maycocksean said:
It sounds to me like this guy doesn't have much of a case, but to be honest, I'm don't find most the posts decrying him to be that convincing. . .I don't know what it is. . .I'm trying to put my finger on it.
Does a woman have a choice as to whether she can become a parent, but a man has no choice (other than to use protection and hope it works) about it?
Is this not a legitmate question (even if this particularly guy's lawsuit was nonsense)?
I think that the arguments that this guy should have used a condom or abstained from sex all together would have been condemned had they been directed at a woman. . .
Not if said woman were trying to escape financial obligations to a child the other biological parent held custody of, which is the legal issue at stake here. Child support laws apply equally to men and women--they aren't treated as separate categories of persons for that purpose, because the carrying out of financial obligations doesn't take place inside anyone's body. If Matt Dubay were to be allowed to get out of those obligations, then the precedent that would set would be that any man could say "But I don't want to be a father" upon finding out he's impregnated someone, and thus summarily escape all financial obligations should a child result.
In essence, legalized abortion assumes that the state's undeniable interest in procuring future citizens and ensuring their support through to the age of majority is insufficient to justify treating the inside of an existing citizen's body as state property--property over which the state's agency exceeds said citizen's--once said body is in a condition of pregnancy (whether intentionally or not). It confers a narrow right to not remain pregnant (though not necessarily without limits; for example, many countries allow abortion only through the first trimester, save for medical emergencies)--not an open-ended right to evade the financial obligations of parenthood.
True, in practice decisions to abort pretty much always involve more longterm considerations than that, and those considerations might well include preparedness to assume said financial obligations--which is why you're
also seeing "posts decrying" Dubay invoking the idea of Wells as an "ass," "scum," "scheming bitch"...
she had a meaningful choice to decide whether to accept those financial obligations (among many, many others--but still);
he didn't, except in the minimal sense that he didn't even try to protect himself against the possible risks of having sex with a woman he didn't know well enough for it to be anything but ill-advised for him to take her word for it that 'No condom, no problem'. (And for what it's worth, I'd consider a woman who took a man's word for it, in a similar casual dating scenario, that "Oh BTW, I'm infertile plus I've tested STD/AIDS-free, so no need to worry about protection with me!" similarly imprudent.) Still, a decision to abort is obviously never
merely about longterm financial commitments, because if the physical, psychological, social-interpersonal, professional, and economic consequences *specific to being pregnant* were
truly irrelevant to the woman, then she'd have no reason to abort rather than put the resulting baby up for adoption. Legalized abortion presumes that it's her right, as the owner of that pregnant body, to take those consequences (as well as the 'big picture' ones) into account in deciding whether or not to remain pregnant. Treating whether or not to remain pregnant as synonymous with whether or not to accept financial responsibility for a potential dependent in general is very misleading--in practice there's unquestionably some overlap (and that's precisely the gap Mr. Dubay fell into, which is why as said earlier, I'm sympathetic to his situation), but it only goes so far before you collide with the reality that having a uterus is not analogous to having a savings account at a local bank.
Perhaps in a hypothetical politically 'ideal' world, all reproduction would occur through a man and a woman mutually agreeing to provide sperm/eggs for in vitro fertilization, with gestation taking place in an incubator...then none of us would have to lock horns over all this crap. That wouldn't seem to be in the cards, though...
MadelynIris said:
Indra, you keep digging deeper. As an involved father, and representing involved fathers everywhere, I can honestly say, our contibution to our children's lives is equally important as their mother's.
Thank you very much.
Willingly becoming an involved father (or mother) is very different from being unwillingly forced into that. The same applies to pregnancy--it has unavoidable physical, psychological, social-interpersonal, professional, and economic consequences regardless of willingness, but accepting those willingly is an altogether different experience from being forced into them. And legally speaking, the former and the latter are very different--'involved parenthood' doesn't take place inside anyone else's body. Being legally compelled (whether you're a man or a woman) to pay X amount of dollars monthly, even for 18 years, isn't analogous to being legally compelled to relinquish ownership of the inside of your own body to the state for 9 months (again, with the aforementioned unavoidable consequences). The state certainly has a legitimate interest in protecting dependent citizens, and to a point in ensuring that new ones are produced (which is why I think the 'European model' of permitting abortion through the first trimester only, save for medical reasons, is a worthy compromise)--but, it certainly also has an interest in protecting existing citizens' say in what goes on inside their own bodies.
BonosSaint said:
To complicate matters, I believe in many states, the husband is the presumed father (whether or not he is the biological father--say if his wife has an affair) and bears the financial responsibility for child support.
Which is seriously fucked-up...but apparently not a relevant dimension in this particular case.