I read the article and some of the debate, but found that most of it de-volved into the usual name calling crap and ridiculous statements (ie "if a man doesn't want children then he should never have sex").

The articles were okay, but really didn't offer any solutions or anything new, especially compared to Salon's coverage of the same issue fairly recently. Practically speaking, what can be done? Should women be forced to the abortion clinic and tied down on the exam table because a man doesn't want to pay child support? Isn't that just as disgusting as forcing a women to go through pregnancy and birth when she doesn't want to? Are either of those options really the same as making a man send a check to his child each month? Then again, if a man is tricked into becoming a father, shouldn't he have some recourse? How can that be implemented without negatively impacting the child, which does deserve the full support of its parents? How about looking at the way custody and divorce laws and courts are set up and how they should be reformed to create a less adversarial environment? Nope, none of that discussed, even though it really needs to be.

Some of the usual misconceptions came up in the debate and weren't dealt with. The first being that only men pay child support and that child support is the same as alimony (a payment to the parent) as opposed to payment owed to the child. The other thing that a lot of the debaters focused on was a non-married couple having a child out of wedlock where the father did not want a child as opposed to the many instances where the couple is married and willingly had children together, but then split up and then the non-custodial parent (yes, usually the father) must pay child support. I've tried finding statistics on the percentage of parents owing child support are from children of their prior marriages vs children from non-marital relationship, but couldn't find anything outside of numbers of custodial parents having ever been married vs never married.

In the ensuing debate, there was a lot of support for increased types of male birth control outside of condoms. But then it was pointed out that there is a male pill in testing, but that several surveys showed that most men wouldn't use it. There was a lot of back and forth about women scheming to take men for a ride by sabotaging their birth control and that any man who believed a woman that she was infertile or on the pill was an idiot and deserved what he got. I found very little sympathy in the discussion for the poor children that get caught up in the situation like Matthew Dubay's daughter, she and the others like her are the true casualties of this war.

The notion that Plan B will cause women to become promiscuous is ludicrous. The pill costs as much, or more, than contraception, so it's not exactly the "easy way out" that politicians envision.

And even if it did cause promiscuity, so what?

This is typical, Big-Government Republican Liberals at work - Government is a hammer, and everything in sight is a nail.

Note to Republicans - "Conservative" means less government, not more....

My boyfriend just woke up and has some addendums to the points made above:

Addendum to 3c: If a man does have private DNA testing done and finds he is not the father of the child, and can afford to hire a lawyer and sue the state to prove so (you can't just send them different results and say "Okay I don't have to pay anymore, right?"), he does not receive reimbursement for any payments he has already made to support a child that is not his.

Addendum to 3e: Jail time is used as a last resort in cases of non-payment of child support. Prior to being sent to jail, if you can't make your child support payments, most states will take your driver's license away. This makes as much sense as jail time, since it would also prevent a male from the possibility of achieving the income he needs to make any further payments.

That is a fascinating and much-needed subject of debate, and I'm surprised that none of Broadsheet's readers have commented on it. I would much prefer to read what other people have to say on the subject, because I have such little understanding of other people's opinions on the debate. I feel like my opinions are very untested, but here they are:

1. Forcing a woman to abort against her will and forcing a woman to give birth against her will constitute assault and torture akin to forcing a woman to have sex against her will. The fetus is inside of the woman's body, and as unfair as that is, noone but that woman has the right to tell her what to do with it. Others can advise, offer opinions and otherwise attempt to persuade her in a non-violent manner. If the fetus is the product of an ideal relationship, then neither party would have misrepresentted themselves, both parties would have previously discussed the matter, and both parties' opinions would be taken into account.

2. If that man can prove that the woman misrepresented herself and tricked him into fathering her child against his will, then I think he should have some sort of recourse.

3. The child support laws are in place to support living children, and seem to have no moral concern for how that support is gotten. This is reprehensible.

3a. The obligation for monetary child support should not automatically default to the male. Likewise, the obligation for physical child rearing should not automatically default to the female. It seems as though, in US courts, the male is guilty of bad parenting until proven innocent and the female is innocent until proven guilty. Likewise the female is held as incapable of making sufficient income to support her children, while the male is automatically held as capable of doing so. These laws were written 50 years ago, and it's about time they were overhauled. The lifestyles, incomes and desires of both parents should be taken into account when deciding who will pay how much and who will do the rearing and how much, regardless of gender.

3b. Males are required to pay back-pay and continual child support for children that they may not have even known existed. In this situation, also, the males have no rights whatsoever to even meet their children or take part in their physical parenting. This isn't just unfair to the fathers, it's unfair to the children and sends a very negative message to the children, the fathers and society at large: Fathers are only worth the money they make, and they are not otherwise necessary in the lives of their children. This unspoken but very clear and detrimental message is at least partly responsible for the breakdown of the American family over the past 50 years.

3c. States use very cheap DNA testing labs, some of which have since been successfully sued for having such small databases that false positives were almost inevitable. Using Virginia as an example, the particular DNA lab was used for several years until the state sued a wealthy man for paternity, and he sued the state for using a shitty DNA lab that produced a false positive. He won the suit. Virginia stopped using the lab, but did they turn around and tell all the "fathers" whose DNA had been tested in that lab that they may not be the fathers, and needed to be retested? Of course not.

3d. Child support payments are decided based on the income of the male at the time of the child support suit and in most states are never again adjusted. If a male cannot make his child support payments due to losing a job or illness, in most states he is not offered the option to make reduced or deferred payments, he is not offered job training or placement assistance, he is thrown in jail. This doesn't even make sense in light of "supporting the child at all costs" because it is impossible for a man in jail to support his child.

3e. If a male who has been sued for child support wants to be able to have custody or rights to his children, he has to hire a lawyer on his own. Most of the time, he can’t afford to do this because of the child support payments he has to make under threat of jail time. Yet the state will pursue a male for child support free of charge for the female. I think a similar free service should be offered to males who want rights to their children, especially if they never knew about the existence of the children and therefore never gave up their rights. Currently, males who did not know they had children are treated as males who fled the responsibility of their children. Likewise unmarried males whose children are taken away by their mothers, even if it was against the wishes of the males.

Until the child support and custody system in this nation is overhauled to not only protect mothers and children, but to protect fathers as well, perhaps some sort of contracts should be used between people who engage in potentially reproductive sex. Personally, if I marry I will sign a prenuptial agreement, and include in that agreement exactly how the rearing and monetary support of potential children will be decided, should a divorce occur and should children be in existence.