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Female privilege

Metaphor said:
Bronzeage said:
There are merits to the idea that society will provide for the helpless and abandoned. The question becomes, do we sanction those who abandon others and leave them helpless? Can we declare this 14 year old boy to have been helpless and thus society takes up his responsibilities?
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How did they become "his responsibilities"? I am not proposing mercy for a guilty party, I'm saying he isn't guilty in the first place.
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A kid's gotta man up sometimes.
 
As I have said before,

From my own moral stand point

I see the boy as having been raped at fourteen and he shouldn't have to pay for child support for a person he did not have the where withal to consent to have.

But this a rare case, and falls well outside the norm. Grown men and women, that's a different story.
 
AthenaAwakened said:
As I have said before,

From my own moral stand point

I see the boy as having been raped at fourteen and he shouldn't have to pay for child support for a person he did not have the where withal to consent to have.

But this a rare case, and falls well outside the norm. Grown men and women, that's a different story.
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I agree. There's a great big mitigating factor the state is ignoring here. The boy could not have legally consented to sex with a 20 year old woman. It was statutory rape, and he should not be made to shoulder the burden of fatherhood that resulted from it. The state should treat this the same way it does for "father unknown" cases.
 
Jolly_Penguin said:
laughing dog said:
This is not a mirror image of the OP scenario, since it is the state who is going after the man for child support because the mother petitioned for state assistance. If one reads the comments in the OP by the state officials, the genders are irrelevant because this is basically a strategy to minimize state support for children.
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So if the man in Metaphor's scenario were to petition for state assistance, you would fully expect the state to go after the raped girl for child support? Really?
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I would fully expect them to, but I wouldn't agree with it any more than I agree with making the male in the OP article pay child support.

I can't see any justification for sacrificing one child (by holding him/her to adult responsibilities resultant from an act society says they arent adult enough to consent to) for the benefit of another child. I understand that the state has an automatic system set up to mitigate the expense of supporting the baby, but there needs to be an exception for a situation like this.
 
Jolly_Penguin said:
laughing dog said:
This is not a mirror image of the OP scenario, since it is the state who is going after the man for child support because the mother petitioned for state assistance. If one reads the comments in the OP by the state officials, the genders are irrelevant because this is basically a strategy to minimize state support for children.
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So if the man in Metaphor's scenario were to petition for state assistance, you would fully expect the state to go after the raped girl for child support? Really?
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If it occurred in Arizona (the same state) and it still had these idiotic laws and policies which do not permit the exclusion of identified rape victims, yes I would.
 
If he only owes $15,000 (and that includes penalties) and the child is 8 or 9, he was NOT charged back to her birth. Perhaps he was charged from the point he turned 18.
 
Metaphor said:
Sabine Grant said:
And you are going to whine about those biological fathers being compelled by law to provide financial support until the majority of the child or graduation from high school?

Speaking of the above, is it just me or have other participants to this same old same old topic noticed that the folks who tend to support what derec has been suggesting "any man should be able to renounce parental rights...etc" are folks who do not appear to have raised a child? That their thinking about parental responsibilities is limited to financial?
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It is surely the case that if there's an explicit agreement to renounce parenthood (e.g. egg or sperm donation) or one party did not consent (stolen sperm, statutory rape), that person should not be obligated to provide any parenting if they don't want to?
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Derec stated "any man should....". "any" does not reflect exceptions such as sperm donations or statutory rape. Donated sperm with a clause that it is purely for the purpose of assisting in a medical procedure known as artificial insemination should (of course) not result in the donor being expected to provide financial support to the resulting child. Similarly in the case presented by the OP, considering that the biological father being 15 and then deemed unable to provide consent, there should not be any expectations of assuming any responsibilities for anything resulting from the sexual encounter. The problem here seems to be that there was no report initially and consequently no charges filed against the adult female, charges reflecting statutory rape. Further aggravated by the reality that the court process resulting in the order to provide child support is a totally separate process from a criminal court of law.

I recall the case of the man who donated sperm to a lesbian couple, with no money changing hands, and the agreement that he would have no rights or obligations with respect to the child. The oouple split up, and the biological mother applied for State welfare -- and, of course -- then the biological father was on the hook.
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Metaphor, verbal agreements only usually do not hold any water. What sperm donors to their acquaintances/friends need to know is that there is a difference between an agreement redacted under a contract form, notarized, and a verbal agreement between the concerned parties. To also remember that the pursued party by the State welfare system can appeal in court and provide evidence of the material existence of a contract which nullified any responsibilities.

What such sperm donors need to know is that any agreement with their acquaintances/friends needs to be formulated with the assistance of legal counsel.As usual, many people will and intend to be helpful without realizing that what appears to be stable and secure now may drastically change in the future.

A friend of mine donated an egg to an infertile couple a few years ago, and she is now the biological mother to their child. If that couple split up, should the State extract child support from my friend? Does that seem remotely fair to you?
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What should have come along with her donation is (again) the assistance of legal counsel so she could have legally renounced parental rights via a voluntary termination of such rights which would make her a biological parent no more than you or me. Again, such willing to help folks have to understand that biological father/mother are automatically endowed with parental rights and it is essential that they insure from the get go that those rights be either nullified (legal contract terms) or petition for voluntary termination.

One would think that what applies to legal adoptions (which result in the termination of the parental rights of the bio parents) should automatically apply to sperm/egg donors.
 
Keith&Co. said:
They're reversible (Sometimes spontaneously (as you mentioned, it's not 100%). But it's still an option, a choice.
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Reversibility isn't anything like 100%.

She gets a second chance to fix a mistake, he doesn't.
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But her second chance is based on her control, ownership of her body. The male also has the same right, control over his body. Where he sticks his body or if he gets snipped. There's no basis for him to be able to impose an abortion on someone else, same as no woman can impose a vasectomy on a male.
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Yeah, everyone has control of their own body--but rights come with responsibilities for your choices.
 
fast said:
KeepTalking said:
Legally speaking, it is. A paternity suit is a legal issue, and all that would matter with regard to any such suit would be guilt or innocence in the eyes of the law. But that does not even appear to matter. If a convicted male rapist can sue for visitation rights, then a convicted female rapist can sue for child support. Of course, in this case there was no rape conviction, there was not even a charge of rape. The guy had a several year window of opportunity to make his case, and he did not do it. No one else should be to blame for his inaction.
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No, a person that is guilty (legally speaking) is not therefore guilty. An innocent person that has committed no crime yet subsequently convicted is guilty (legally speaking), but we ought not therefore conclude that such a person is guilty. The lexical definition stands in strong contrast to the stipulative (hence, legal) definition.

I won't say the 20 year old is guilty, but I will say the 20 year old is guilty, where the former is legally speaking and the latter is not. Clearly, you're using the term as anyone in the legal field would, but if it's clear that she is guilty; hence, if it's clear that she committed the crime, then not being found guilty one way or the other because no charges were ever brought up has only a bearing on guilt in the legal sense--not the lexical sense.

Yes, maybe the legal sense is the only sense that matters to the courts in regards to legal issues, but we shouldn't let the convoluted different uses of words cloud our moral judgement. Outrage shouldn't be a function of a legal verdict--or lack thereof. Recall from what I said earlier, if a person has committed a crime, then that person is guilty of a crime. No differing legal usage is going to change that fact. We can presume innocence all we want.
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The legal sense is the only one that matter here.

In regard to the moral issue, I noted in a previous post that from just the OP, and before reading the article, I was on Derec's side. That was my morality speaking. Morally speaking I don't feel it is right for a rape victim to have to pay child support. Unfortunately, this guy made every possible wrong decision he could have made, even after he was supposed to be all grown up and stuff. Even if there was a legal loophole in Arizona that a rape victim could not be held liable for child support (and I don't think there is) he missed his window of opportunity to take advantage of that loophole. He has no one to blame but himself for the current situation. So, any moral outrage that I may have felt is mitigated by the fact that he never once took a responsible action to attempt to right this perceived injustice.
 
KeepTalking said:
In regard to the moral issue, I noted in a previous post that from just the OP, and before reading the article, I was on Derec's side. That was my morality speaking. Morally speaking I don't feel it is right for a rape victim to have to pay child support. Unfortunately, this guy made every possible wrong decision he could have made, even after he was supposed to be all grown up and stuff. Even if there was a legal loophole in Arizona that a rape victim could not be held liable for child support (and I don't think there is) he missed his window of opportunity to take advantage of that loophole. He has no one to blame but himself for the current situation. So, any moral outrage that I may have felt is mitigated by the fact that he never once took a responsible action to attempt to right this perceived injustice.
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Do you feel the same way about women who are raped and don't report it?
 
Sabine Grant said:
Metaphor, verbal agreements only usually do not hold any water. What sperm donors to their acquaintances/friends need to know is that there is a difference between an agreement redacted under a contract form, notarized, and a verbal agreement between the concerned parties. To also remember that the pursued party by the State welfare system can appeal in court and provide evidence of the material existence of a contract which nullified any responsibilities.
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It was not a verbal only contract and the facts were not in dispute. Both women, and the sperm donor, agreed to the facts. It was the State that simply ignored it.

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KeepTalking said:
He has no one to blame but himself for the current situation.
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You don't seem to care about blaming the victim, so I'm sure I can't persuade you, but he does have one other person to blame.

The woman who raped him.
 
Jolly_Penguin said:
KeepTalking said:
In regard to the moral issue, I noted in a previous post that from just the OP, and before reading the article, I was on Derec's side. That was my morality speaking. Morally speaking I don't feel it is right for a rape victim to have to pay child support. Unfortunately, this guy made every possible wrong decision he could have made, even after he was supposed to be all grown up and stuff. Even if there was a legal loophole in Arizona that a rape victim could not be held liable for child support (and I don't think there is) he missed his window of opportunity to take advantage of that loophole. He has no one to blame but himself for the current situation. So, any moral outrage that I may have felt is mitigated by the fact that he never once took a responsible action to attempt to right this perceived injustice.
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Do you feel the same way about women who are raped and don't report it?
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Female rape victims are usually the ones most susceptible to end up pregnant, not male rape victims. I still fail to see why anyone would attempt to draw an analogy here and equate male and female rape victims not reporting a rape with a subsequent pregnancy. How many female rape victims with a subsequent pregnancy will be relying on the biological father to raise the child? Is that supposed to be a common phenomenon on the Northern American continent?
 
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