The Reproductive Rights of Man

[Kaelik]

How come noone talks about the flip side of the issue. What if you DO want the child, and the mother doesn't. Or what if you want to be involved in the child's life. And the mother refuses to let that happen. Or gives the child away for adoption without letting you know she was even pregnant.

Because none of us want a fucking kid.

And I'm sorry Dean. You agreed to the possibility of having to raise a child you conceive when you had sex with the woman. She didn't want to have an abortion? You probably should have figured that out before you slept with her. You do not get to abandon your child because you decide it's inconvenient for you.

Even in the hypothetical about how she lied about being on birth control? If he took adequate precautions, why should that child be considered his? She wanted it badly enough to lie to him to get it? (Or was lying for some other reason, but fraud is fraud even if you don't benefit.)

If someone sneaks in the night and jacks him off, then goes to the fertility clinic, is he obligated to support that child because of the accident of genetics?

[DSMatticus]

Men who don't want babies can get a vasectomy, it can even be reversed.

I am amused that you said the thing that is the exact opposite of true. But I am also just amused that you are recommending non-trivial surgery as the go-to form of birth control for the teens and 20-somethings of the world who don't want to be parents before they have... jobs. Real ones, anyway.

Anyone who thinks men should be able to force a woman into abortion

There are zero of these people here and there is no reasonable explanation for the misunderstanding you have had. You owe some apologies.

What if you DO want the child, and the mother doesn't.

Well, I don't think anyone has the right to have other people incubate tumors for them. That is unduly burdensome to an actual person in a way "instead of getting child support from a father who expressed his refusal to assume parentage in the limited window after being informed, you will get social welfare while the man retains his right not to be forced into parentage by your decisions for him" isn't.

You agreed to the possibility of having to raise a child you conceive when you had sex with the woman.

You are arguing that sex is implicit consent for its consequences. That is an argument against abortion. It is the Christian punish sex rhetoric applied to men at step N+1 instead of step N. When you use contraceptives and have sex with the obvious intent to not create a child at all, you aren't consenting to anything.

Or what if you want to be involved in the child's life. And the mother refuses to let that happen.

Well, if I think when you found out about the pregnancy you expressed your desire to be a part of your child's life then the mother has both a moral and legal obligation to fulfill that requirement as tempered by feasibility and the best interest of the child. I don't think in the hypothetical situation where a man and a woman have sex and there is an unintended pregnancy and the woman immediately decides she wants to be a mother and the man immediately decides he wants to be a father... that the woman should be able to tell him no without justification.

Or gives the child away for adoption without letting you know she was even pregnant.

Once a child has a life and a social support network, your parental rights are basically gone and that is completely and totally obvious. You can show up and ask politely if you can be a part of their life, and maybe you will get lucky. But the child's interest in keeping the family they already have is very real. You don't do yourself any favors by pretending this isn't true in order to try and turn this example into a thorny issue.

You do not get to abandon your child because you decide it's inconvenient for you.

No, see, you do. You already described it. It's called adoption. If two people have sex (those irresponsible cads!) and decide it's inconvenient for them (those monsters! it's a child!) they can put the child up for adoption (selfish assholes!). This already happens. You are telling me putting up children for adoption is evil. If your argument were "because you should have had an abortion instead unless you're certain the child will be properly supported," I'd buy it. But it's not, your argument is people can't shirk parental duties because they don't want them and that means adoption is evil. Oops. Seriously.

"Father and mother can mutually abandon parental responsibilities through adoption. Mother can abandon parental responsibilities through abortion. Father can't do a fucking thing." You are claiming this to be fair and reasonable and not at all sexist or awful. Even though the asymmetry in rights is as obvious as day and night.

But also, the argument goes:
1) Sex leads to parenthood (even with birth control).
2) If you have sex, you consent to parenthood.
3) You can't opt out of the thing you consented to.

Here's a similar one, let me know what you think:
1) Sex leads to pregnancy (even with birth control).
2) if you have sex, you consent to pregnancy.
3) You can't opt out of the thing you consented to.

I apologize for the many-small-quotes format that ended up having, but whatever. There were examples. They needed shooting down. (Everytime I edit and fix this, I notice more mistakes. I am too full and too tired to be arguing on the internet.)

[ubernoob]

How come noone talks about the flip side of the issue. What if you DO want the child, and the mother doesn't. Or what if you want to be involved in the child's life. And the mother refuses to let that happen. Or gives the child away for adoption without letting you know she was even pregnant.

Because none of us want a fucking kid.

Additionally, when I get to the point of settling down with a woman because I do want kids at that point in my life, part of my dating criteria will be "wants to have at least one child." Any sex I have until that point does not involve producing a child.

Seriously, you're a man. You can have sex with women that do want to have kids if that is your desire. No one is stopping you. Making a baby takes two people. Both of those people should be doing so willingly because that is a gigantic lifestyle change and huge responsibility (seriously, babies become people).

At no point should a baby be made without both individuals being willing to care for and raise that future person. A woman should not be able to trick a man into having a kid and then leach off his wages for the rest of his life when he did not desire this. A man should not be able to get a woman pregnant without her desire (this is sometimes called rape).

It takes two. Period.

Edit: Just read sab's other stuff. I'm officially done with this thread. I am not going to talk about the retardedness that is abstinence. That has been disproven with fucking science. In areas that push abstinence, teen pregnancy goes UP, not down. End of discussion. Any argument based on the abstinence logic of "SEX IS SCARY AND YOU ASKED FOR IT BY STICKING YOUR PEE PEE IN HER VAGOO" is just too dumb for me to take part in. Peace.

[Koumei]

ubernoob: it helps if you remember that sabs is some combination of stupid and insane, and they don't add together, they multiply.

[Username17]

My last post was unfortunately too on-topic to make the jump with the thread split, so I'll cover the main points:

In Norway, which is a real place, they actually do have a system where the father is not required to be hounded and forced to pay for a pregnancy that he didn't want and women aren't expected to starve to feed their babies without male support. It is awesome.

In most advanced countries, "child support" doesn't really go to the mother. The mother gets single parent and child benefits from the government, and then the government recoups some or all of those costs by taking money away from the biological father. But, fortunately, if the father runs away to Chile or something, the government doesn't stop payments to feed and clothe the child. But this underlies how essentially pointless this whole thing is. If we agree that it is established that it is immoral for the government to allow the child to go hungry at any point, why is it important that we financially penalize some random dude who is not involved with the child's life?

-Username17

[Starmaker]

If we agree that it is established that it is immoral for the government to allow the child to go hungry at any point, why is it important that we financially penalize some random dude who is not involved with the child's life?

Because people who are afraid of octomoms are even more afraid of centodads.

[Lago PARANOIA]

If we agree that it is established that it is immoral for the government to allow the child to go hungry at any point, why is it important that we financially penalize some random dude who is not involved with the child's life?

This might seem like pure snark, but I'm actually somewhat serious with this next point. I think that part of the problem is that a not-insignificant portion of the populace burns and writhes with jealousy offense at the idea of some young casanova stud going around and impregnating peoples' beautiful, lust-inducing, virginal daughters without some sort of consequence.

Think back to the whole 'angry dad who threatens daughter's date with emasculation if he steps out of line' trope. It's apparently considered normal or at least not abnormal and creepy in (American) culture for parents to obsess over the sexual purity of their daughters. And by pushing the policy you recommend it robs said creepy parents of their first line of defense; that is, lifelong punishment for horny boys.

It's misogynist, creepy, and even downright Freudian but there you go. It touches the raw nerve of sublimated sexual jealousy.

[Chamomile]

If we agree that it is established that it is immoral for the government to allow the child to go hungry at any point, why is it important that we financially penalize some random dude who is not involved with the child's life?

Because people who are afraid of octomoms are even more afraid of centodads.

What about octodad?

[fectin]

I'm just gonna leave this here and see what happens:
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/7024930/

[Maj]

[Maxus]

I'm dumb-founded.

I can't see how you can justify making him pay child support there. And that she isn't denying it is even more astonishing.

I do think him trying to claim theft is overreacting.

Hooboy. The MRists are going to go apeshit.

[Meikle641]

>implying this case is somehow unique

[ubernoob]

Isn't this basically a trope at this point? Man releases semen near woman he does not want to impregnate. Evil woman schemes and gets pregnant anyways then presses for child support.

I swear to god I've actually seen that plot on family guy/southpark/some other nonsense. This is like the slut version of Poes Law.

[Orion]

I'm dumb-founded.
I can't see how you can justify making him pay child support there. And that she isn't denying it is even more astonishing.

Really? It seem pretty clear why you might decide that way. It's the default answer you get if you just read the applicable laws, since they don't explicitly call out any exception, so I would imagine it's legally proper. And it's also arguably morally proper, because screwing over an adult is considered preferable to screwing over a kid.

Oh and Meikle: I'm given that this case is from 2005, I'm guessing it is "somehow unique."

[Username17]

It's important to remember that fraudulent pregnancies are still about a million times more likely to have been a result of men claiming to have had a vasectomy or claiming they were going to pull out or whatever than to have a woman collect semen from around the room and turkey baster it into her vagina.

However, women do also have the ability to claim to be using birth control while that being factually untrue in order to con men into having sex with them without protection for the purposes of having a baby. I have a real cousin who really resulted from that. Sometimes we meet at family parties, and I've even touched her - she's totally a real person resulting from a real event.

That the law doesn't (in most places, Norway I salute you) cover acts of fraud is a significant flaw. But it's still much less worse than living in a society where a man deciding to leave his girlfriend could result in children actually starving. And remember: that was the way things worked until fairly recently. It's not really that long ago that people were talking about "Bounders" and "Cads" as things that could destroy lives.

-Username17

[Maxus]

It strikes me as abusing that law, and I seriously doubt the people writing that law thought this level of WTF would happen, but I hadn't thought about the kid. Who has the tiebreaker of 'being a kid' in the 'blamelessness' scale.

[Stahlseele]

"I'm sorry child, it's not your fault that the woman you love and adore as your mother is an evil cunning greedy bitch"

[Dean]

That the law doesn't (in most places, Norway I salute you) cover acts of fraud is a significant flaw. But it's still much less worse than living in a society where a man deciding to leave his girlfriend could result in children actually starving.

I know we aren't really in disagreement but it should be noted that every member of the "Men should have reproductive rights" crowd including myself has stated that those legal changes do not take priority over the currently more important fight of putting women in greater control over their reproductive capacities. Everyone making the argument is aware of the order in which those battles need to be won in order to best improve our society.
The argument is only alive because those in opposition to it are willing to make self contradictory and aggressively sexist arguments against those rights existing at all. The fact that someone saying "In the future, ideally, in cases of blatant fraud men should not have to care for a child they did not agree to for a lifetime" causes people to lose their minds declaring misogyny and rape apology demonstrates that this is the sort of argument that needs to be won if we want feminism to be a rational and internally consistent belief system rather than a den for reactionary ill thought out blog posts.

[FaerieGodfather]

I know we aren't really in disagreement but it should be noted that every member of the "Men should have reproductive rights" crowd including myself has stated that those legal changes do not take priority over the currently more important fight of putting women in greater control over their reproductive capacities.

Really? Because as much as I, myself, am an advocate of men having legally-protected reproductive rights, I've never had an argument on this topic in which most of the men involved weren't arguing that they should either have the power to force women to abort children they don't want, or force them to gestate children they do want. This topic is like a homing beacon for red pill assholes.

Or are you just talking about the crowd here?

Anyway, it seems to me that there is only one equitable and morally legitimate system for determining parental obligations in a way that respects the basic liberties of both men and women:

• Woman becomes pregnant, and chooses whether or not to give birth.
• Having chosen to give birth, woman then chooses whether or not to keep the child.
• Having chosen to keep the child, woman chooses man to offer paternity to.
• Having been offered a child, man chooses whether or not to accept.
• If man accepts, he is father, period. If man refuses, woman is free to choose another man.

Anything else either allows women to force paternity on men or gives men unlawful and immoral authority over womens' bodies-- and creates unseemly legal battles over paternity fraud.

[Maj]

I think it's just the crowd here. The issue of men's rights is an unfortunate attractor of asshattery, but most of the guys here are into not oppressing women.

[Starmaker]

• Woman becomes pregnant, and chooses whether or not to give birth.
• Having chosen to give birth, woman then chooses whether or not to keep the child.
• Having chosen to keep the child, woman chooses man to offer paternity to.
• Having been offered a child, man chooses whether or not to accept.
• If man accepts, he is father, period. If man refuses, woman is free to choose another man.

Not really. (1) You should cycle through the whole list each time, because the woman's decision to give birth might depend on a man's acceptance of paternity, and (2) having initially decided to give birth, the woman should make a good faith effort to offer paternity to the biological father (unless the sperm was sourced form a bank).

[FaerieGodfather]

Not really. (1) You should cycle through the whole list each time, because the woman's decision to give birth might depend on a man's acceptance of paternity...

But, as ridiculous as it is, oftentimes a man's acceptance of paternity is going to be conditional on the results of a paternity test-- or on other factors that cannot be determined until after birth. The woman should be able to make her decision based on whether or not she has a willing father right now, but can't reasonably expect a man to walk in blind.

... and (2) having initially decided to give birth, the woman should make a good faith effort to offer paternity to the biological father (unless the sperm was sourced form a bank).

I disagree. He didn't make the baby. If he wants a baby, he should find a woman who wants to give him one.

[JonSetanta]

However, women do also have the ability to claim to be using birth control while that being factually untrue in order to con men into having sex with them without protection for the purposes of having a baby.

Happened to me (the lying, not the baby), she used the "withdrawal method" instead while switching from enjoying the encounter to angrily attacking me mid-coitus.
She killed herself much later when her preferred method didn't work with someone and she became pregnant, so c'est la vie, crazy genes were not passed on this time.

[fectin]

Here's a quick thought experiment. I don't have evidence or believe it's true, but it's at least superficially plausible:

Assume, for the moment, that some small fraction of women are willing to lie as described by Frank and sigma. Assume that some of those women are also fairly promiscuous. Say that fraction is something like a tenth of a percent of women (again, not because it's true, but purely as a thought experiment). For this, lets say that "reasonably promiscuous" means ten partners over her lifetime (so, not even an extreme).

That would mean that roughly 1% of men would have personally had some encounter like that (1%), and if they tell only 10 of their friends, that fully 10% of men have reason to believe this is a real issue (if not necessarily common).

Obviously, there are some issues with this model, first and foremost of which is that the numbers are, and I stress this, completely made up. Even so though, I think it's useful for thinking about how some people might think this is a frequent occurrence.

[FaerieGodfather]

Hell, I know it's a real issue because it's happened more than once within my family.