Who Should Pay Child Support? (Split from Roe v Wade is on deck)

[TomC]

Tom, not only does every man, woman, and child have every right to revoke consent to the use of her biology for another organism,

Really?
You believe that men have the right to revoke consent to use their biology?

That's not what I'm seeing here, on this IIDB thread. Women have that right, but men do not. Men who have sex have Chosen responsibility. Women have not, unless they choose later to accept the responsibility.

If women choose to take on a child, the father owes them.
Tom

 

[Loren Pechtel]

How about this.

The default assumption between unmarried people getting together for a mutually agreeable romp is that, in the case of a pregnancy he wants an abortion. And will pay for it.

If she wants something else that's fine too. But if she wants child support, in the event of a pregnancy, she needs to make that clear before the sex. She still has complete control over her body. I'll continue the pregnancy, I'll terminate, whatever she wants.

But she cannot obligate someone else to a commitment against their will, based on her unfettered choice.

How about that?
Tom

What I started with.

The default is the cheapest legal option, but they're free to make other agreements. It's just it must be done up front, he knows what an oops will mean before he sticks it in.

I would also say anyone who lies about contraceptive status assumes 100% of the burden--but note that this would be a fairly high burden to reach. Forgetting your pill isn't lying about your contraceptive status, it's an oops. "Don't worry, I've had a vasectomy" when he hasn't is lying.

 

[laughing dog]

You need to bone up on biology - women cannot make children on their own.

Bone up on your law.
Is there a child at 2 weeks of pregnancy?
Legally, no there isn't.

Legally, the fetus becomes a child if, and when, the mother decides he/she is is a child.

You are the one that needs to bone up on the law, not me. Legally, the fetus becomes a child when then law, not the mother, says it is a child. That is why there are laws against abortion after a certain period of time - because the fetus is legally recognized as a person.

Yes, the situation is asymmetrical - women have the ultimate choice whether or not to carry an embryo to term. But that is because biology is asymmetrical - only women can become pregnant.

However, for some obscure reason, the notion that the living child should merit sufficient support from its parents appears to be lost on you and those who feel like you do.

And for some obscure reason, the hypocrisy of demanding that only women should be held accountable for their voluntary choices but not men is lost on you.

 

[TomC]

Legally, the fetus becomes a child when then law, not the mother, says it is a child.

Is there legally a child two weeks into pregnancy?

It's a yes or no question.

If yes, then abortion is killing a child. If no, then requiring a man to pay child support is requiring him to pay for the mother's preference.
Tom

 

[laughing dog]

Legally, the fetus becomes a child when then law, not the mother, says it is a child.

Is there legally a child two weeks into pregnancy?

It's a yes or no question.

If yes, then abortion is killing a child. If no, then requiring a man to pay child support is requiring him to pay for the mother's preference.
Tom

No, it is requiring the man to help support a child he choose to help create.

You keep ignoring the child’s welfare, and the man’s choices.

 

[TomC]

Legally, the fetus becomes a child when then law, not the mother, says it is a child.

Is there legally a child two weeks into pregnancy?

It's a yes or no question.

If yes, then abortion is killing a child. If no, then requiring a man to pay child support is requiring him to pay for the mother's preference.
Tom

No, it is requiring the man to help support a child he choose to help create.

You keep ignoring the child’s welfare, and the man’s choices.

You're ignoring the question.
"Two weeks into a pregnancy, is there a child involved?"

@Jimmy Higgins says that there isn't. There is no child until birth.

My point is that by such a standard women make babies, legally, all by themselves.
Women choose whether to grow their fetus into a child or kill the fetus before it's a child.

So, let me ask again. "At two weeks pregnancy, is there a child involved?"

I think there is. Perhaps you disagree.
Tom

 

[laughing dog]

Legally, the fetus becomes a child when then law, not the mother, says it is a child.

Is there legally a child two weeks into pregnancy?

It's a yes or no question.

If yes, then abortion is killing a child. If no, then requiring a man to pay child support is requiring him to pay for the mother's preference.
Tom

No, it is requiring the man to help support a child he choose to help create.

You keep ignoring the child’s welfare, and the man’s choices.

You're ignoring the question.
"Two weeks into a pregnancy, is there a child involved?"

@Jimmy Higgins says that there isn't. There is no child until birth.

My point is that by such a standard women make babies, legally, all by themselves.
Women choose whether to grow their fetus into a child or kill the fetus before it's a child.

So, let me ask again. "At two weeks pregnancy, is there a child involved?"

I think there is. Perhaps you disagree.
Tom

Your question is irrelevant to the issue of legality.

BTW, if you think the fetus is a child at 2 weeks and you are opposed to murder, you should support men supporting their child.

 

[Rhea]

Legally, the fetus becomes a child when then law, not the mother, says it is a child.

Is there legally a child two weeks into pregnancy?

It's a yes or no question.

If yes, then abortion is killing a child.

Nope, it’s still not. It is withdrawing consent for organ donation, and I can do it to you if I promise you a kidney and change my mond on teh gourney on the way to the OR, after having squandered all your other choices because you thought I was going to donate. I can change my mind and you cannot coerce my donation and that is not murder.

(It lacks compassion, but it is neither illegal nor immoral.)

If no, then requiring a man to pay child support is requiring him to pay for the mother's preference.
Tom

No.

The man made a choice to have sex.
A baby resulted.
If one of those parents wants to keep and raise the child, then the other must pay child support.
This is an interesting analysis of child support data. There are many layers and I caution you against drawing a conclusion after the foirst paragraph, bearing in mind that,

That’s not all. The average household income of a dad who doesn’t get the child support money he’s due is $51,791. For moms, that figure is $26,231.

And

Custodial dads are also more likely than custodial moms to receive non-cash support from the other parent. That means that moms who don’t have custody are more likely to pitch in for things like groceries, medical expenses, clothes and gifts.

He is legally on the hook because our society refuses to act mature and take care of the kid regardless of his desires.. Because they believe it was his choice to enter an act that resulted in a born baby.

You, (man) can decide that society should care for that child and he’d be off the hook by pushing for legislation that provides for children regardless of an uninterested father. But our society’s men do not make that decision. Which is a shame, IMHO.

 

[Rhea]

Legally, the fetus becomes a child when then law, not the mother, says it is a child.

Is there legally a child two weeks into pregnancy?

It's a yes or no question.

If yes, then abortion is killing a child. If no, then requiring a man to pay child support is requiring him to pay for the mother's preference.
Tom

No, it is requiring the man to help support a child he choose to help create.

You keep ignoring the child’s welfare, and the man’s choices.

You're ignoring the question.
"Two weeks into a pregnancy, is there a child involved?"

@Jimmy Higgins says that there isn't. There is no child until birth.

My point is that by such a standard women make babies, legally, all by themselves.
Women choose whether to grow their fetus into a child or kill the fetus before it's a child.

So, let me ask again. "At two weeks pregnancy, is there a child involved?"

I think there is. Perhaps you disagree.
Tom

You are ignoring the people who aren’t answering the way you want.

But even if we stipulate that, you are still flat wrong.
Because even IF therfe is “no child until birth” it was still a man’s choice to do an activity that resulted in that birth.

 

[TomC]

Your question is irrelevant to the issue of legality.

It's entirely about the legality.
That's all it's about.

BTW, if you think the fetus is a child at 2 weeks and you are opposed to murder, you should support men supporting their child.

Let's leave the word murder out of this. I carefully avoid it. It's too subjective to be useful.

Personally, I consider the U.S. invasion of Iraq to have been mass murder. But it was "legal", so technically it's not murder.

Do you understand that I totally support parents supporting the children that result from choices that they freely make? Including female parents? That I see the problem here being mainly people who feel entitled to sex, that might involve another person, one who has no say in anything? That I consider people to have some value and dignity, starting at conception?

That the problem I'm talking about is the disconnect between sex(potentially fertile sex) and parenthood? The gender discrimination of legally allowing female parents to abrogate the responsibility for parenthood but not the male parent? The corrosive effects that has on society as a whole?

If you think that I don't want to hold men accountable for their choices, concerning baby making, you really haven't read many of my posts and have no idea what I value and argue in favor of.
Tom

 

[Rhea]

The gender discrimination of legally allowing female parents to abrogate the responsibility for parenthood but not the male parent?

The male only becomes a parent when there is a live birth.
The female only becomes a parent when there is a live birth.
At that point they have equal rights.

Prior to that point, whoever is the host gets to choose if they want to be a host.
If it is a lesbian couple, and even if the egg was fertilized using the other woman’s DNA (if that could be done,) it is STILL only true that a person carrying apreganancy gets to choose.


You keep conflating this idea that the decision to let your personal body be used is the same as the decision to support a live born child. And that you wring your hands that the non-pregnant parent isn’t being treated equally in that, and this is somehow linked to whether they should support their children.

Then when we split off a thread to talk about the financial support of the live born child, you want to make it all about your moral judgment of whether they were serious enough early enough in gestation.

YOU ARE OFF TOPIC, TOM.
You should go back to the abortion thread with those comments.

This one is about, once a child is born, who should pay for it.

You seem to be saying that,

1. Once a child is born, the man should support it
2. But only if abortion is outlawed so that he can force the woman to carry to term if he demands it, so that it’s “fair.”
3. Or conversely that he can demand an abortion so he doesn’t have to pay foer the child, becauase that would be “fair” in giving him “equal say.”

Because every time we go back to who should support a live born child, you keep jumping back to “only people who have been treated “fairly” in deciding when a woman’s body is used.


So I guess we have your answer, and you are not swayed by the counter argument. You appear to say that men should only have to pay for child support if they get to demand that a woman terminate her pregnancy if he doesn’t want to, or carry a pregnancy against her will if he does. And if he doesn’t get to dictate what happens with her organs, then he doesn’t have to give a shit about the welfare of a child that he fathered.


I think we get it. It makes for a good argument for forced sterilization of men, I suppose.

 

[TomC]

YOU ARE OFF TOPIC, TOM.
You should go back to the abortion thread with those comments.

This split was made specifically to stay away from the subject of abortion rights.

But I can't keep feminists from returning to it.
Could you stop going off topic? Stick to the subject?
If women can decide that they don't want to be parents why can't men decide that?

Leave abortion rights out of it. That's a given.
Tom

 

[laughing dog]

Your question is irrelevant to the issue of legality.

It's entirely about the legality.
That's all it's about.

BTW, if you think the fetus is a child at 2 weeks and you are opposed to murder, you should support men supporting their child.

Let's leave the word murder out of this. I carefully avoid it. It's too subjective to be useful.

Personally, I consider the U.S. invasion of Iraq to have been mass murder. But it was "legal", so technically it's not murder.

Do you understand that I totally support parents supporting the children that result from choices that they freely make? Including female parents? That I see the problem here being mainly people who feel entitled to sex, that might involve another person, one who has no say in anything? That I consider people to have some value and dignity, starting at conception?

That the problem I'm talking about is the disconnect between sex(potentially fertile sex) and parenthood? The gender discrimination of legally allowing female parents to abrogate the responsibility for parenthood but not the male parent? The corrosive effects that has on society as a whole?

If you think that I don't want to hold men accountable for their choices, concerning baby making, you really haven't read many of my posts and have no idea what I value and argue in favor of.
Tom

After that word salad, I think the problem is you don’t read what you write.

You advocate that men who choose to inseminate a woman should not have to pay child support that they don’t want. That is advocating that those fathers are not accountable for their choices. That is basic reasoning. It is illogical to deny it.

Your stated position is internally inconsistent- it is incoherent.

 

[bilby]

Both parents are responsible for caring for a child.

As a legal last resort, if one refuses to do their duty as a parent, the government can attempt to protect some of the child's rights by at least enforcing financial support for that child from the delinquent parent.

This has exactly nothing to do with gender, or with any choices made by either parent other than the choice to abandon their offspring.

It has nothing whatsoever to do with abortion. Nothing.

Tom's stupid false dichotomy founders on the fact that a child doesn't exist until it is born, but nevertheless still has two parents.

You're not a millionaire until the lottery is drawn. Once it has been drawn, no sane person would deny you your winnings because you bought the ticket nine months earlier, and haven't been a millionaire in the intervening time.

 

[Jarhyn]

Tom, not only does every man, woman, and child have every right to revoke consent to the use of her biology for another organism,

Really?
You believe that men have the right to revoke consent to use their biology?

That's not what I'm seeing here, on this IIDB thread. Women have that right, but men do not. Men who have sex have Chosen responsibility. Women have not, unless they choose later to accept the responsibility.

If women choose to take on a child, the father owes them.
Tom

That's the thing. It stopped being their biology the minute it left them, and became its own entirely new biology... Dependent on someone else's biology.

Look again at what you wrote and then speak the words "children are not the property of their parents". Then read it again.

You believe that organism is a child.

You believe it should not be aborted because and I cannot stress this enough, you believe it is not the property of the person gestating them, and so not theirs to merely dispose of as they wish.

So no, it's not the sperm donor's biology.

It is, however, someone else's body being forced to maintain it, and they DO get to revoke their continuing donation of their organs in that way.

As is pointed out, I accept the proposition that you can't demand I donate a kidney to someone, you can't demand someone donate lease of a uterus to someone.

Even if it were "a living breathing thinking child with bright soulful eyes" who needed said kidney.

The fact is, I would entirely volunteer to have an engineered sack of muscle with a blastocyst implanted in the middle that would have to be cut out of me no matter what. But if someone told me I had to, tried to force me, either they would give up or one of us would be dead.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

YOU ARE OFF TOPIC, TOM.
You should go back to the abortion thread with those comments.

This split was made specifically to stay away from the subject of abortion rights.

You technically keep hanging a poison pill with abortion... that if a woman gets to have the right to an abortion that gives the man a right to walk away with no responsibility over the child.

But I can't keep feminists from returning to it.
Could you stop going off topic? Stick to the subject?
If women can decide that they don't want to be parents why can't men decide that?

Well, the thing is, what you consider being a "parent" is exclusively cash based. No one would be forcing the male to make the 18 year time of personal time investment in being a parent.

 

[Tigers!]

We could reduce significantly a lot of these issues (not all) if we thought with our brains rather than our sex organs.

 

[bilby]

We could reduce significantly a lot of these issues (not all) if we thought with our brains rather than our sex organs.

Sure, and if we had ham, we could have ham and eggs, if we had any eggs.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

We could reduce significantly a lot of these issues (not all) if we thought with our brains rather than our sex organs.

As a liberal, with age I've wised up to economic realities that constrain businesses and the nonsense of a liberal utopia if businesses just "do this". This is the same sort of issue. If people just stopped making bad decisions...

That isn't happening and we need to deal with the reality that we are psychotic apes that are a lot more a product of the chemistry in our head than the civilized version of ourselves we would prefer we (and all others) would be. This insistence that we are "this close" to making things perfect is inhibiting our ability to address these problems like adults.

 

[Toni]

You need to bone up on biology - women cannot make children on their own.

Bone up on your law.
Is there a child at 2 weeks of pregnancy?
Legally, no there isn't.

Legally, the fetus becomes a child if, and when, the mother decides he/she is is a child.

I keep having this pointed out by people who support abortion rights.

Hypocritically, they can't seem to agree upon when a human being becomes worthy of any protection.
Tom

You still have not cited any law that says that a fetus becomes a child if and when the mother decides.

Why haven't you, since you keep making the assertion?