Thoughts on abortion, in light of South Dakota

[pecunium]

I apologise, sort of, for all the posting.

I will be in Korea from the 11th of this month, until the first of next, so I'm feeling the urge to write.

So, lets assume, for the sake of argument, that the SD law passes, and the Missouri law, and a wave of laws like them which make abortion hard, if not impossible, for poor people to get (because the wealthy will come to California, or go to Canada, Sweden or some other place they can get rid of their problems (and they won't be only the rich pro-choicers, Avedon reminds me of The Only Moral Abortion is MY Abortion which I am grateful for the URL for, as I had lost it, about the attitdes of pro-lifers who find themselves with an unexpected guest).

So there will be a whole lot more babies being born, who weren't expected, much less planned for.

We can assume a lot of those babies will be born out of wedlock, the world being what it is today, there won't be as many shotgun weddings as there once were (we aren't Iceland, but we have a much higher tolerance for single parents these days, even if we tend to force it on the mother).

Back in the "good old days, when a woman had damn all for options (she could be a secretary, a nurse, a teacher or a housewife) she was expected to be a virgin when she wed, and not have much in the way of salable skills (I recall my mother, who was rearing two kids alone... the circumstances of that are not clear from here, but they don't really matter, not being able to get credit, because she didn't have a husband around to share a card with. Some years later she got divorced, but it was some years after that before she had credit. She, however, was a phlebotomist, until she married again, and moved to California, which wanted her to go to school for two yaers to learn what she already knew, but I digress, she at least had a salable, and {mostly} portable skill), the law was built in such a way that should her husband leave her (much less get caught cheating) she got some hefty support.

These days, well she gets less, but the theory is she has the ability to earn as much on her own as she loses by being single, and he supplements to meet the extra obligations of the kid.

DNA. Used to be all there was to go on was blood type. One could disprove paternity, but that was it (Maternity was certain, paternity; assumed). These days, daddy can be found.

Something to think about.

Comments

[sunfell.livejournal.com]

"These days, daddy can be found."

And right there is the hinge on which our freedom and rights to self-determination as women swings.

We can track them down now. They can't run away. They can pay the price.

Only when we make it as hard on men to 'sow wild oats' as we do on women who have to bear them will we have any real progress. We can do that now, and we should.

[hoosier-red.livejournal.com]

Problem is, when you find Daddy, can you make him support his children?

I've known women who have waited for years for child support because their exes deliberately quit jobs, drifted around, and used other avoidance tactics to skip out on paying for their kids. One asshat actually tried to, and I kid you not, give his wife and kids away to another man, so that he wouldn't be financially responsible for them anymore (needless to say, the wife was not pleased about this).

Finding Daddy is one thing -- instilling a sense of responsibility in these losers (I hesitate to call them men -- a man takes care of his children to the best of his ability) is a much harder problem.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I agree. Lack of enforcement is a real problem. But one can hope it will improve (and the states might decide they had a stronger interest if the costs of all those single mothers, with inadequate prospects start coming home to roost... not only will there be drain on public services, but a loss of potential tax revenue... the painful double whammy of poverty).

If it does improve, well the men have choices to make; be more careful, support choice, pay for the kid, or find a way to live which doesn't require an income.

TK

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I've already seen dark notices going out pointing out that with less abortion available, a drunken one-night stand can turn into 18 years of support payments.

But this seems a fragile, even dangerous, thing to tie to considering how easy it is now for deadbeat dads to dodge payments, and in light of the fact that the leading cause of death in pregnant women is murder by unwilling fathers. (A threat to women's lives that is presumably impossible to prove under South Dakota's "law.")

[bifemmefatale.livejournal.com]

Um, I've been in a 3 year battle to get my ex to pay his child support, and he's in the same town as I am and not making any effort to hide. Plus the federal government is cutting funds to track down deadbeat dads, along with welfare, WIC, Medicaid, Head Start.....It ain't that easy. I predict a lot more women dying and a lot more babies in dumpsters, along with the resurrection of the Janes. I may just end up joining them.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I know it isn't easy. It isn't so much the application I expect (though as the numbers of single mothers, by unhappy accident, rise, I think the percentage of enforcements may go up) as the idea that one faces the threat (because until they get involved in something like this, most people think the state is as heavy in chasing down child support as it is in chasing down traffic tickets) and the desire to avoid the hassle.

The fact is most people support Roe, but haven't thought through what its absence would mean to them.

This is one more point to personalise it to the men in the audience.

TK

[chris-goodwin.livejournal.com]

They belong to a religion that has as one of its core tenets the notion that women and children are the property of men. The same people are against birth control and sex education (because, after all, property can't have some control over its own reproduction). Condoms are marginally okay when used by men for the sole purpose of preventing them from getting disease.

See also. (http://wicked-wish.livejournal.com/463017.html)

[iamcompubear.livejournal.com]

I will miss you and your postings. Please be safe. I wish you could see my so while you were there he is just a hop skip jump away in Okinowa.

[doutdes.livejournal.com]

I’m not very hopeful that even if you can find the fathers, that you can make them pay (http://childsupportguidelines.com/articles/art200004.html)

In March 1999, the United States Bureau of the Census issued its latest report on the collection of child support. U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Dep't of Commerce, Child Support for Custodial Mothers and Fathers: 1995 (Current Population Reports, Series P-60, No. 196, March 1999). According to this report, approximately 22.8 million children under the age of 21 lived with 13.7 million custodial parents, while the other parent lived elsewhere. Only 58% of these 13.7 million custodial parents had child support awards of any sort. The rest had no child support awards at all. The report further states that total child support awards due in 1995 were $28.3 billion. Yet, only $17.8 billion, or 63%, of the child support actually owed was paid.

I don’t know if the numbers have changed much in the last 10 years, but I’d bet they haven’t. I’m not sure if abortion would change it either. Only if the states are paying for additional social services would they start going after dead-beat parents more effectively, and probably only to recover expenses for those programs (i.e. Medicaid). My hypothesis is that more custodial parents will receive support (even if it’s paid directly to the state), but that they will receive far less than the full payment.


PS. Where will you be staying in Korea? I live in Dongducheon, near Camp Casey (North of Camp Redcloud).