Gotta disagree with you on this one, Page.

1) Forced testing of a person who is, in the eyes of the law, innocent until proven guilty opens the door to all kinds of invasions -- the same invasions that we've been screaming about for four years now.

2) Rape victims don't need to know the status of the rapists to take the HIV anti-transmission course. They should do it anyway, regardless of side effects. Perhaps the accused assailant has simply not shown a positive, though he has in fact been previously exposed. Or, God forbid, but it happens -- perhaps police have apprehended the wrong man and the victim has made a false identification, in which case, it doesn't matter what the accused's HIV status is -- the actual rapist's status could be positive.

Take the drugs, ladies. I've watched someone die of AIDS. A little vomiting and diarrhea is such a small price to pay, you wouldn't believe me if I told you.

~AS~

I'm astounded at the number of people who have missed the biggest point of this article. This isn't solely about the decision to stay home vs. the decision to keep working. Hirshman's point is well taken. Men don't really have that option when they decide to become parents. Society expects them to keep working, regardless of whether they become parents or not. If women expect to be treated as equals, perhaps its time we began behaving like equals. A woman must take responsibility for her life -- for her survival for her entire life. This seems to be getting overlooked by many of the responses to this article.

I was happy to stay at home and raise my daughter for the pre-school years of her life. And I wouldn't have traded that time for anything, because I think it had a very positive effect on her. But every year, when Social Security sends me a summary of my benefits, and I compare it to that of my same-age friends who were working moms, I can't help but be struck by the fact that I lost a consider amount of retirement income because I made that choice. My benefits fall between $700 and $1000 per month less than my contemporaries who remained in the work force for those four or five years, even though I worked as hard or harder as a stay-at-home during those years. My ex-husband, who became a parent on the exact same day as I did, suffered no such loss.

This was something that I never considered when making the decision to stay home. Had I been made aware of exactly what I was sacrificing in the long run, I might have gone ahead and made the same decision. Then again, maybe not. That grand a month isn't enough to make me rich, but could very well be the difference between being able to live comfortably on my pension and SS benefits, and having to (as another poster wrote) eat Fancy Feast.

Though my ex and I both made the decision for me to stay home and raise our child, only one of us will be paying for it well into her golden years. It's a matter of informed consent. Every woman should stop to think seriously about her future before she decides to stay home, and she should have a Plan B, in case, as Hekker points out, she's one of the 54% of all American women who ends up divorced.

~AS~

No, really... bad....

For your sake, her sake and the sake of your as-yet-unborn children, she must - must -- repeat, MUST get counseling before you will marry her. And you must - must -- MUST get counseling before she will marry you. Because her way of being intentionally cruel to you was to hit you. Your way of being intentionally cruel to her was to withhold love and shut her out, though you knew it was breaking her heart.

This does not excuse her behavior in the slightest. The true blessing here is that you provoked her into displaying this behavior before a helpless toddler did it. Now, everybody can do what everybody should do before anybody gets married. Run, don't walk, to a licensed marriage and family counselor immediately, without hesitation (last week would have been good), and work on becoming the people that you should be and not the people your parents raised you to be.

And, P.S. -- Take it from a woman. It doesn't matter how much you love her. You cannot change her behavior by yourself. She exhibits classic batterer behavior, and you exhibit classic emotional abuser behavior. Knock it off, the two of yas, before you bring children into this world, or you'll both be equally guilty of perpetuating this evil bullshit.

Now. Go. And hit and sulk no more.

~AS~

It is reader responses like the ones above that remind me (just in the nick of time, before I'm tempted again) why I stay out of Table Talk these days.

Uber-yuppies.... what a collection of mental driftwood!

~AS~

Why on earth should you apologize for speaking the truth? My heart goes out to anybody victimized by an unscrupulous barbarian who presumes to profit off of another's momentary position of weakness -- whether the weakness is captivity (Francis) or of temporary lack of judgement brought on by alcohol (many of the girls whose inebriation he's profited from).

Francis has every right and every reason to go to court and protest his treatment. But he'd best not doing hoping that no one will draw the parallel between what was done to him and what he himself has done.

Hopefully, he will learn the kharmic lesson. But whether he does or not, there's no reason why you can't make a point of it to the rest of the world.

~AS~