Display:
Well men don't have much role in raising children, so why should they have a say in anything to do with them? Mind you, I don't think the father should be able to either force or stop an abortion: however a woman who chooses to have a child against the father's will shouldn't be able to claim support from him thereafter. That's going to be another popular opinion, isn't it?
by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Tue Sep 2nd, 2008 at 05:42:05 AM EST
[ Parent ]
So at waht point pre-birth can the father withdraw consent and leave the mother without support? and when you've decided that why that point and not any other?

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.
by ceebs (ceebs (at) eurotrib (dot) com) on Tue Sep 2nd, 2008 at 05:52:23 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Somewhere before the deadline for deciding to have an abortion.
by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Tue Sep 2nd, 2008 at 05:56:24 AM EST
[ Parent ]
That could be used to put a great deal of unfair pressure on the woman.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.
by ceebs (ceebs (at) eurotrib (dot) com) on Tue Sep 2nd, 2008 at 06:11:31 AM EST
[ Parent ]
In what way unfair?
by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Tue Sep 2nd, 2008 at 06:15:20 AM EST
[ Parent ]
You could argue it is unfair for a man to get a monetary benefit (pay for a cheap abortion to save future child support) by having a woman undergo a traumatic medical procedure when she would rather have the child.

A vivid image of what should exist acts as a surrogate for reality. Pursuit of the image then prevents pursuit of the reality -- John K. Galbraith
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Sep 2nd, 2008 at 06:20:06 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Entrapment does happen. Germaine Greer had an interesting book out in the 80s about historical sexual habits which were based on deliberately getting pregnant so that a man would be forced to marry and provide support.

The issue of consent becomes as fuzzy as it occasionally does in rape cases. It's easy to be clear at the extremes, but it can get very fuzzy in the middle, especially if either or both people change their minds about what happened after the event.

That's not going to be a popular idea either, I suppose.

Maybe condom packets could come with pre-printed indemnity contracts which could be signed and exchanged in the presence of a lawyer before the condoms are used?

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Tue Sep 2nd, 2008 at 10:33:05 AM EST
[ Parent ]
In the Ideal World(TM), where men and women have equal rights de facto and not merely de jure, as well as equal pay, equal opportunity, equal wossname, etc., I might agree in principle (noting, however, that there is a case to be made for providing some form of government support to single parents in such cases to avoid abortions due to purely economic concerns).

But until that happy day, I say the fight for gender equality has bigger fish to fry than the rather meagre support money being that the non-parenting parent pays to the parenting one (who are usually, although not universally, male and female, respectively).

- Jake

If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Tue Sep 2nd, 2008 at 04:22:49 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Display:
Login
. Make a new account
. Reset password
Occasional Series