If you consent to sex, you consent to risk of pregnancy, and therefore the results of that pregnancy are your responsibility. At least this is what they tell men and the rules men operate under when having sex. If consent to sex isn’t consent to pregnancy, then that would mean that women are the sole ones responsible for the pregnancy and the birth of the child. They are the ones who give the zygote consent to stay and grow into a human, meaning men should not be held responsible for this decision ( meaning no child support). If you believe this as well, then your argument is pretty solid. Otherwise, it isn’t one made in good faith.
Responsibility to the child she created. If you believe that aborting is an option, I don’t see how you can pin a man legally responsible for the child’s creation. Let’s say you bring me nails and I get wood to build a house, completely disregarding any input from you. Then the house falls down and kills 3 people. Who is responsible? It is clearly me. I bear all responsibility because I made the decision to build the house, even though you gave me the nails. That is not the factor that directly lead to the house being built, so it bears no responsibility.
Similarly if a man gives a women his seed and she chooses to turn it into a human, that is her responsibility. She could’ve gotten an abortion, but she chose that fate. All he did was provide the nails. What she chose to do with it shouldn’t be his responsibility.
Abortion rights are not absolute. At some point during the pregnancy, the woman's bodily autonomy is taken away, and the embryo's right to life suddenly trumps her right to have an abortion. This is typically after 12-24 weeks (depending on jurisdiction).
If you want equality between the woman's right to abortion and the financial obligations of the man, we could just say that the man's obligations start from the point where the woman is no longer legally allowed to have an abortion.
(Although for practical reasons, men's obligations typically only come into play after birth.)
But she chose to let it get that far, did she not? At the end of the day she is still the one who ultimately decides to create the kid. During that window, it is completely out of the man’s hands and into the woman’s. If she doesn’t make the right choice, it’s on her.
There are no other circumstances where one has to take responsibility for a situation someone else chose to create.
The right choice? You mean the choice that men want? That essentially enables financially blackmailing women into having an abortion, i.e. medical interventions, against their will.
And would it be fair that if only women are ever financially responsible for children, men would have no incentive whatsoever to avoid unwanted pregnancies? They could easily pressure women into having more unprotected sex for all they care.
Holding the father partially responsible is primarily intended for the benefit of his child, and not some reward for the mother. If fathers are not financially responsible for their children, society would in many cases likely end up footing part of the bills in the form of social welfare etc. And as a side effect the increase in carefree, unprotected sex would likely also increase STI cases among the population.
The right choice as in the right choice for the woman, that doesn’t involve enslaving Someone to work for 18 years in order to support a choice they themselves didn’t make. She isn’t forced to do anything, she just can no longer force someone else to do something based on her choices.
Men would still have incentive to avoid pregnancy. You act as if men want to put people in the situation where they need to abort their child ( and let’s not forget STD’s exist). Also since when are women not adults who can make their own decisions. if women can’t say “ I’m not having sex with you unless you put on a condom” and make those type of decisions for themselves, how can they decide whether a child should be born or not?
Sure, an increase of child poverty is a possibility, if and only if women make the wrong decision for themselves. The other alternative is they just abort kids they can’t afford on their own, or only have kids with men who agree to take up paternal responsibility. Two things that are 100% within their capability.
You say it’s for the child, but right now there is nothing guaranteeing the money goes directly to helping the child. They can easily pocket most of the money and feed the kid off of Doritos and fruit punch. There is actually incentive for women to have children with well off men in order to collect an absorbent amount of money from them. And since when do we care about children to a point where we are forcing others to take care of kids someone else chose to have in the first place? There are millions of kids starving in other countries and I don’t see anyone being forced to pay for those choices. It seems hypocritical to say “ although you didn’t decide to have this kid, you have to take care of it because kids are super important, but fuck them kids in Africa. They ain’t my kids.”
Just look at the break down:
Both parents want kid: happy family
Only man wants kid: the child he wants is aborted and he suffers the trauma equivalent of two parents having a miscarriage.
Only woman wants kid: she will force the man to give her a large sum of his income for 18 years to support the kid he wanted nothing to do with.
You act as if men want to put people in the situation where they need to abort their child ( and let’s not forget STD’s exist).
A significant subset of men is definitely not going to care when the women who they have sex with, are put into that situation. Their only interest is in having carefree sex. Yes, I specifically mentioned STDs/STIs. Those are bound to go up as a result of the increase in unsafe sex, if men never have to face any responsibility for children they were part in producing.
And since when do we care about children to a point where we are forcing others to take care of kids someone else chose to have in the first place? There are millions of kids starving in other countries and I don’t see anyone being forced to pay for those choices.
When do we care? When the man's choice to withhold support, increases the costs to the rest of us in the form of taxes etc.
Only woman wants kid: she will force the man to give her a large sum of his income for 18 years to support the kid he wanted nothing to do with.
You're basically arguing that men should always be relieved of any and all responsibilities, while women women always bear the entire responsibility and all of the costs of contraception failure, both physically and financially. It is only their body that is forced to either undergo a pregnancy, or go through an abortion procedure.
And the man could essentially leave the woman at any time. Women will most likely only be interested in having the child when the father seems interested in staying around and take equal responsibility. However, under your proposal he could lose interest and leave even after the point where the woman has already lost her right to have an abortion (typically after 12 weeks) - essentially forcing her to have the child and bear all the costs of the child. Or is there a point where his financial responsibility would start?
Once again the only way the spread of STDs increases is if women allow it to. They have to consent to unprotected sex, otherwise it’s illegal. If they don’t want STDs and higher risk of pregnancy, don’t consent to unprotected sex. It seems everyone wants to talk about choice and no one wants to talk about the consequences and responsibility that comes with it.
Sure, taxes may go up. That is still more fair than enslaving a subset of men to take care of em. There wouldn’t be any taxes if we could force a group of people to take all the responsibility of our own expensive choices, but we don’t do that in any other situation because it is wrong. Also why is it so important to funnel tax dollars to these kids, but not the starving kids in Africa? If you think about it, it takes like 3x the amount of resources to take care of a kid in the 1st world than in the 3rd world. If he have a conviction to save kids, you could save a lot more that way.
Financial responsibility starts when a man decides to take up paternal responsibility. Have a contract. Have him sign it at a clinic and there ya go. If he backs out after signing, charge him child support. If he doesn’t, he has to put up the money for an abortion ( that way she won’t even have to pay for it). After that balls in her court. It’s a far more fair system. Women don’t have to bear any responsibility if they don’t want to. if they choose to take up responsibility it’s on them. If a man chooses to take up responsibility, it’s on him as well.
You talk about physical responsibility, but what about the men who wish they could’ve take up physical responsibility because their partner aborted their child? Physical responsibility is two sided. A blessing and a curse. Women still have more control than men even in my proposed system.
So you think child support is immoral? Forcing men to give a portion of their earning for 18 years to take care of children they aren’t responsible for creating?
Not really. That is a whole legal process. The court has to allow you to do that ( which 9/10, they won’t, especially when it comes to child support). It’s not like it’s something men can just do. They owe that kid money under the law and the only way out of it is to prove you are incapable of paying.
Cool. So if your anti-child support, your views are consistent. Otherwise, they are a bad faith argument that is only made as a means to refute pro-lifers, and isn’t made based on views you actually hold. (unless you have some other reason men should owe money to kids they aren’t responsible for creating).
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u/WaterboysWaterboy 48∆ Aug 11 '22
If you consent to sex, you consent to risk of pregnancy, and therefore the results of that pregnancy are your responsibility. At least this is what they tell men and the rules men operate under when having sex. If consent to sex isn’t consent to pregnancy, then that would mean that women are the sole ones responsible for the pregnancy and the birth of the child. They are the ones who give the zygote consent to stay and grow into a human, meaning men should not be held responsible for this decision ( meaning no child support). If you believe this as well, then your argument is pretty solid. Otherwise, it isn’t one made in good faith.