible than the reverse. I really thought we’d got past all that.
james,
“no reason why the father ignoring the mothers wishes is any more terrible than the reverse”
1) Please let us know when you find a woman going to the press to brag about her end-run around an agreement she’d made with her husband about their child’s name.
2) Please let us know when you find a man who spends 9 months growing a baby, then goes through the pain of delivering it, only to have his wife act as described in 1).
Are you serious?
I have heard excellent arguments that the woman should have primary responsibility for determining what happens while the child is inside her, since it is, after all, inside HER and not inside someone else.
but there is no way in hell that she somehow retains”ownership rights” post delivery, because of her sex. Post delivery it is a shared child, with shared responsibility for parenting.
Really? So if the mother of the baby walks out of the delivery room without the kid, and the father never was there to begin with and legally is liable only for financial support, who gets prosecuted for child abandonment?
A) Both, because “post delivery it is a shared child, with shared responsibility for parenting”!
B) Only the mother, because realistically in the aftermath of childbirth and in the absence of the father, the law goes after her alone.
I didn’t say that women have ownership of the babies they deliver — I don’t believe in an ownership premise for children’s legal status at all — but I do think it’s even worse to pull a stunt like this after the difficulties of pregnancy and delivery. Women are treated as peculiarly responsible for the babies they deliver, whereas in the hypothetical I posed above, if a couple had adopted a baby together and it was found abandoned, both would be subject to prosecution.
(c): Neither. Did you forget that option? You don’t want your kid, you don’t need to have your kid. You can’t dump it on the roadside, but you don’t have to keep it, and prosecution isn’t a realistic threat.
This just is not true. Mothers can arrange to give up their kids and avoid all responsibility. Mothers are responsible for the babies in a legal sense–which is what you are talking about–because they WANT to be, not because they HAVE to be.
There is a very limited arena in which mothers have additional responsibility, which is in making the turnover go OK. As in, don’t leave them on the sidewalk. But that is not “peculiar;” it is a fully normal byproduct of giving mothers the control over the timing and place of delivery. Which is a good thing.
This hypothetical is inane. You don’t need to abandon a baby and be subject to prosecution. It is a false choice. You can give it up for private adoption, or can arrange prebirth to give it to the state as a ward. You can also (if you are fortunate enough to live in a state where is is accessible) abort it in the first trimester, or even sometimes in the second trimester, thus avoiding the issue. And in many states, you can drop it at the hospital and walk away; there is a special “baby drop box” for the purpose and you don’t even need to fill out a form.
Yes, mothers get prosecuted for abandonment. But the reason they get prosecuted is because they make crazy choices, like, say, leaving a live baby in a dumpster instead of bringing it in for adoption. They are prosecuted for the choice of method, not for the act of declining to parent.
Yes, mothers get prosecuted for abandonment. But the reason they get prosecuted is because they make crazy choices, like, say, leaving a live baby in a dumpster instead of bringing it in for adoption. They are prosecuted for the choice of method, not for the act of declining to parent.
I don’t think you’re as familiar with family law and its intersection with criminal law as you seem to believe. Even if a mother leaves a kid in a perfectly safe place like a hospital nursery, she is committing abandonment because she holds legal custody.
Abandonment in a safe place =/= adoption.
Handing your baby to a responsible adult and then running away =/= adoption.
In adoption, the holder of custody transfers this legal status, not just the physical possession of the child, to another person or the state. Until this transfer is complete, the prior custodian is at all times responsible for child and cannot abandon it without being liable to prosecution for abandonment. The prosecutions are not limited to people who make “crazy choices.”
There is a reason that states recently had to pass Safe Haven laws*: because prior to such legislation, mothers who left their kids, even in safer places than a sidewalk or dumpster, were liable to prosecution for abandonment. The whole point of such laws is to create an incentive to bring the baby to a designated safe place, and the inducement is the promise of exemption from prosecution. Apparently the threat of prosecution was sufficiently realistic that 48 legislatures — to varying degrees, depending on the state/territory — were creating some level of exemption from it.
There is a reason a Michigan woman drove all the way to Nebraska to abandon her child; Nebraska’s Safe Haven law covers children up to the age of majority. In other states, the age is far more limited; a dozen states won’t extend the exemption for a child more than 3 days old, which means that in those states, a woman who hemorrhaged during delivery and was in the hospital for 4 days and walks out without her baby on the 5th, without having completed the transfer of legal custody, is subject to prosecution.
* For those interested in these laws, I recommend Carol Sanger, “Infant Safe Haven Laws: Legislating in the Culture of Life,” 106 Col. L. Rev. 753 (2006).
First of all: are you arguing against a straw historical man? IIRC, all 50 states currently have some form of safe haven law whereby a mother can leave an infant shortly after birth. They did not do that to protect the mothers from prosecution for abandonment–mothers could already have given their kids up for adoption in the usual manner, without too much fuss. Rather , they did it to protect the kids (remember them?) from the thankfully-rare parents who would leave them in a street or alley, rather than fill out paperwork and make an appearance to give up custody to the state.
After all, the process of transferring legal custody is not especially onerous. in some instances it is quite simple.
Take the private adoption market. If you decide early enough and happen to be in a social or racial class where babies are rarely available for adoption, you will not only have practical and legal assistance with giving up your child for adoption, but you can often get all your prenatal and delivery costs paid for. Unfortunately, this is more difficult for nonwhite mothers to attain–a social problem resulting from racism in adoption selection–but is still possible at times.
Even if you do not investigate the private adoption market, it is still possible to begin the process of putting your child up for adoption prior to the birth of the child, which greatly reduces the fuss you have to deal with after birth. And of course there is the abortion option, for some women. Seeing as gestation takes quite some time, there is usually at least some opportunity to prepare prior to the actual birth, hmm?
And even if you wait to make that decision until after birth–as will obviously happen to some women for various reasons–the biggest difficulty is that you have to transfer legal custody. Forgive me for saying so, but that is not an especially huge burden on the mother as compared to the societal benefits that we get from making sure those transfers are appropriate, ethical, protective, and the like.
What you appear to be decrying is the fact that in many cases a parent cannot decide sua sponte to get rid of her infant or child “right now this very moment no waiting,” like one could do with an old shirt. That he (or she–this applies equally to all parents who are in control of the child at the time of abandonment, FYI) would have to fill out some papers is really that much of a bother to you?
And on that subject:
Yes, and is this supposed to be an argument for letting them do that? There is a reason that many states do NOT allow you to give up a child to the state, especially an older child who you have been parenting for years, without at least some interaction and understanding as to why. Heck, even Nebraska officials don’t get it; they don’t know if she even told the father. Does that bother you at all? “Honey, where’s John?” “Oh, I took him to Nebraska, he’s gone now.”
And, I might also note, this is not happening with great frequency, and is only happening in Nebraska, which is why it makes the press. Nebraska had about 26,000 births in 2004, so we would expect roughly 6500 births since the law was passed in July. From then to now, a whopping two teenagers and 16 other children (nine of who were siblings from the same family) have been dropped off for safe haven.
In the rest of the country, plenty of kids get put up for adoption or fostering (which is occasionally a MUCH better option for both the parent and child.) Part of the normal adoption process that “safe haven” allows parents to avoid is a meeting with folks who will, for example, make sure that the parent knows that fostering is even an option, or who will, sometimes, try to do things to help he parent keep the kid.
The reality is that “mothers” as a rule were NOT being prosecuted for abandoning their children, because most mothers who did not want their children followed one of the many avenues to give their kids up in a system-happy way.
And, in fact, “being prosecuted” is also deceptive as it attempts to conflate completely different circumstances. Prosecution serves two roles in these cases and they are not the same.
Sometimes it serves to punish mothers who actually left their babies to die, or get hurt–the proverbial dumpster. Personally, I think that prosecution is appropriate in those cases, and I have no objection to prosecuting those mothers. But sometimes, to my knowledge it was/is used as a means of getting an unwilling mother into court to deal with the issue (and sign appropriate papers)–but not to actually suffer criminal charges. I am sure that you can be technically liable for child abandonment if you leave your infant in the ward of a major city hospital, with reasonable notice, but how many people actually get punished for doing it? I am too lazy to do a lexis search on it, but are you claiming that such punishment would be standard at all? I suspect that most of those cases are going to get dismissed or filed, for good reason.
So when you say:
I don’t know what you think i am claiming. If i was a family law specialist I would say so. But if you’re a family law specialist, let’s hear it. If not, then enough with the ad homs already, because they’re not helping your arguments.
Sailorman, I don’t think you should be raising talk of strawmen when you’re accusing me of being indifferent to child welfare. My original point was that despite your rhetoric about shared responsibility for children immediately after they have been delivered, that is not actually the case, and my example of one way in which this is not true is the prosecution of mothers who have just given birth for walking out of the hospital without the baby, whereas if the father wasn’t there he faces no liability.
I question your knowledge of family/ criminal law because you make absurd claims about how mothers only “get prosecuted is because they make crazy choices, like, say, leaving a live baby in a dumpster.” When I point out that the fact that we have to have Safe Haven laws that exempt women from prosecution for abandonment so long as they abandon the infant in a non-dumpster site like a hospital, you say I’m arguing “a straw historical man” — even though the first safe haven law was enacted in Texas in 1999. This is why I said that you might be less knowledgeable in this area than you thought — and although I’m not an overall family law specialist, I was on Prof. Sanger’s research team for the article I recommended above, so in the particular area of safe haven laws and the prosecutions of abandonments, I’m better informed than the average person. There aren’t safe haven laws in D.C., and Alaska, Nebraska and Hawaii just enacted theirs in the past year. Given the pace of many criminal prosecutions, that means there may well be women currently in the midst of prosecution, never mind serving time, for having abandoned babies in a manner that now would be exempt from prosecution. I’m sure they see the issue as a “straw historical man.”
But hey, so long as you can twist the discussion from the differential levels of responsibility borne by mothers and fathers into an accusation like this:
What you appear to be decrying is the fact that in many cases a parent cannot decide sua sponte to get rid of her infant or child “right now this very moment no waiting,” like one could do with an old shirt. That he (or she–this applies equally to all parents who are in control of the child at the time of abandonment, FYI) would have to fill out some papers is really that much of a bother to you?
why bother addressing silly things like the law?
[shrug] You seem to be saying that the primary reason to pass, or primary effect of, a safe haven law is to protect the mother from prosecution. You have not raised, or responded to, any of the child-centered issues w/r/t safe haven. You have not discussed, or responded to, the question of whether any burden on the mother (related to the requirements to do an adoption formally) is justified, and/or linked to the child’s interests. You have also not discussed, or refuted, my claims that there are a variety of alternate paths to avoid prosecution, which are not especially onerous and which often are of great benefit to the child. Combined with what appears to be your approval of the recent nebraska law, then yes: from my perspective it is indicative of a certain indifference to the welfare of the children involved. You may feel differently in real life, but IMO you haven’t demonstrated that in your posts.
I am glad to know that you have participated in the research, and assume that you have access to hard data. Can you tell me, then, precisely or roughly, a) how many prosecutions there were in (some location and period that you studied) for mothers who left their babies in a safe location such as a hospital, and b) how many of the prosecutions resulted in actual convictions for abandonment?
As I have not made a career of studying this issue, I may be wrong. If women are/were frequently not only prosecuted, but convicted and punished, for leaving their babies in a hospital nursery, then I am certainly incorrect. you see to think i am, as you mention women serving time. From the various family law and criminal cases which I have seen, this doesn’t seem to match the usual behavior of judges or prosecutors. But that is anecdotal and I may be wrong as applied over a larger scale.
If this thread is following the “have you stopped beating your wife” style of discussion, then I am not going to participate further. Suffice to say that:
1) At no point have I said that any law, whether it be the state of the law prior to the Safe Haven laws or Nebraska’s new and unusually broad law, is better than another. Incidentally if you read the article I pointed out, you’ll find that these laws don’t help what was supposed to be the target group — otherwise neonaticidal mothers — because they doesn’t address the psychology of such people. Nor have I said that parents shouldn’t be prosecuted for child abandonment. I only have pointed out that these prosecutions with regard to newborns will fall more heavily on mothers because they are the ones necessarily immediately present after the birth. I put this forward as a counterpoint to your claim that as soon as the baby is delivered, mother and father have equal responsibility. You have done nothing to refute my example; instead, you simply say that because you consider it so easy for the mother to avoid legal liability, the fact that liability exists in the law is irrelevant. You also do your best to shift the subject from whether there is a difference in responsibility under the law to a completely different subject than the equality of mothers and fathers in responsibility for offspring. If we’re not going to discuss the relative responsibilities of mothers and fathers — the actual point of this post — then the conversation is over for me.
2) If you cannot distinguish “The whole point of such laws is to create an incentive to bring the baby to a designated safe place, and the inducement is the promise of exemption from prosecution,” from your strawman of “the primary reason to pass, or primary effect of, a safe haven law is to protect the mother from prosecution,” then that’s another reason for us not to continue conversation, as I find it wearisome to state a point and have that completely ignored in favor of what the other person wishes I had said. If you don’t believe that the incentive plan was lawmakers’ intent, try talking to some of the legislators. “The intention of the law was not to track the number of children who were abandoned. It was to get the baby into a safe haven, and keep the mother from being criminally prosecuted.” — Assemblywoman Joan Christensen, a lead sponsor of NY State’s Safe Haven law.
3) A quick walk-through on Safe Haven laws: they don’t require mothers to engage in any kind of adoption procedure. Indeed, the anonymity is advertised as an attractive option: leave your baby here, and no one need know that you ever were pregnant. They also vary in the degree to which they exempt someone from prosecution: some states guarantee that the parents of unharmed infants will not be prosecuted for abandonment, others reduce the severity of charges or make relinquishing a child at a safe haven an affirmative defense to prosecution. In Texas, the first state to create a safe haven law in 1999, someone who intentionally abandoned a child of which she had custody, care, or control had committed a third-degree felony if there was no intent to return to the child. Before NY’s 2000 passage of a safe haven law, a mother who left a baby at a hospital without identifying herself or taking other legal steps for adoption faced arrest for child abandonment, a felony. My research didn’t involve tracking prosecutions, prior to the enactment of these laws, that would not have occurred after the law took effect. Prosecutors’ offices don’t keep separate statistics on child abandonment/ neglect arrests, prosecutions and convictions based on the location where the child was abandoned.
Come on, Sailorman, you know better than pulling this. Knock it off.
PG – I’m really having trouble following your argument. Could you clear it up a little?
What’s the connection between child abandonment and naming rights? I don’t get it? You seem to be saying that because absent fathers aren’t prosecuted for abandonment (for the technical reason that you can’t abandon someone without being in their presence first), fathers who are present – and hence could be charged with abandonment – shouldn’t be able sign a birth certificate, to name a child, and attest to something they witnessed. That doesn’t seem to make any sense.
james, the argument is that because of differential circumstances, mothers’ rights and fathers’ rights immediately after birth should not be equal. (At least, I think that’s what’s being said.) Given that one side has greater responsibility – one side is more likely to be hit with legal recriminations, in practice if not in theory, or so the argument goes – that side should have greater rights. Safe haven laws are being used as an example of this.
Not sure how I feel about all this. I err on the side of equal parenting rights from birth, and am doubtful of the number of women actually punished for using safe havens. Though given many women in this situation fear for their anonymity more than any other legal repercussions, so I can easily see how a legal song and dance can be damaging nevertheless. How much of it is necessary book-keeping to help the child and how much is dickishness from the law?
But the following attribution:
… is ridiculous. There’s a difference between being able to name a child and secretly signing papers to turn your baby girl into a bad publicity stunt while your significant other is safely sedated by painkillers.
James, please re-read my comments. Point to where I said, “because absent fathers aren’t prosecuted for abandonment (for the technical reason that you can’t abandon someone without being in their presence first), fathers who are present – and hence could be charged with abandonment – shouldn’t be able sign a birth certificate, to name a child, and attest to something they witnessed.”
There seems to be a great deal of confusion in this thread about what I actually argued, so I will summarize without reference to legislative history, law review articles, etc.
1) I ask James to point to an example of a woman doing what the father in this news story had done, and secondarily to a man who had given birth whose wife had done what the father in this news story had done. My point was that if a woman names the baby she’s delivered without consulting the father, she doesn’t go to the press with the story.
2) Sailorman twists this into a claim that I was saying a woman had ‘”ownership rights” post delivery, because of her sex.’ He declared, “Post delivery it is a shared child, with shared responsibility for parenting.”
3) I challenge his assertion by pointing to the fact that in the case of a biological child who just has been born, if the biological father wasn’t present, he won’t be charged with abandonment, but the woman who just delivered the baby will be. My point was that Sailorman’s claim of shared responsibility for parenting beginning immediately after delivery doesn’t seem to mesh with how things actually work; the biological connection between a bio-mother and child necessitates that she be present and thus responsible in a way that the bio-father need not be and often isn’t.
4) Sailorman accuses me of indifference to child welfare because I had noted this difference in the legal liability of mothers and fathers for post-delivery abandonment.
5) I come to the conclusion that there is not much point in conversing with people who wilfully ignore stuff that you spent your time thinking about and typing, in favor of what they think you mean, even though they don’t trouble themselves to read your words carefully or to quote them when they declare you to have no more regard for a child than for an old shirt. People who do that aren’t merely disagreeing, they’re disrespecting, and while I welcome disagreement, I don’t need more disrespect in my life.
I assume then everyone is just as disappointed when any father or mother names their child after a political figure they admire or respect. I cant wait to see how many kids with Washington or Lincoln read how disappointed you are for a proud father raising his daughter. Yes he should have talked to the wife but if it meant that much to him then I hope she would understand and agree with the name.
Mandolin, I tried to set out my conclusions, and how I came to them.
It’s like that for all people who talk only about the rights of A group and never mention a relevant B group: if they want to avoid being perceived as biased towards A, then they can change what they say. But it’s usually the job of the speaker to do that (or not) and it’s not the listener’s fault if they are perceived as biased. Or, as it was once succinctly put to me, “if you believe you’re not racist and don’t want anyone to think you are, the easiest way to avoid that is not to do anything which would make people think you’re racist.”
If I have arrived an an interpretation which is not representative of PG’s stance, I am sorry. It is always unpleasant, as I know, to have your position misstated. I will revise my knowledge of PG’s position accordingly. But I am, in rereading PG’s posts, still comfortable with the manner in which I reached my initial conclusion.
I still believe PG is taking a very narrow focus, and that she (he?) is not doing a good job of balancing the various interests.
PG Writes:
October 16th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
There seems to be a great deal of confusion in this thread about what I actually argued, so I will summarize without reference to legislative history, law review articles, etc.
The fact that you ask someone to give an example of a man giving birth in order to support your point is, well, ridiculous. And the issue of going to the press–so what? You know as well as I do that parents (of both sexes) do things to/with their children which are against the wishes of the pther parent. It happens all the time. Which isn’t good, but is true.
You weren’t literally saying that she had ownership rights–if you did, I would have said so–but you clearly are implying that she has a level of rights which cannot be equaled unless the man delivers the baby. And you DID say that. Since that doesn’t happen, your statement remains clearly biased towards unequal rights.
Yes, and you then add to the claim by saying, in summary,
The woman controls the sharing. She can control whether or not the father even knows about the baby. She can also control whether she has a baby at all; where she delivers it, and how much responsibility he has.
Simply focusing on her added responsibility is a red herring. She has immense control over the process, including but not limited to the amount of responsibility she will have post birth.
This is a deliberately false summary: you have omitted two posts, both of which are pretty relevant. try this:
Remember that?
Is there some reason that you left that out? because that is where you (again) ignore things.
See, the funny think (combined with the bullshit about misquoting you) is that this isn’t what I said. I didn’t say that YOU don’t have regard for a child than an old shirt, i said that you wanted parents to be free:
*You appear to want parents to be able to dump their children under safe haven laws.
*You appear to want safe haven laws to be extended, unless I am mistaken. DO you want them to be extended? DO you approve of the nebraska law?
*You appear to want to give a level of freedom to the parents which allows the parents to dispose of their children as if, from the parent’s perspective, the child is an old shirt. I.e. the parent can (literally) leave them in a drop box and drive away.
*You have not–still–mentioned a damn thing about how you think this affects the kids involved, where the balance should be, or anything else.
you think I am “willfully ignoring” you? No: I am reading every word in your posts. they just don’t present an especially pleasant position.
Then change your position.
OK, Sailorman, you’ve had enough time to make your point, and I agree that there’s too much a tone of personal insult in your posts, so I’m going to ask you to step out of the thread. Thanks.
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