I am pregnant, almost 3 months along, and the father of this unborn child wanted to have this child but changed his mind when I was already pregnant. I guess he realized how much it’ll cost to raise this child specially now that he’s attending school full-time. Half of the times he wants this child but half of the time he doesn’t.

We moved from one state in the west coast to another state in the east coast to start our lives together.
Things haven’t been good, we’ve been argueing all the time and now with this child-to-come we don’t know which way to go. He has asked me to leave, as we live in his relative’s house I would be the one that has to go, many times and I can’t do it, starting because of financial reasons.

I do not agree with abortion. But the father of this unborn child has been making me feel horrible and guilty for this pregnancy and for not opting to have an abortion. But as I said, sometimes he likes the idea of having the baby, sometimes he doesn’t.

I love him but we can’t continue to live the way we’ve been living. He says he loves me too but has asked me many times to leave him. And stating not to care about where I go or what I do.

What can I do? If I had his help with money I would leave. I have no place to go to, my family lives in another country and can’t help me, and I’m this situation without any help, whatsoever.

The right being sought is not properly analogous to the woman’s right to an abortion, but to those laws in almost all jurisdictions that allow a new mother to drop off her baby at a firehouse or hospital within three days of birth and … just … walk … away … with no legal rights or responsibilities after that [except that in California they can retrieve the baby within the first 28 days].

The fact that men can’t do something a lot like that is fundamentally unequal treatment under the law.

The 72 hour clock should start as soon as the man first finds out about the fatherhood. In the case at bar that would have given the woman plenty of time for an abortion. In all cases it gives the mother an incentive to tell the father early, rather than create one of those ambush situations that one occasionally hears about in child support cases. In the status quo women have two incentives to delay notification: the men won’t bond which means the judge is unlikely to award any visitation which gives the woman one less problem [from her standpoint] and a larger support check, and she gets to see if he’ll become a high earner which may make support payments lucrative enough to make it worth the bother of dealing with him and risking some co-parenting.

-dk

“This is a real case from Canada: A 68 year old bed ridden man with a part time home visit nurse. She upped his meds and forced sex to bet pregnant. She did get pregnant. She also got a massive child support award.

He had zero say in whether or not he was going to have sex: He had zero say in whether or not he was going to be a father.

Now, according to the opposition to male reproductive rights, this is right, proper and fair.

So, what neo-con and the rest are actually arguing is that no male is human enough to be worthy of one of the basic human rights. That is, the right to choose to be or not to be a parent. This argument is a pro-slavery argument, not a medical argument.”

So the government is looking out for its own interests, in reality, instead of the child’s? You got some legal inconsistencies here.

But anyway, if you don’t want courts to do it, try to find me a LEGISLATURE that is going to vote for new laws under which fathers can opt out of child support by contracting with the other partner before sex.

Well, that is the point, isn’t it in the end. Things are moving in that direction. Public awareness has been sparked through that lawsuit case, debates like this one. This is all a preview to getting the legislature to do something.

It’ll still never happen. No legislature wants to take back to the taxpayers an argument that runs, essentially, like this: “We don’t think it’s fair that fathers should have to pay any part of the cost of raising children they didn’t want or intend to conceive. When a mother can’t cover the cost alone, we think you, the taxpayers, should help to support the kids so their fathers don’t have to. So here’s your new law and your increased tax bill for Medicaid, AFDC, and other children’s services. Pay up!”

Well, people said abortion couldn’t happen either, but look what happened. People said the KELO act couldn’t happen either, but then it happened. So tell me exactly, why this will never happen?

The point I am trying to make is that the government has a self-interest here.

Well, it seems to me that the reasons you and Neo gave about not letting men opt out was because of child’s rights, now you say it is also because the government is corrupt and won’t do jack. If it is both, then perhaps both should be changed, eh?

It’s certainly unjust, for one thing, that only the woman must undergo pregnancy or abortion, while the man who made the same choice escapes all physical consequences (and then complains when he has to experience any consequences at all!) For that matter, it’s unjust that men can’t experience the joys and rewards of pregnancy.

You’re using unjust as interchangeable with unfair. I tend to think that will become a problem. And given that I read the end comments here, I’m right, it did cause a problem and I thank others for mentioning it so I don’t have to.

In response to Niko, I do appreciate his insights and his knowledge of the law. It has helped me understand greater the possibilities. It doesn’t mean I agree with him, but it does mean that I like information regardless of the source. So long as they aren’t part of a PsychOps that is, always gotta be careful about those ; )

– insisting that anybody who believes that the male parent ought to bear some part of the burden must be just as benighted as the supporters of slavery — and a hand-flapper to boot! — really doesn’t do a whole lot to advance your point of view.

Well, to defend Sally, that’s not what she meant. If I may speak on her behalf. I do tend to read a lot and have better reading comprehension given the amount of time I spend on science fiction and debates. So, the way I percieve it, is that Sally said that your defense of your position is just as invalid as the defense for slavery. She didn’t say you had the moral problems of slavery in your position, simply that your defense of society is the same in terms of lack of validity as the defense of society used for slavery.

Her problem, to me, is that you try and defend your position using things that don’t work and shouldn’t work. Your position, as far as I know, is simply the note that trying to change things shouldn’t be done. A conservative and a status quo position. You may be open to solutions, but there are a manifest of reasons you think those solutions probably will NEVER work, as you said before.

I guess I’m not, at least not on subjects like this one where nothing close to a moral consensus exists.

A lot of people who do support legislation giving men rights or are willing to, are Constitutionalists. Some may do so to stop abortion, some may do so because they believe it is as just as you can get with abortion, and some may just be lazy men who don’t want to pay. Regardless, probably the majority are believers in the Constitution, like me. And believe that law should be Constitutionally derived, not derived from judges, lawyers, and the whims of legislatures.

A lawyer probably does not have the freedom to believe in the Constitution, I understand that, I just think it is a loss.

Btw, moral consensus isn’t really the benchmark. Constitutionality, however, is. Constitutionality isn’t based upon mob rule, for good reasons.

t’s ironic that what triggered this discussion is the recently-filed federal lawsuit in which Mr. Dubay, a father ordered to pay child support, is appealing to the courts — not, you will note, to legislators — for change in the child support laws.

As you noted, Niko, the legislatures are too greedy and politically afraid to do anything. So we use fire to fight fire. If the judges want to proactively make shit up as they go along, we must take whatever advantage in the media and in the courts as we can get. Especially with 2 new Supreme Justices.

Just because I dislike the tactics of terrorism, doesn’t mean I wouldn’t cut off a terroist’s head on national tv to support the war effort. Apply it as you will, to disliking judge made laws.

I submit, because it’s the only way he might possibly win.

If you read the article Neo linked to, they said they probably knew this wouldn’t win. They wanted to generate a public debate, because they knew the media would not give a damn about a Bill when they would about a lawsuit. It is clever and effective. And it works, proof example this debate here and among elsewhere.

like I said, his lawyers don’t have the luxury to believe in the Constitution as we do. I don’t blame them for it, they are lawyers after all. They got their own thing to do.

About the deadbeat dad scenarios. Current law discourages dead beat dads and encourage women getting pregnant from dead beat dads. Until you change that, complaining that dead beat dads would benefit from a change in legislation is being inaccurate. What you actually want is a law that encourages good dads, punish bad dads, encourage women to marry good dads and punish women who marry bad dads. That is what the law should do, rather than try and engineer child support as if we were back in the 50s and women couldn’t work and were ostracized for being divorced.

Times have changed, laws should change with them. But just because the law has changed, doesn’t mean you can bypass Constitutionality. A judge should conform to the Constitution as the law of the land, not make up whole new laws. If a judge conforms to his balance of powers, then I have no problem with victories derived from judges.

It’s heartening that that has not happened here.

It is mostly because Neo writes via the long essay format. Semi-literate profanity users tend to avoid having to read long stuff. And when the comments are just as long, if not longer, than the OrigPost, then profanity users like the KosKidz tend to become disorientated.

She still gets emails, of course. People will email her things they would never say in the comments, since they would get eviscerated.

Just one more thing: I appreciate the care that the commenters here have taken to keep this discussion civil. It’s an intensely emotional subject and in many parts of the Internet it would have descended by now into insults and profanity. It’s heartening that that has not happened here.

Regardless of dictionaries, “fairness” is all too often used in a childish way to complain about the nature of things, as in the observation that only women give birth, whereas “justice” is something that’s in our hands to produce — or not — given the nature of things.

Beyond this, I’m just repeating myself, so I’ll stop shortly. But I did want to make one last attempt to be clear about the point at issue here — it’s NOT about just removing all burdens from the “male parent”, for example, nor about fathers who simply “do not feel like supporting” their children. Right? Can we all be clear on that? The very fact that you and others on this thread repeatedly fall back on the stereotype of the “deadbeat dad” illustrates the blinkers that you’re wearing here. I’ve said repeatedly that there’s no question that men should be held to their legitimate family responsibilities — so the question comes down to what exactly is “legitimate” in these situations. And my point, one more time, is that, SINCE there now exists a choice about whether or not to bear a child even after pregnancy (which there wasn’t before), THEN to exclude men entirely from that choice is to render their coerced support for it illegitimate.

Several people here have objected to “judge-made law,” as opposed, I guess, to law made by legislators. It’s ironic that what triggered this discussion is the recently-filed federal lawsuit in which Mr. Dubay, a father ordered to pay child support, is appealing to the courts — not, you will note, to legislators — for change in the child support laws. Why did he choose to do it through the courts rather than through the legislatures? I submit, because it’s the only way he might possibly win. Legislators won’t change this law unless a sufficient majority forms among their consituents to compel them to do so, and I don’t think any of us believe that will happen any time soon. An individual judge, on the other hand, who agrees with Mr. Dubay’s point of view on principles of justice might possibly do so, or at least, so Mr. Dubay and those who are supporting his lawsuit must have reasoned. I wonder, should Mr. Dubay prevail, if those of you who have been complaining about “judge-made law” will object to the result on the ground that “judge-made law” is bad and that legislators, not judges, should have overturned our existing child support laws?

When Solomon ruled that the baby should be cut in two and each woman claiming maternity be given half, his ruling was Fair, but clearly unjust; which he knew would force the mother, in the interest of ultimate justice, to yield her claim. The definitions I’ve read never mention morality in defining fairness, but do in defining justice. Fairness follows the prescribed rules, Justice appeals to something greater- morality, God…

It also seems that some might be equating support for the idea that, under current law, men should have the right to ‘opt out’ of parenthood under certain conditions to mean that we think it is a good idea, or moral, or best for society in general. I certainly do not, but society has to face the ramifications of the law as it’s been allowed to develop, and confront the flaws in it to be convinced to revise it. Allowing inconsistancies to stand only prolongs injustice. It also goes to show you what happens when Judges who only see things ex post facto in practice, ‘make law’ from the bench.

I’m still failing to see how a woman is not only absolved of the responsibilities of having sex, but rewarded because she carries the baby. Neither males nor the state made it so, so if she carries greater risk (of burden), she also carries greater responsibility, no? If you disagree, you upset the balance, and disincentivize responsibility. I think Ymar has said this previously, and I’ve yet to read a response that made sense to me. And if you want to lecture me about the negatives of single parents, what has the current law done to reduce that?

“If a woman gets pregnant and knows that she has NOTHING to guarantee her support while child-raising, will she be less, or more, inclined to abort?
Perhaps she’d be far less inclined to have sex in the first place…Just because it wouldn’t work out that way all the time doesn’t mean it might not have a better batting average, and a better impact on society on the whole, and isn’t that really what this whole discussion is about?

“If we get to the point that men get to choose whether or not to support the children they help create, what happens to the institution of marriage?”
It becomes invaluable to women who want children, and thereby to men who want sex regularly. Seems pretty clear to me.

I think what we have here is what happens when legality sideswipes morality. If you are to be legally consistant, men would have some ‘choice’ as well, but since they don’t, we start to see the damage done to morality by the manipulation of and reliance on legality. Don’t expect the law to save everyone, even children, because it can’t. The concern of the law should be for the interests of society on the whole- individual protections are an integral part of that, but only a part. It certainly seems that the more we’ve tried to legislate the complications of interpersonal relations, the worse things have gotten in that arena.

BTW: This kept coming up earlier- the ’statistic’ that 50% of marriages end in divorce is false. If you believe it, point me to a reliable source.

You evidently see some kind of important distinction between the concepts of fairness and justice, but if you’ve explained it — and you may well have done so somewhere in these long comment threads — I haven’t seen it or grasped it. In my mind, the terms are nearly synonymous. I just looked up the terms in a few dictionaries and found that quite often, the word “fairness” is used to define “justice,” while the word “justice” is used to define fairness. I can see that the distinction is extremely important to you, but I don’t see why. Meanwhile, I can’t respond to the charge of being “fixated on fairness rather than justice” when I can’t figure out why that is so significant to you.

And as for flapping my hands and supporting slavery — well, that’s all just way beyond me. There are three primary parties involved in each unwanted pregnancy: a male parent, a female parent, and a child. Behind that triad is a fourth, more generalized party: society. There are also burdens (or inequities or injustices or unfairnesses or whatever it is you want to call them) created by unwanted pregnancies. One way or another, the burdens have to be distributed among those four parties. If you can offer good strong reasons why the burdens should be distributed in a way that results in your preferred outcome — that is, so that none of them fall upon the male parent — great, do it. The process really shouldn’t require any name-calling; reasoned argument will do the trick if the ideas are sound. Or, if you can propose a solution that does away entirely with the burdens, so that nobody has to bear them, by all means do that. But this line of argument — insisting that anybody who believes that the male parent ought to bear some part of the burden must be just as benighted as the supporters of slavery — and a hand-flapper to boot! — really doesn’t do a whole lot to advance your point of view.

I don’t think I’ve stated anywhere that the present state of the law is perfect or even, necessarily, the best way. What I have tried to do — and what I think Neo was trying to do in the posts that triggered this discussion — is to point out that there are rational reasons why the law is presently constructed this way, and to point out some of the minefields we are going to have to cross if we change it. You may have heard the expression, “Hard cases make bad law.” This situation could have been the inspiration for that saying.

Justin, your comment either misunderstands or mischaracterizes nearly everything I’ve said. Just for starters, there’s no logical connection whatsoever between my observation that it is unjust that only women get pregnant and your inference that therefore I must think that this is a sufficient reason to entitle them to child support. Nor does your observation about the “official government position” on abortion have anything to do with my comment about some people’s opinions of the justices and injustices involved.

But that’s enough for now. It’s late. Good night!

I see. So the mere fact that women can get pregnant entitles them to child support, even though they have every chance to terminate the pregnancy and not require child support at all. That’s a… well, let’s just say that I’m glad I don’t have to defend that position.

Would now be a bad time to mention that in most cases the woman had the option not to have the physical consequences, as well?

Many would argue that it is profoundly unjust to the unborn child when a mother chooses to end her pregnancy.

As far as I’m aware, the official government position is that that is a negligible option. Of course, no one said the woman had to have an abortion; contraception would have worked just as well.

society has concluded that hardship to men is preferable

Translation: men are the stronger gender, so if anyone needs to get shafted, it should be them.

or forcing society to foot the bills for those children

Or maybe a family that wants the child, and can afford more than both unfortunate parents combined?

It’s a matter of recognizing that, painful though it may be, there are times when the real and the ideal flatly refuse to coincide.

I usually prescribe going with the thing that most closely approximates the ideal. But obviously we disagree on that philosophy.

Maybe someday technology will erase some of the barriers to justice that presently exist in this area.
…you’re tempting me. Really, really bad.

Yes. So then don’t assume what I’m assuming. The “you” in my sentence was a general “you”, as in the British “one”.

But you specifically do seem fixated on this idea of “unfairness” rather than justice, and under the rubric of unfairness you want to gather in such things as the fact that men can’t get pregnant while women can, and then you metaphorically flutter your hands and say that, you know, nothing’s perfect, ideal and real don’t coincide, etc., etc. Not to make assumptions, Nikolaides, but I’ll just observe that just this sort of obfuscation has characterized every obtuse defence of an immoral status quo since well before slavery. “Society has concluded that –”, whatever. The point is to question what society has concluded. As for your defence of “society” in this regard, I can’t do better than to repeat your own words at the conclusion of your previous post: “Fair, unfair, just, unjust — that’s not really the point. It’s just too expensive.”

As I see it, the problem with your argument is that you have selected only one of the multiple injustices created by unwanted pregnancies and are focusing on that one injustice as though it were the only one in the situation. You concentrate on the undeniable unfairness of holding fathers responsible for the consequences of an unwanted pregnancy when they cannot choose to end it, while the mother can. But that’s only one of many unfairnesses in this situation. It’s certainly unjust, for one thing, that only the woman must undergo pregnancy or abortion, while the man who made the same choice escapes all physical consequences (and then complains when he has to experience any consequences at all!) For that matter, it’s unjust that men can’t experience the joys and rewards of pregnancy. Many would argue that it is profoundly unjust to the unborn child when a mother chooses to end her pregnancy. And, as I have repeatedly argued, it is unjust to the rest of society to hold it financially responsible for the needs of children whose fathers do not feel like supporting them. There are many more injustices here. No matter how you resolve the situation, some will crop up. The choice is not whether there will be injustice. The choice is, who will bear the burden?

I am not denying the existence of the injustice you are upset about. I am just saying that in this situation, society has had to choose among a number of unjust solutions to a particularly thorny and intractable problem. Right now, society has decided that the least unjust solution is to compel men to pay for the needs of their children, whether or not they wanted the children to be born. While this certainly does visit hardship upon some men (not all men, since, in my experience, not all men who pay child support resent that obligation), society has concluded that hardship to men is preferable to the various other unjust alternatives — such as forcing unwilling women to undergo abortions; forcing children to grow up without the economic support of one of their parents; or forcing society to foot the bills for those children. It is not so unreasonable, when choosing whether an unavoidable hardship is to be born by children, single mothers, or fathers, for society to decide that fathers are the best-equipped to handle it. This is not a matter of “shrugging off” the injustice. It’s a matter of recognizing that, painful though it may be, there are times when the real and the ideal flatly refuse to coincide.

Maybe someday technology will erase some of the barriers to justice that presently exist in this area. But until that happens, perfect justice in situations of unwanted pregnancy is simply not going to occur, no matter how often society decides to shift the burdens around among the players.

Look — behind the laws and routines governing the current situation lie a number of things: inertia, cynicism, and, no doubt, the simple, old desire to have somebody else pay. I’d venture to suggest a further factor as well — an unholy but long-standing alliance between puritanical segments of the right, that wants to punish sex (especially the extra-marital kind), and misandrist segments of a feminist left, that wants to punish men (or, at the very least, is indifferent to their claims). Caught in the intersection where these forces overlap are those unfortunate males who, just like a myriad females, have had sex and then have been surprised to find that it resulted in pregnancy. Unlike all the women in that situation, however, these people are now trapped — and doubtless a number have been trapped.

In any case, sure, as long as you, or someone close to you, is not in that situation himself, it seems like it’s easy to do the old “life’s unfair” shrug and just keep on doing what we’ve always been doing. But I don’t think a society can sustain that kind of wilfull blindness in the long run. I think, instead, that ignoring the issue of justice, particularly in the name of simple unwillingness to pay, will exact a price — in terms of a growing skepticism and cynicism regarding the law in this area generally, and particularly as it’s applied to men, and a spreading disinterest among men in the claims by women for “choice”, rights, and justice regarding abortion.

For those who liked the “good old days”, that may seem to be just fine. But I think they’ll be in for a sad disappointment — if they think that we can simply re-don a mythic 50’s innocence, I think they’ll find it instead a bitter parody. But any who understand the irony inherent in the phrase “the good old days”, particularly as it applies to these issues, should be willing at least to look at the one-sided injustice that is threatening to undermine some genuine and important social achievements.

But anyway, if you don’t want courts to do it, try to find me a LEGISLATURE that is going to vote for new laws under which fathers can opt out of child support by contracting with the other partner before sex. It’ll still never happen. No legislature wants to take back to the taxpayers an argument that runs, essentially, like this: “We don’t think it’s fair that fathers should have to pay any part of the cost of raising children they didn’t want or intend to conceive. When a mother can’t cover the cost alone, we think you, the taxpayers, should help to support the kids so their fathers don’t have to. So here’s your new law and your increased tax bill for Medicaid, AFDC, and other children’s services. Pay up!”

The point I am trying to make is that the government has a self-interest here. Since legislatures vote on budgets, that’s even more true if you are looking at the legislature than if you are looking at the courts. As long as that self-interest exists, no branch of government is going to be motivated to make it easier for fathers to opt out of paying child support. You aren’t going to get much support from voters for such legislation, either — not once they realize their wallets are directly affected. The constituency of reluctant fathers just isn’t big enough. Fair, unfair, just, unjust — that’s not really the point. It’s just too expensive.

.

But, of course, “conception” isn’t the point at issue here — birth is the point at issue. And it’s certainly not a matter of breaching an agreement — the whole point of this thread is that no agreement is involved. Indeed, the point is precisely that one “party” — which just happens to be the male party — has no power whatsoever to make any kind of “agreement” in these matters that has any legal standing. And that’s simply wrong. And it’s not, necessarily, for the courts to determine this. It’s for we, the people — a people with a basic interest in unbiased justice — to determine, and to instruct our courts on.

I don’t have prejudices one way or another. I know that is hard to accept, but that’s just the facts.

There is no reason for unplanned or unwated children to be born.

Is that a support for abortion I hear?

Because more people know of more ways to both threaten and protect children than ever before. In the interest of keeping the peace, the government has had to intervene, lest teams of cell phone connected pedophiles and vigilante mobs who run out to kill anyone who gets called “Chester the Molester” in an IRC chat room don’t rip the nation apart.

How exactly does child support protect the children in those cases you outline, however? Which was my original point, of course. If the state wants to protect the child, enforced child support isn’t the correct method.

My arguments are based upon the historical-traditionist model. If the fabric of our society depends upon the protection of our children through current means, then it is easy for me to disprove that by going back into history far enough that such methods did not exist, yet America still stood strong. I don’t think it is a fear people should take counsel of, that is all.

I won’t go into the extent of Flenser’s arguments, since his differs a bit from mine. Just to make that clear.

Anyone that actually thinks today’s world is better than any time in America’s past, has an obligation to support their conclusion with the facts that explain why child support is responsible for such benefits.

People like me, who believe today’s world is the best, don’t have to offer explanations because I don’t believe enforced child support was responsible at all.

That’s the difference, you see.

Another solution not offered is simply court enforcement of legal or non-legal oral agreements before or during sex that the female should take contraceptives in addition to the male.

Since the child ain’t concieved yet, it ain’t got no rights to be blunt. Even if presumably it had rights after being concieved.

So, if the male or female breaks the agreement, legally the courts should be able to enforce that the side that broke the agreement should not be able to hold the other side financially liable.

If you have prenuptial agreements, there is no reason for lack of another.

Because even if you aren’t married, the courts can make you do things you don’t want to do. So you might as well start the legal process early on, even if you aren’t married and are just cohabitating.

It won’t solve all the problems, but it will reward the smart vs the dumb, which is all we can do.

Neither one of these sad, sorry human beings is fit to be a parent. The poor kid deserves better than either one of them.

You mean like condoms?

What the law and society are saying is the no male has ANY right at all to choose to be or not to be a father. The law as it is says that all reprorductive rights are female only. That is a big problem.

When a society says group A has no rights, that society has lost the right to govern; which is the situation we are now in.

Now, if we were to say that we will put massive amounts of money into a male contraceptive and provide it free to all males, the current law in combination with that may have some real rights in it. That as we all know is not going to happen. The opposition to wasting money on a male contraceptive is simply too high.

Put it all together and we have a situation in which our law says your son is a non-human for a goodly part of the law.

But this only works in a society where sexual intercourse is tightly linked not just to physical maturity, but to responsible social and (ideally) emotioanl maturity.[/i]

While I understand the nostalgia for the fifties, and the desire to believe that “back then, people were responsible, marriage and children were tightly linked, and everything worked out fine,” I tend to take that idea with a grain of salt, given my family history.

My father has a half brother, the child of his father’s first wife. After my grandfather and his first wife split up, my grandfather moved back in with his mother, my great-grandmother. My great-grandmother apparently always hated my grandfather’s first wife, and she would not take the kid. Neither did my grandfather make any effort to keep in touch with his son. To this day, my uncle wants nothing to do with the rest of my dad’s family.

On my mother’s side, her father walked out on my grandmother and her three children, took off for California and was never seen again. Mom got *one* letter from him twenty years later, and that was the last she heard of him. My grandmother received no financial assistance or even contact from him, ever again, and was forced to go to work with no qualifications other than a high school diploma, supporting three preschool children. Furthermore, this was back in the day when divorced women in particular were heavily stigmatized–the stories my grandmother has about some of the slimeballs she had to deal with after her husband abandoned her are hair-raising. (No sexual harassment laws back then either–some of these slimeballs were her coworkers and even bosses.) The effects of this abandonment had profound emotional consequences on Mom and her two brothers that (in my opinion) have seriously f***ed up her life, both past and present, and has had consequences for us children as well.

Now I absolutely agree that the cultural concept of the linkage between marriage and childbearing is fairly weak in modern society, and I think is a bad thing for all sorts of reasons. But based on my own familial experiences, I’m not entirely sure how tight the *behavioral* (as opposed to conceptual) linkage was in the first place, not to mention the real nastiness of some of the concepts that supposedly buttressed it (for example the idea that a divorced woman is a “fallen” woman who is easily sexually available).

In short, because of abortion, women can “walk out” on raising a child. Men cannot. Not without a lifetime of evading prosecution.

This is nothing short of sexual discrimination against men. Men should be able to toss 300 or so dollars at whoever to stop being the father of a unborn baby, right?

(just thought I’d add some controversy, hehehehe)

Most of the law in this area has been made by the courts, rather than by legislatures. The courts authority to make law ranges from the uncertain to the non-existent. When it comes to deciding what is best for society the situation is crystal clear; the courts have no authority whatsoever.

The older law on these subjects was explicitly based on the good of society. The current law is based on “fairness” to “individuals”, if the individual is a woman, and the interests of society, if the individual is a man. (Neo’s post makes this admirably clear.) In other words, we have libertarianism for women and social-conservatism for men. Or as the old saw puts it, “Women have rights, men have responsibilities.”

Current law has quite plainly not served the interests of society as a whole, and as this discussion indicates, it has not even done a good job of being fair to individuals. But nothing is likely to change until control of the process is wrested back from the courts.

You will have to tell me where you looked. I just had a look at the Fourteenth Amdt and it makes no reference at all to biological differences between male and female. Feminists have relied on this fact for generations in breaking down laws which discriminated against women. It appears a tad hypocritical for women to now announce that of course biological differences should be considered, as long as such consideration leads to outcomes which they favor.

..the decision to have sex (and to assume its consequences), in which both take part

This is rendered meaningless by the fact that your whole post is a justification for a system in which the “consequences” are entirely up to the woman. Sex has whatever consequences for her, and for the man, that she wishes it to have.

But your post is an interesting example of the degree of rationalization of which educated people are capable.

I agree with ben-david; this entire discussion is based on a wildly inflated sense of individual rights, and an obliteration of the sense of individual obligation and responsibility.

Although nnc does not state it so baldly, the thrust of her argument is that women have an obligation to themselves, and men have an obligation to defer to women. Whatever else can be said in favor of this position, it flies in the face of the idea of equality under the law, of the idea that man and women should be interchangeable in the eyes of the law, and the idea that every individual should have a choice as to whether or not to become a parent.

I think all of these ideas are a little dubious myself, but they form the basis for the whole “pro-choice” feminist argument. You cannot reasonably scrap them just because they are now being employed by men, and expect to keep them for use by women. At least, not without looking completely self-serving.

There is much wrangling over the relative rights of individuals - male vs female sexual partners, or parents vs. fetuses.

And there is repeated yearning for some imaginary “good old days”.

The underlying issue here is that social mores and the contract of marriage DID once function as very clear indications of intent and committment to conceive and nurture children.

Certainly there were messy divorces and bad situations in the past.

But the clarity of that marriage marker is the missing aspect of the “good old days” that I think many here are nostalgic for.

But this only works in a society where sexual intercourse is tightly linked not just to physical maturity, but to responsible social and (ideally) emotioanl maturity.

The discussions about competing individual rights indicates only how far we have sunk into an adolescent, self-indulgent view of “adulthood”.

The problem is that children - sometimes of advanced age! - are now free to have sex. But the results of sex still require adult maturity.

[i]In the British colonies, and in the states of the United
States (with the exception of California, Idaho, Missouri,
Oregon, Texas and Utah), there is some procedure (usually
termed filiation) akin to that described above [i.e., affiliation in Great Britain], by means
of which a mother can obtain a contribution to the support
of her illegitimate child from the putative father. The
amount ordered to be paid may subsequently be increased or
diminished (1905; 94 N.Y. Supplt. 372). On the continent of
Europe, however, the legislation of the various countries
differs rather widely. France, Belgium, Holland, Italy,
Russia, Servia and the canton of Geneva provide no means
of inquiry into the paternity of an illegitimate child, and
consequently all support of the child falls upon the mother;
on the other hand, Germany, Austria, Norway, Sweden, Denmark
and the majority of the Swiss cantons provide for an inquiry
into the paternity of illegitimate children, and the law
casts a certain amount of responsibility upon the father. [/i]

The argument that it is very important for children to have caring from both parents it seems to me does not hold water. Far more important, as having much-longer-lasting effects on future generations, is that children have well-loved genetic qualities, which is more likely to be the case if the female is allowed to have children by a male who is well-loved but can’t give money. Prostitution is bad to the extent it is expensive, not to the extent it is cheap; thus it certainly seems morally questionable that it be proper to force some women into it by denying their right to have meaningful, repro