Letters to the Editor
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I vote for it!
Is a woman allowed to have sex without wanting to bear a child?
If a woman gets pregnant, can she then choose not to have that child?
At present, the answer is still yes in our country.
Can we offer the same freedom to men?
Can men have sex without wanting to produce a child? If an unwanted pregnancy results from that sex, can the man at least refuse further involvement for himself, if not actually prevent the birth? It seems fair somehow, that so long as the woman has ultimate veto power over the child's life, that the man should at least be permitted to opt out.
Now if we were really civilized, we would take a completely different approach, and make contraception mandatory, starting in junior high school, with some sort of implant or clip inside children (male and female). People would have to take tests and classes, and get licensed before removing the contraceptive device and having children. I suppose that's draconian, but it would make our society so much happier.
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Interesting that he uses the word sacrifice:
Feit sees his mission as philosophically weighty. "Reproductive freedom for women did more than give them control of their bodies," he said. "It gave them control of their lives. It said that they had a right to choose to love and have intimacy with another human being without having to sacrifice their lives for it. That's what Roe is all about."
They get to sacrifice the lives of their innocent children instead. For the sake of nothing more than convenience --- how noble. After all, they can't let that lump of tissue interfere with their fabulous lifestyles and consequence-free sex!
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Dismissed
The concern about this lawsuit crowding abortion out of the news is overwrought. There’s a lot more going on in the country and the world to distract Americans from the fate of Roe v Wade than the novel legal rants of the NCM. I doubt that anybody who cares one way or another about abortion isn’t already aware about what is happening to abortion access in this country.
Dismissing the NCM’s argument as a distraction seems like an attempt to duck the issue, to not engage, which indicates to me that they may have a real issue here.
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Is it time for male birth control?
I'm hoping this stimulates discussion of an effective, minimally invasive form of birth control for men. What men have now is either a hassle (condoms) or permanent and often irreversible (vasectomies).
Men need a Pill or something similar. Then they can put their money where their mouth is and not risk fathering children they don't want.
In the meantime, the best solution is for a man to maybe - oh NOES! - don't have sex with someone you can't communicate with. Even the most foolproof birth-control methods fail. Unfortunately, we tend to take for granted that the Pill is so effective. So we really don't know what to do when birth control fails.
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What Happens if Your Partner is a Liar?
OK, so say men have a choice to opt out of child support payments. What if the man said initially, "O baby I looove you and I'll be there for you and our child through thick and thin" and then after its too late to abort he skips off and files to relinquish parental claims and all child support obligations, leaving the woman holding the bag, so to speak. This already happens in practice except teh man doesn't go through the hassle of filing court papers he just disappears of the face of the earth. This is the issue here for me. Who knows what he told his ex-girlfriend before they broke up. He could have been talking about marriage and then conveniently changed his mind once she found out she was pregnant.
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Cross Veto
The fundamental principle of Roe v Wade was that a woman could not be forced to carry an unwanted child. Period. But laws around birth and parentage that have focused on the responsibility of the father toward the child have not changed.
So we have a simple matrix:
Father wants child - Mother Wants child - Keep
Father wants child - Mother Does not want child - Abort*
Father Does not want child - Mother Does not want child - Abort
Father Does not want child - Mother wants child - Keep & pay
The question posed here is: can a woman force a man to have an unwanted child? I am not meaning to be provacative here, but arguments of who is responsible for birth control are meaningless to me - mainly because any form of birth control coupled with sex runs a risk of pregnancy. Both sides risk the consequences when they have sex and both should be willing to accept responsibilites.
I agree that #2 in the matrix above may be unfair to a prospective father , but the woman has the veto. But #4, the subject of the article is much more grey. If a man cannot force a woman to abort, then why should he be responsible for the full maintenance of the child? He certainly has some responsibility that he should accept - from the risk of having had sex with the woman. But full in this case? Grey, very grey area.
It almost makes you wish that both parties had to put up deposits before you were allowed to have sex - to cover the case where these disputes happen. At least it would make people think - with their heads and not their gonads so much.
The tragedy is that the victim is the kid - aborted or half unwanted. And bitterness and resentment all around. The subject deserves debate and is certainly not a distraction.
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An alternate suggestion
Here's a thought: What if, rather than the current mess where patrimony is established through a mish-mash of he-said/she-said, misunderstandings and finally blood tests, we declare that there is no patrimony unless a man signs off on it, regardless of state of marriage. Make acknowedgement of patrimony a free but formally binding contract where the man gets equal rights in all things to do with the child along with equal responsibility. Patrimony contracts could be signed before or after birth.
While it may be in the best interests of a child to have two parents, this doesn't square with reality where a child can easily be left with one or no parents through any of several means, including a woman going to a sperm bank by herself to have her own child by choice with no one else involved.