Regarding this article

http://www.debate.org/opinions/should-the-father-have-to-pay-child-support-if-he-wanted-an-abortion

Just wondering how everyone feels about this-should the father have to pay sprog support if wanted an abortion?

I'll start:

If I really stretch myself I still can't imagine this ever being an issue I have to face. I'm a female and I'd have an abortion without any input from a man.

Even if I was a very very different version of myself and wanted sprogs I would still have an abortion rather than drag an unwilling man into a sprog's life. Why would any female want to bring a sprog into this world when the father is rejecting it right from the get-go? Isn't that damning a life right from the start? Seems a woman would have to be damn selfish to do this!

I'll be thrilled when there is a more effective male birth control that equals all the choices women have. Then we'll see the population diminish. Or not because it does require a certain level of responsibility for the male to take the birth control. I'd guess there is a huge group of men out there who wished they'd had vasectomies. And it would level the playing field (condoms break, vasectomies are permanent, but since there is a male pill/injection/etc. you no longer have any excuses!)

Having said all that, as a selfish taxpayer I do think the father should have to pay sprog support even if he wanted an abortion. Net-net is it is also his problem and responsibility!

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freya
Having said all that, as a selfish taxpayer I do think the father should have to pay sprog support even if he wanted an abortion. Net-net is it is also his problem and responsibility!

His sperm, his spawn, his responsibility. There is a method of birth control available for men - condoms. If he wants to ride bareback, then it's his roulette to play.

I don't even see why people get into these long drawn out arguments on the subject. We childfrees, for the most part, are good at the game of NOT getting pregnant or fathering kids, I fail to understand why it seems so hard for other people to keep from reproducing.

If there is selfishness, it's toward the breeders, not us taxpayers.

I feel that the man should pay his due. He knows he's a man and thus can't get pregnant but CAN get a woman pregnant. Sometimes we are just born into shitty situations and in this case, being a man means you can't have an abortion. There are however (I believe) documents that men can get notarized to make them immune to paternity shit in case of wannabreed women. I also believe that a man and woman should discuss case scenarios before sex to see what each other think about abortion and whatnot. I also believe that if a man wants to be with a woman, he should be able to say, before flies even start unzipping, "if you get pregnant I don't want it and I will pay half of all the fees for an abortion but after that you're on your own". I think that should be an option.

But the thing is, if this is such a problem then maybe male birth control should be protested for. If it's SO common that the EBIL wimmens keep vacuuming up their sperm, then men need to take a chapter from the women's book and seek change.

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I also believe that if a man wants to be with a woman, he should be able to say, before flies even start unzipping, "if you get pregnant I don't want it and I will pay half of all the fees for an abortion but after that you're on your own". I think that should be an option.

As an aside, if a man in that situation is smart, he'd offer to pay for the whole thing. That's called being a savvy negotiator. Pay a little now or pay a lot later.

An oopsing woman is a vile creature. A man who pressures his mate for a kid and then can't be bothered to stick around and raise the kid is equally vile. I've seen both scenarios happen many times in my life.

There are plenty of men who try to walk away from their parental responsibilities, even with babybees they willingly created. I don't give a shit if the guy said he didn't want a kid prior to having sex with the woman. I don't give a shit if he wanted the kid. The fact is, the kid is here and he's going to either relinquish his parental rights or pay. And if the kid is on public assistance, the man shouldn't be able to relinquish his financial responsibilities, unless the kid is adopted by someone else.

As a taxpayer who has been paying into the system the most due to my non-chylded status for almost 40 years, I'm tired of taking it up the ass for other people's poor reproductive choices. Let them support their own damned brats.

And as a practical matter, courts are clogged up enough with Fambilee Issues. Who is going to chase down all these he said/she said situations? I like things simple: your DNA, you are going to pay. And conversely, not your DNA, you don't pay. Some bitch lied about you being the father? Let her go find the biological father then.

I strongly belive that if a man is duped and dose not want kids, he should not have to pay child support, since I do know a number of females that have gone out for one night stands, just to get pregnant, at first saying they don't need the mans support, till the baby is almost born and they cant afford half of what it needs, and suddenly they located and inform him their hevily pregnant and its his, and he should either marry them or pay child support, meanwhile, wheres the guys say in all this, he maybe didn't want a kid, certainly wasn't interested in marrage or child support at this stage of his life.

it can happen that even if the guy uses a condom, the chick might poke holes with a pin when hes not looking, or take her own faulty one and suggest it, say she's on the pill but really isn't, there are many sneaky ways it can happen, some even do oral, say their going to the bathroom to spit it out, then ram as much of it as they can up their vaginas, meanwhile the guy thinks he got a blow job with no risk of getting her pregnant.

I am female, but I wouldn't trust a female if I had a penis, unless I knew she was fixed, even then, condoms.

I say that if an unwanted pregnancy does happen, it is in the best interest of the guy to pay the entire bill for the abortion. Even if she wants to get one at a private clinic for 3k - it is still way cheaper.

Paying for abortion is not only a good idea, but it is highly encouraged. Pay the whole thing, do it quick - BEFORE she talks to any of her hen breeder friends who will sway her mind into keeping it. Even if the bill is 10k, so what? Still cheaper than a kid.

What is it with people calling referring to women as "females", eh? I thought it was an MRA thing but I see it popping up in more and more places. Strange...

Anyway, I struggle to have any sympathy for men who claim to be "oopsied". If they were forced to have unprotected sex at gunpoint then fine, but I suspect most of them weren't, and I have more sympathy for women who get pregnant by rapists and didn't have a chance to use protection. Also no method of contraception is 100% effective so men can falsely accuse women of oopsing them, just as women can oopsie men.

Putting the onus on one partner to take responsibility and letting the other off the hook would be dangerous for too many reasons- it would be best to keep both men and women taking precautions. As the name suggests, child support is meant to support a child, not its mother, and while some men may like to think of it as the latter to emotionally detach themselves as an excuse for not paying it, we can't forget that in many cases a child who never asked to be born will suffer if they don't.

As for "just getting an abortion", it's not that simple and it isn't exactly a walk in the park. A friend of mine was convinced she didn't want a baby at 18 but changed her mind minutes before the abortion she was booked in to have. Not everyone sees a clump of cells like us, for some less CF people the whole abortion thing is a much bigger dilemma and the decision is much more emotionally fraught. Some people are also under huge pressure from religious relatives, less permissive societies, etc...

Incidentally, one child support case I have been following with interest is that of serial deadbeat dad Liam Gallagher and his daughter Gemma, by his latest babymother, Liza Ghorbani. I used to have such a crush on him back in the 1990s when I was a teenage Britpop fan who didn't know any better, but since then he's proved himself to be a total sleazebag and the very worst kind of feckless breeder. He married a notorious golddigger, knocked up his ex two weeks after the wedding and started paying her £2,000 a month to keep quiet about it, had a baybee with the golddigger "to make everything better", got divorced then had a third baybee with his second wife and knocked up another woman while still married to her and tried to get her to "keep quiet" too. I hope Ghorbani sues him for every penny... *shudder* these days I wouldn't touch him with yours- really, I can't understand why poor men don't wrap it up or get the snip, so men with millions to lose must be completely doolally to take such risks:

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@Screaming Sausage: Liam sounds just like a bunch of folks here in USA who are professional sports players, politicians and high dollar executives. Here in USA, people who breed like that are either very rich or a very poor. The reason that I can find behind it is that irresponsible breeding does not affect the lifestyle of the rich or the poor a whole lot. There is not much that can be taken from the poor and while there is a whole lot that can be taken from the rich, they simply have so much more that remains.

Back to the original post. Most of us here know what the current laws are - guy pays child support whether kid was wanted by him or not.

If the law was to change, lawmakers may just have to "split the difference". If a guy gets a "surprise", there should be a provision for him to relinquish parental rights, but not at no financial cost to him. If laws were written where men could simply walk away, I see a door opening to some serious abuse of the situation.

Laws would almost have to be written in such a way that if a man wants to walk away, he can, but for a set fee, hopefully dependent on his income and calculated by a judge. A year of his salary maybe? Because whether a woman aborts or not, her body still gets to suffer. If she does abort, her medical bills, side effects, time off from work, cost to get to the doctor, other expenses, she should not have to endure that alone. Once a pregnancy occurs, a damage occurs. In modern society, any damage, even un-intended damage, has costs.

While having a man pay life long child support may just seem like too much, giving him alternative to pay a set amount of let's say 50k and walk free could settle many arguments on both sides.

It's not originally a MRA thing to say females, it's a which side of the water thing. It's a 'murrican habit I've seen addressed in TV shows, English people react with shock, but it's considered normal speech here.
But since MRA started as a 'murrican thing (right?), obviously it shows up with them too.
I saw it addressed in other media well before I ever heard of MRA.

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Presto
It's not originally a MRA thing to say females, it's a which side of the water thing. It's a 'murrican habit I've seen addressed in TV shows, English people react with shock, but it's considered normal speech here.
But since MRA started as a 'murrican thing (right?), obviously it shows up with them too.
I saw it addressed in other media well before I ever heard of MRA.

I knew an English lady who used the term 'female' to describe any woman she disliked. I took it on, since I grew up with her son and she always did this around me. I really adored her, and she liked me a lot, because I was a positive influence on her son and we are both still friends 35 years later.

Now, I refer to serial breeding bitches and wanna-moos as females.

As for the guy walking away, I take issue with it. His sperm got her knocked up. If he wasn't dipping his dick into a breeder, then he wouldn't have to worry about it. There IS no excuse for breeding an unwanted child, and there are ways that guys can protect themselves against it. If it turns out to be his, he should pay for it if the woman chooses to keep the kid. Why should taxpayers be on the hook for a mistake that they made?

I may sound harsh, but the only one who suffers is the kid in these situations. My duh wasn't around for me, and I suffered for it greatly. He didn't pay my moo a penny for me, as he was a chronic alcoholic, so we lived in poverty. My moo worked so we didn't go on welfare, but still...he shoulda done something to contribute to my life. After all, if he hadn't have fucked my moo, I wouldn't have been created in the first place.

I believe that people who are concious and deliberate about their choices should be afforded some protection by law. Male contraceptives lag behind, so at present a man who may want to breed later but not now, or who is undecided has few options for taking responsibility for his fertility. This is no excuse for the vast majority of "accidents" which are the result of people making minimal or no effort to prevent pregnancy.

As a woman, I'm deliberate about my sexual encounters. I discuss with my partner(s) what will happen if an accidental pregnancy occurs (I will abort), and I ensure that contraception is used (I am sterilized) and offer evidence that this is the case. If I were a man, I'd be equally deliberate and careful. But the fact remains that if I were a man, I'd have fewer options, because my partner(s) could lie about their intentions with abortions, and could deceive me about contraception, and I'd have no recourse. Even getting a vasectomy could not ensure that I would never become a parent. That strikes me as unfair.

The problem, as I see it, is that the law makes no allowance for people being deliberate and cautious. Someone who fell victim to a one in a million chance is treated the same as any old asshat who didn't think beyond getting laid.

This is a more widespread problem. In many places, the law protects fools who waltz through life with no plan, and ignores the efforts of people who planned. Consider prenuptial agreements. They're a sensible approach for people who are thinking about all possible future outcomes, but in some places they're considered invalid. What's the cautious person to do: avoid marrying? But wait, there are common-law marriage laws, which will make a person your de-facto spouse even if you never chose to enter into a legal relationship. In effect, the person who thinks things through and tries to make expectations explicit is screwed, so that the law can protect those who can't be arsed to think beyond today.

I don't see why the law can't respect private contracts between individuals which are made between equal parties in full knowledge of the consequences. In the case of pregnancy, if a man is deliberate enough to prepare a contract with a potential sexual partner which indicates his unwillingness to reproduce with her, and have it signed by her and witnessed, I think he should be free of obligation toward any offspring. People who would go to such lengths would be rare and determined, and would also use contraceptives, so it would not be a burden on the public purse to not hold them financially accountable.

I think this goes further than finances, though. It horrifies me to think of my genetic material being used to perpetuate suffering. It is morally repugnant to me. When I think of how I would feel if my DNA were being used in the genetic baton race without my consent - for instance if eggs were as easy and painless to harvest as sperm - I have a great deal of compassion for a man who shares my beliefs but who is betrayed by a partner who either doesn't follow through with an abortion in the event of a genuine accident or who deliberately sabotages or lies about contraceptives. I'm not sure what the right solution is; I used to consider myself pro-choice, but the more I see what piss-poor choices people make when public health is at stake (vaccines) the more I'm becoming in favor of forced medical intervention when the procedure has a real impact on others. I can't even see it as the other side of the slippery slope of forced birthing, given how that is already a real risk in many places, without any hints of forced abortions being a consequence.

Obviously, more contraceptive options for men will improve the odds, and I greatly welcome these things. Biology makes us unequal in some ways which the law cannot overcome, but the law should strive to be as equal as possible. Presently, I feel it falls short in protecting a man's reproductive choices, financially at least, and possibly in absolute biological terms as well.

I would consider giving a pass on child support to a guy who was truly "oopsed", but only under certain conditions.

1. The guy would truly have to have not wanted the kid and truly want nothing to do with it. If the guy ever decided to be a part of the kid's life, full child support would be reinstated.

2. The guy would have to have at least offered to pay for half of an abortion.

3. Moo is not allowed to collect welfare for the sprog. If duh doesn't want and won't support the kid, then moo needs to either : get an abortion, put the sprog up for adoption, or get a job and support it herself.

Number 3 is critical. While I do not like the idea of a man being trapped by a moo intent on getting inpig, Joe Taxpayer is not the one who knocked her up, or who was lied to about being on the pill, or had holes poked in his condom. Taxpayers should never be on the hook for a child that we did nothing to create. If duh was tricked -- as so many are -- he shouldn't be on the hook, but you better believe I would hold him responsible long before I would hold "the village" responsible.

So yeah, any oopsing moo needs to support herself and the sprog she so desperately wants, without the safety net of sponging off others. Moo so desperately wants a kid, she can go out and earn to provide for it. There would only be one exception. If moo truly cannot find a job -- probably because she's under-educated and has few skills -- then she would be able to get some form of assistance, but only if she did some form of full-time community service.

Frankly, I think any moo who already gets assistance should be doing community service in exchange for it. At least that would be somewhat productive. There should be no sitting around doing nothing and collecting a check. If you "can't" go and find an actual job, then you need to be giving something back to 'the village' in some way.

I would be willing to bet that if moos weren't able to "oops" a guy into paying her way, and she was not able to suck off the taxpayer while sitting on her ass, but actually had to go out and work in some form, we would see a lot less "oopsing" and probably a lot less single moos.