Do you need an abortion? Did you bring a note?

[RavenSky]

IF I had a child, then yes he would have been responsible for it. However, it's still the woman's choice. Just like it's usually the woman's choice to have sex in the first place (under most circumstances).

And it doesn't strike you as at all unjust that he is financially on the hook for your choice?
My sense of justice dictates that responsibility should be apportioned relative to choices made in the matter. I.e. he should be given a chance to opt-out when informed of the pregnancy just as you have a chance to opt-out through abortion (if you had an uterus).

The man has several choices to "opt-out" of a pregnancy with any particular woman, including a condom.

And as I have stated before, I am even willing to support the ability of any man to "opt-out" of fatherhood by providing the woman with a signed, notarized statement to that effect BEFORE sexual intercourse.

After conception, though, too late. He has made his choice to risk a pregnancy, same as she did, and is therefore equally financially responsible. But it is her body, and he does not get to dictate what she does any more than a woman can dictate that a man must have a vasectomy or, conversely, provide viable sperm.

 

[Derec]

Or do you think a 5-year old can "consent" to any of the above acts?

Because a 5 year old can't consent to sex we must criminalize consensual sex with 17 year olds. Makes perfect sense.

 

[ksen]

smash patriarchy

 

[Derec]

The man has several choices to avoid pregnancy with any particular woman, including a condom.

His ability to make a choice ends when he ejaculates but a woman has a lot more choice after the ejaculation (from morning after pills to late term abortions). It is simply unjust to give them same level of responsibility when their level of choice is so unequal and lopsided in favor of the woman. Hence my suggestion for paternal opt-out provisions.

Hell, even if a woman rapes him or steals his sperm he is still liable for child support. Do you find any of that fair?

- - - Updated - - -

smash patriarchy

The problem is that modern US society is more matriarchy than patriarchy.

 

[RavenSky]

To be fair, she'd need to get his written permission to obtain any birth control, so it wouldn't be her sole responsibility.

Why?

He is referring to the US states that are trying to force a woman to have her employer's permission before she can get birth control.

 

[RavenSky]

Or do you think a 5-year old can "consent" to any of the above acts?

Because a 5 year old can't consent to sex we must criminalize consensual sex with 17 year olds. Makes perfect sense.

As I said, we as a society draw a line in the sand which means we have to draw it somewhere. In some states it is 18. In some it is 16.

In the eyes of the "statutory rape" law, there is no difference whatsoever between 5 years old and 17 years old. Likewise, we as a society have drawn the line in the sand for all types of contracts, for drinking, smoking, enlisting, etc.

That's the way it is and everyone knows it, so complaining that a 17-year old girl "consented" is nothing but a continuation of your general theme that no female really gets raped.

 

[RavenSky]

His ability to make a choice ends when he ejaculates but a woman has a lot more choice after the ejaculation (from morning after pills to late term abortions).

boo-fucking-hoo. That's biology for ya! A woman ALSO gets ALL of the health risks and damages to her body from an abortion or from a pregnancy. I will take your complaints about supporting your own child, and hand you the stretch marks and hemrhoids.

Hell, even if a woman rapes him or steals his sperm he is still liable for child support. Do you find any of that fair?

no I don't. Have I ever said I did?

 

[Derec]

I will reiterate: The choice to procreate or not is dependent upon each and every individual.

But female individuals are given much more choice. A man's choice ends at ejaculation, woman's doesn't. Responsibility should be apportioned relative to the choice an individual had in a matter. Therefore, men should be allowed to opt out of parental rights and obligations.

It's a man's right to have a vasectomy. I have known, and dated, men who have chosen not to reproduce voluntarily and have had a vasectomy so that it doesn't happen.
With me, it was my choice, primarily for health reasons, to have the hysterectomy.

That part is symmetrical and therefore not the issue.

Should I have fallen pregnant at any time before that, it would have been MY choice to keep or terminate.

And therefore responsibility for the kid should be YOURS as well.

The involvement of the father is not always necessary and if the father wants to give up any paternal rights, he can petition for that through the courts.

Right now the chances of that are nil, unless there is some other man that can be held liable for the kid.

Should he choose not to financially support a child, then he shouldn't have put himself in the position of creating one in the first place. There are such things has condoms you know.

Yes, and women have a plethora of birth control methods. They are not 100% reliable though. But women also have methods that work after ejaculation (morning after pill) as well as abortion.
A common argument by pro-choicers is that restrictions on abortion punish women for having sex. But isn't requiring men to pay child support punishing them for sex just as much?
I merely want a greater degree of equality between the sexes when it comes to reproductive choice. Feminists want to maintain the power imbalance because it is in their favor. Just like they are in favor of life-long alimony laws as 94% of alimonies is awarded to women.

If a man and women are so irresponsible as to CHOOSE to have unprotected sex in this day and age, then BOTH are saying that they will accept the responsibility for any life that may be created.

But a woman is given an out. In fact, several outs. A man has no ability to choose after ejaculation.

I do accept that rape is another matter entirely. With regards to rape, the woman should automatically have the choice and the father should not have any say in it.

What if he is the rape victim?

If a man doesn't want to be financially tied down - then he needs to step up to the plate and do something proactive. It shouldn't always be up to the woman to look after birth control.

You are mirroring the arguments of those who want to make abortion illegal. "If a woman doesn't want a child she should do something proactive".

 

[Derec]

boo-fucking-hoo. That's biology for ya!

Laws are there to mitigate injustices from biology.
You might as well cite biology to say that women should shoulder all the responsibility because they are the ones carrying the babies. However, laws were made to address that biological injustice. Unfortunately, they went too far. It is quite hypocritical to cite biology to justify injustice now that the pendulum has swung in your favor.

A woman ALSO gets ALL of the health risks and damages to her body from an abortion or from a pregnancy.

That doesn't change the fact that she has the ultimate choice yet the law saddles the man with equal (at least) responsibility. That is inherently unjust and should be addressed by law.

I will take your complaints about supporting your own child, and hand you the stretch marks and hemrhoids.

Stretch marks? The horrors! Hemorrhoids? You do know babies do not come out that way? Unless you conceived from anal sex, of course, although deliveries from oral sex conceptions are even more uncomfortable as you have to dislocate your jaw like a snake.

no I don't. Have I ever said I did?

Well you do think equal responsibility for very unequal choice is fair when it obviously isn't.

 

[Jarhyn]

boo-fucking-hoo. That's biology for ya! A woman ALSO gets ALL of the health risks and damages to her body from an abortion or from a pregnancy. I will take your complaints about supporting your own child, and hand you the stretch marks and hemrhoids.

Hell, even if a woman rapes him or steals his sperm he is still liable for child support. Do you find any of that fair?

no I don't. Have I ever said I did?

Last I knew, the whole point of modern medicine, society, technology, language, education, ethics, and pretty much every other thing we do is to give biology one massive middle finger. And now the evils of biology need to be accepted as a good and arbiter of what is right merely because it's convenient to the argument that you want to make? Accidental biology can't be the reason something is considered 'right'.

Your argument supports a strong social safety net for women, to make both pregnancy and abortion as safe as possible. It supports men being responsible for paying for the abortion and making it as affordable as possible. It still cannot be contorted into a denial of the man's right to self determination past the end of the pregnancy.

 

[RavenSky]

Laws are there to mitigate injustices from biology.
You might as well cite biology to say that women should shoulder all the responsibility because they are the ones carrying the babies. However, laws were made to address that biological injustice. Unfortunately, they went too far. It is quite hypocritical to cite biology to justify injustice now that the pendulum has swung in your favor.

A woman ALSO gets ALL of the health risks and damages to her body from an abortion or from a pregnancy.

That doesn't change the fact that she has the ultimate choice yet the law saddles the man with equal (at least) responsibility. That is inherently unjust and should be addressed by law.

there is nothing "inherently unjust" about expecting every parent to support their own children. If you don't want children, take precautions. That goes for men and women. It seems your big complaint is that women - due to the immutable facts of biology - get an extra few months to make their decision.

And you've completely ignored that I fully support the idea that men should be allowed to "opt out" of parenthood prior to conception. But they simply don't get to change their minds about it after conception. They need to take responsibility for their actions before they take those actions.

I will take your complaints about supporting your own child, and hand you the stretch marks and hemrhoids.

Stretch marks? The horrors! Hemorrhoids? You do know babies do not come out that way? Unless you conceived from anal sex, of course, although deliveries from oral sex conceptions are even more uncomfortable as you have to dislocate your jaw like a snake.

You really are arguing from a place of utter ignorance in these matters, aren't you? That certainly explains quite a bit about why your stance is so absurd.

no I don't. Have I ever said I did?

Well you do think equal responsibility for very unequal choice is fair when it obviously isn't.

"obvious" only to a guy who clearly doesn't understand anything whatsoever about pregnancy and delivery Derec, given the totality of your positions on any topic involving women, it is absolutely clear that a desire for equality has nothing to do with your opinions.

 

[RavenSky]

boo-fucking-hoo. That's biology for ya! A woman ALSO gets ALL of the health risks and damages to her body from an abortion or from a pregnancy. I will take your complaints about supporting your own child, and hand you the stretch marks and hemrhoids.

no I don't. Have I ever said I did?

Last I knew, the whole point of modern medicine, society, technology, language, education, ethics, and pretty much every other thing we do is to give biology one massive middle finger. And now the evils of biology need to be accepted as a good and arbiter of what is right merely because it's convenient to the argument that you want to make? Accidental biology can't be the reason something is considered 'right'.

I agree completely! And when "modern medicine, society, technology, language, education, ethics, and pretty much every other thing" allows men to get pregnant, then we can disregard biology in this issue too.

Your argument supports a strong social safety net for women, to make both pregnancy and abortion as safe as possible. It supports men being responsible for paying for the abortion and making it as affordable as possible. It still cannot be contorted into a denial of the man's right to self determination past the end of the pregnancy.

"Past the end of pregnancy" means that there is a third person involved, a child with no ability to take care of itself. A child that is the product of that man's actions, as much as the woman's. No one, woman or man, gets to walk away from that responsibility after the fact.

 

[dx713]

The religious right has never been able to overcome the "rape and incest" exception found in all abortion restrictions. All their anti-abortion arguments stumble on R&I. It prevents them from consolidating the GOP. It's a middle class safety valve kind of thing. It allows a girl to graduate high school or college on time and no one asks personal questions. A good upstanding conservative and be against abortion, but keep his fingers crossed. One finger is rape and the other is incest.

Of course, anyone who has a just a bit of moral philosophy reading knows an infant, at any stage of development is not responsible for its conception. It's a little strange to see solid conservatives agree to kill a baby, just so all that tuition won't go to waste, but it's a practical decision.

The "legitimate rape" pitfall that religious conservatives can't seem to avoid is as campaign aimed at less than religious conservatives. They want to chisel away at the rape exception, by demonstrating how few pregnancies are the result of rape. They are trying to pull down the curtain that the Republican base keeps tightly closed.

Agreed with that, but I think the root cause of the exception is different.
For the average conservative, "killing a baby" is a grey area. The root thinking against abortion is that pregnancy is a punishment for sex, it's the risk that protects our daughters from becoming sluts.
So you have to have a loophole for when they didn't consent, if you want to only punish the sluts.

Please be at least disingenuous enough to admit that what is meant by 'legitimate rape' is where a virgin is abducted at gun or knife point, dragged into a dark alleyway and raped by some enormous black man. Anything else is just 'regretted but completely consensual' sex.

From the article, it's even worse: the rape must be proven.
I don't know how the lawyers would interprete the exact law wording, but in the law's author point of view, I'd guess it means a judge has to pronounce the rape "legitimate". Which would be a great way to deny all abortion, as by the time a judgement is issued, given justice's pace, the window for abortion will be far gone (if not the child already born).

 

[RavenSky]

Derec and Jaryn, I'd like to suggest that the two of you educate yourselves about that effects of pregnancy on a woman's body before you make any more silly arguments about ignoring biology: http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/pregnancy-and-baby/pages/common-pregnancy-problems.aspx#close

These are just the common issues. All woman get some to many of these complications during pregnancy. Some of the complications can kill the woman if not caught in time.

Please provide a link to a list of the physical complications, from mildly uncomfortable to life-threatening, that a man suffers during a pregnancy.

 

[RavenSky]

Agreed with that, but I think the root cause of the exception is different.
For the average conservative, "killing a baby" is a grey area. The root thinking against abortion is that pregnancy is a punishment for sex, it's the risk that protects our daughters from becoming sluts.
So you have to have a loophole for when they didn't consent, if you want to only punish the sluts.

Please be at least disingenuous enough to admit that what is meant by 'legitimate rape' is where a virgin is abducted at gun or knife point, dragged into a dark alleyway and raped by some enormous black man. Anything else is just 'regretted but completely consensual' sex.

From the article, it's even worse: the rape must be proven.
I don't know how the lawyers would interprete the exact law wording, but in the law's author point of view, I'd guess it means a judge has to pronounce the rape "legitimate". Which would be a great way to deny all abortion, as by the time a judgement is issued, given justice's pace, the window for abortion will be far gone (if not the child already born).

Very good points. He is quoted as saying: "Just like any rape, you have to report it, and you have to prove it.". It is the second half of that comment that is particularly problematic (even beyond the entire law)

 

[Jarhyn]

Derec and Jaryn, I'd like to suggest that the to of you educate yourselves about that effects of pregnancy on a woman's body before you make any more silly arguments about ignoring biology: http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/pregnancy-and-baby/pages/common-pregnancy-problems.aspx#close

These are just the common issues. All woman get some to many of these complications during pregnancy. Some of the complications can kill the woman if not caught in time.

Please provide a link to a list of the physical complications, from mildly uncomfortable to life-threatening, that a man suffers during a pregnancy.

and those complications, while terrible and an evil of nature to be combatted and prevented whenever possible (and deserving far more research than bullshit like boner pills), still don't justify hobbling anyone else. Just because reality currently has a male bias as far as the risks of sex, you don't get to hobble men. It's every man and woman's responsibility to elevate women. You can't ethically 'level a playing field' by hurting someone.

Life is worse for you because you are a woman? I'll not contribute to that, and I'll help make it better, but that doesn't mean you can arbitrarily demand men give up rights to compensate.

I support parents being given a social safety net, single or otherwise, male or female. If you have a kid, you should be given the resources to care for it, because their wellbeing should not be dependent on your means. Regardless of who is taking care of the kid. I support giving every benefit we afford single mothers to single fathers, and I support giving lots more benefits than we currently do, like Legally mandated PTO, paternity leave, and professional child care services made available through the state.

But at the end of the day, I dont, can't, support skewering any specific man OR woman's future with the costs or responsibilities of parenthood.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

Agreed with that, but I think the root cause of the exception is different.
For the average conservative, "killing a baby" is a grey area. The root thinking against abortion is that pregnancy is a punishment for sex, it's the risk that protects our daughters from becoming sluts.
So you have to have a loophole for when they didn't consent, if you want to only punish the sluts.


From the article, it's even worse: the rape must be proven.
I don't know how the lawyers would interprete the exact law wording, but in the law's author point of view, I'd guess it means a judge has to pronounce the rape "legitimate". Which would be a great way to deny all abortion, as by the time a judgement is issued, given justice's pace, the window for abortion will be far gone (if not the child already born).

Very good points. He is quoted as saying: "Just like any rape, you have to report it, and you have to prove it.". It is the second half of that comment that is particularly problematic (even beyond the entire law)

[sarcasm]No, that is not a problem at all. We all know how easy and quick it is to prove rape. Not like the woman might have to wait 9 months or more just to have the defense get yet another continuance.[/sarcasm]

 

[Derec]

It is the second half of that comment that is particularly problematic (even beyond the entire law)

Feminists always have a problem with having to prove rape.

 

[Derec]

Please provide a link to a list of the physical complications, from mildly uncomfortable to life-threatening, that a man suffers during a pregnancy.

Does wrath of a hormonal wife count?
How about risk of getting in a car accident while buying pickles and ice cream at 2 AM. *putting of flame-retardant suit*

I am familiar with risks and issues associated with pregnancy. In fact, I am listening to the Caustic Soda podcast on this topic. Count your blessings you live in the 21st century or weren't born a hyena is all I have to say.
That doesn't change the fact that there is a huge imbalance between reproductive choices men and women have and the responsibilities they are hobbled with. If no woman should be a parent against her wishes same should go for men. We can't change biology (on a fundamental level) but we can change laws to be more just.

 

[RavenSky]

It is the second half of that comment that is particularly problematic (even beyond the entire law)

Feminists Misogynists always have a problem with having to prove rape.

FIFY

Now that the tit-for-tat is out of the way, did you bother to read what DX wrote?

Which would be a great way to deny all abortion, as by the time a judgement is issued, given justice's pace, the window for abortion will be far gone (if not the child already born).

THAT is the problem with any requirement to "prove" the rape before being allowed to have an abortion.