More on abortion
Feb. 24th, 2006 09:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumAs might be expected there's a lot of talk about abortion in the blogospere right now.
In a few places I have seen the perrenial question, "What about the man's rights to help make the decision?"
As I see it, he doesn't have any. It's a binary choice. This isn't deciding how much money goes on one credit card or the other, or which movie to see tonight.
It's an either or. Either she carries it to term, or she aborts it.
Only one person gets to make that call. There's no way to split the Solomonic Ideal.
But, goes the cry, if she decides to keep the baby, he has to pay for it!
Qu'elle horreur. Shit happens. There are risks to sex. Pregnancy is one of them. If he didn't want the risk of a pregnancy, he ought to get cut, or buy a doll. Yeah, the good one's cost five-grand, but that's cheaper than food, clothes, daycare and college.
And, goes the flipside, what if he wanted the kid and she didn't? Well, he can talk to her, try to arrange a deal where he gets sole-custody, and she owes him nothing, but if she doesn't want to do that, he's SOL.
The argument also gets made, "He ought to be allowed to opt out."
This is the one which probably irks me more than any other.
It usually goes, more or less, like this.
In exchange for offering to pay for an abortion, he gets to walk away. If she takes it, he's out the cost of the abortion and no more.
If she doesn't, he's scot free. He, you see, "did the right thing." He offered to clean up the mess. She refused his noble offer, so she gets nothing more.
Bullshit. That's extortion. Being a single parent is hard. It limits things (jobs, housing, committed relationships) and makes life harder. He gets, in that scenario, to hang that over her head, get the abortion or suffer.
Reprehensible.
I feel for those people who want to make things just; who think that as two people are affected by the decision, two people ought to be involved in making it, but this is that simple. If abortion is an option, the woman gets to choose.
Is it better for the principles to sit down and talk about it. Probably, emotionally they probably both feel better afterwards. But it can't be required.
In a properly run world, abortion wouldn't be a real issue. Single parents wouldn't be any worse off than dual parents. Birth control methods would make accidental pregnancy more rare (and education would make BC more effective because people would use it properly).
But this isn't a perfect world, which means one person has to make the call, and that one person is the woman; she's pregnant. She is going to get stuck if he walks away (in theory he'd have to pay child support, but "dead-beat dads" wouldn't be a recurring theme in Time, and on the evening news if that were the case). He will be seen as the victim when she tries to get that child-support. She will be cast as a tramp and a harlot, conniving to get pregnant so she can live the easy life of a single mom without a husband to clean up after and all his money letting her stay at home and waste her life away on booze and other men.
It's about responsibility. One engages in risky behaviour, and one accepts the results.
In a few places I have seen the perrenial question, "What about the man's rights to help make the decision?"
As I see it, he doesn't have any. It's a binary choice. This isn't deciding how much money goes on one credit card or the other, or which movie to see tonight.
It's an either or. Either she carries it to term, or she aborts it.
Only one person gets to make that call. There's no way to split the Solomonic Ideal.
But, goes the cry, if she decides to keep the baby, he has to pay for it!
Qu'elle horreur. Shit happens. There are risks to sex. Pregnancy is one of them. If he didn't want the risk of a pregnancy, he ought to get cut, or buy a doll. Yeah, the good one's cost five-grand, but that's cheaper than food, clothes, daycare and college.
And, goes the flipside, what if he wanted the kid and she didn't? Well, he can talk to her, try to arrange a deal where he gets sole-custody, and she owes him nothing, but if she doesn't want to do that, he's SOL.
The argument also gets made, "He ought to be allowed to opt out."
This is the one which probably irks me more than any other.
It usually goes, more or less, like this.
In exchange for offering to pay for an abortion, he gets to walk away. If she takes it, he's out the cost of the abortion and no more.
If she doesn't, he's scot free. He, you see, "did the right thing." He offered to clean up the mess. She refused his noble offer, so she gets nothing more.
Bullshit. That's extortion. Being a single parent is hard. It limits things (jobs, housing, committed relationships) and makes life harder. He gets, in that scenario, to hang that over her head, get the abortion or suffer.
Reprehensible.
I feel for those people who want to make things just; who think that as two people are affected by the decision, two people ought to be involved in making it, but this is that simple. If abortion is an option, the woman gets to choose.
Is it better for the principles to sit down and talk about it. Probably, emotionally they probably both feel better afterwards. But it can't be required.
In a properly run world, abortion wouldn't be a real issue. Single parents wouldn't be any worse off than dual parents. Birth control methods would make accidental pregnancy more rare (and education would make BC more effective because people would use it properly).
But this isn't a perfect world, which means one person has to make the call, and that one person is the woman; she's pregnant. She is going to get stuck if he walks away (in theory he'd have to pay child support, but "dead-beat dads" wouldn't be a recurring theme in Time, and on the evening news if that were the case). He will be seen as the victim when she tries to get that child-support. She will be cast as a tramp and a harlot, conniving to get pregnant so she can live the easy life of a single mom without a husband to clean up after and all his money letting her stay at home and waste her life away on booze and other men.
It's about responsibility. One engages in risky behaviour, and one accepts the results.
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no subject
Date: 2006-02-25 07:53 am (UTC)everyone seems to assume that somehow contraception wasn't used.
No, I have repeatedly said that BC can be factored in, they can go whole hog (pill, condom, diaphragm and spermicide) and she still might end up pregnant. Changes not a thing.
You keep saying the woman can't have all the say, but the say you are giving the man is the right to put all the burdens on her.
If he has some say (which you say you want, but don't define) what say does he get.
She gets pregnant. He doesn't. When Maia and I have kids, she will be pregnant. I won't. We'll be having a kid, but she'll be pregant.
The fact of the matter is that the man has the easy way out. He walks away, we call it abandoment, but rarely make him pay anything for it. If she leaves the baby on his couch and leaves, we call that abandonment too, but we put her in jail for it. Seems the relative burden placed on her by law is a bit greater than that placed on him.
As for the burdens placed on people by others, look at the drug laws. If you let me use your place for the weekend and I leave a marijuana seed in the carpet (or in your car, or on your boat) the cops can take it away from you. In that circumstance you would have less say in the situation leading to the loss of money/valuables, than you do in the case of pregnancy.
TK
no subject
Date: 2006-02-27 03:44 am (UTC)um, read that sentence. it says "the same" meaning he was not tied up and forced, but neither was she
no subject
Date: 2006-02-27 04:10 am (UTC)When you made the issue of choice that of having sex, then the equal participation of both partners is an issue. She didn't decide to sleep with him all alone (unless it was a case of his being raped, which is a different question, and set of issues altogether. If she raped him, and then decided to force him to pay for the kid, I'd say she has no leg to stand on).
As for the balance of the argument (that he gets to suffer for her decisions, and that somehow he should get to opt out of the costs of the kid, if she won't have the abortion he demands), I still don't see any way he is entitled to a say in the matter. All the arguements still stand.
They had sex. The risk of a kid (no matter how slight, and how stringently attempts to prevent it were made) exists. One person has to make the call , and the only fair way to make that decision (if we posit that women are people of equal standing with men) is that she gets to do it.
As pointed out by others, once a kid is born, the kid has needs, and society benefits from them being met. Since the father was present in the decision to risk pregnancy, he gets to carry some of the cost.
TK