Letters to the Editor
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Castration
Why do you keep calling me "LeCastrated"? Are you implying that because i am a woman, i am inherently castrated? That doesn't seem to make much sense. If i were a castraTOR, then you could call me LeCastraTOR, but that's not what you're calling me.
And what did i do to be called a shrill harpy? Shit, i know enough statistics to analyze that link you sent! Oh no, she's got the knowledge of statistics! we need to yell at her and call her names until she shuts up! the secret of statistical interpretation should be guarded by men only!
Didn't we already have this discussion, about how i'm not in the least bit a shrill harpy, and someone even backed me up and said that law school women are generally good-looking?
As for this case, it seems both the guy and the girl are weasels. Why is she asking him for child support, if she wanted a baby but couldn't have it, and didn't think she would be able to have it with him? And why is he refusing to pay it?
I acknowledge that abortion is a tough decision, but i also wonder, what kind of foresight do so many people have to decide to commit to raising a child for 18 years without figuring out how it's going to be supported financially? Like, why would you voluntarily put yourself in a financial hole if you can't support the child? Sometimes, i think people (men and women) have children for pretty odious, selfish reasons, like boredom, desire for unconditional love, fear of mortality, feeling like they're getting a second chance at living life...how can these people be good parents?!
I don;t think there's any legal remedy to this, only ethical questions to think about.
PS No Name, do you have children?
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"LeCastrated" you don't know how to read statistics or the facts, then.
Run along and make your emasculated boyfriend life hell. I am sure there is a rubber ball, handcuffs, and a strap on with his name on it.
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Bodily Privacy
""LeCastrated" you don't know how to read statistics or the facts, then.
Run along and make your emasculated boyfriend life hell. I am sure there is a rubber ball, handcuffs, and a strap on with his name on it.
-- No Name Given"
What on earth are you talking about?...Have you lost all ability to be civil and actually talk about the issues rather than insult people?! Did yousee all those things i wrote and a question for you?! Whatever.
Alan S writes:
"And when confronted with the fact that non-custodial mothers (even though they represent a far smaller percentage of non-custodial parents than do men) are far more likely to fail to pay child support, there is some automatic tendency to dismiss and disbelieve."
Um, no, "far more likely" is not the right adjective here. The percetange difference (see my previous post) in not paying child support is something like 4%, not the 10% or 20% implied by "far more likely."
And may i reiterate, Roe v. Wade turned on the fact the fetus grows inside the woman, so the case was very much about your personal bodily privacy, which is not an issue in this case. Yes, it's about reproductive righs, but without that bodily privacy issue, it's not the same case at all.
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Father's duties as wedge issue
The support obligations of fathers are actually an argument for abortion rights and sex education. Families with boys should realize that if they force girls to bear unwanted children through anti-abortion laws, they are condemning their boys to a lifetime of support obligations. They cannot have it both ways: if they really believe that the blastocyst is a child, then they have to be ready to force their boys to stand up to fatherhood, a lifetime of duties, probably without the pleasures of parenting.
On the other hand, with good sex education and freely available contraception, including Plan B, the problems will be fewer, and we can leave the punishment to the individual conscience.
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Men and women united... against Bill Napoli
I just wanted to note that South Dakota State Senator Bill Napoli was quoted incompletely in the article. Yes, he wants to take away a woman's right to abortion (unless she is a religious virgin who got raped anally as well as vaginally)... but the rest of his words says that he supports a return to forcing men to marry the women they impregnate.
Wow. Both men and women have come a long way, baby, since that era. In that light it looks like Matt Dubay is getting off easy--and so is his ex!
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Biology's unfair, but so is the law
The fact is that it is easier to block a pregnancy in a woman's body than to block a man from creating and ejaculating sperm. They're not designed to have that function shut off, as women are designed to be able to stop ovulating under circumstances such as existing pregnancy. I remember discussing the challenges of a male pill in grad school in 1992. So it's being worked on but it's *not* easy, any more than a female Viagra has been easy. I'm quite sure Big Pharma knows there's money to be made here and is interested in getting it, but they just haven't succeeded yet.
It is also the fact that the justification for abortion does not come from a woman's financial situation. Otherwise, infanticide would be legal if you can prove you couldn't support a baby. It comes from her requirement to *physically* support a child from her own body and blood. The law is quite comfortable imposing financial obligations on people but very, very wary of imposing physical obligations on people's bodies. If there were a 100% guaranteed process that could remove a child from a woman's womb safely and easily without more trauma to her body than an abortion, and put it in an artificial womb to gestate, I guarantee you that abortion would become illegal, women who don't want to gestate would have to put their fetuses in artificial wombs, and then they and the father would be equally legally liable for support. You don't have the right to get an abortion because babies are expensive -- although, because women have the right to an abortion, they do do it for that reason, but that is not the reason the right rests on, and if the reason of bodily autonomy was taken away, women would have no more justification for abortion than men do.
However, none of this changes the fact that the law *is* unfairly punitive to men in the area of child support, which is probably one reason *why* there are so many deadbeat dads. Firstly, I don't care what a burden to society it is, no man should ever have to pay support for the child of a rape committed against him. That's insane. It's also so freakin' rare that it would not set a terrible precedent of hordes of children being supported by the state who have rapist mothers. The state should have made an exception in cases of 12-year-old boys being raped by adult women, and it also should have mandated the removal of the child from the woman, because given a choice between the foster care system and a known rapist of children as your only parent, I think the foster care system is a better shot for a baby. (Besides, to be honest, if it's a cute white baby with no health problems it will adopt out in about 30 seconds.) You should not have parental rights to the child of a rape you committed, period, and while I'm in favor of making male rapists pay child support without having any parental rights, I am also in favor of terminating a female rapist's parental rights (and maybe making her pay child support as well, at least if her victim chose to raise the child.) But, again -- really really rare situation.
Secondly, there is no tax deduction for child support. Think about that. You can deduct a business lunch but not the $500 a month you spend on your kid. The justification is that custodial parents should be able to write off any child support money they receive, so it has to be taxed somewhere, but this is baloney -- when I deduct a business lunch, it is no *more* taxable to the restaurant than if it was a personal lunch, and yet the IRS gives me a break on one but not the other. Child support money should be untaxable, period.
Thirdly, social services should be heavily involved in helping non-custodial parents pay their child support and have access to their children. A lot of non-custodials don't pay because they *can't*. They can barely make enough to pay their own bills to survive. Then their car gets booted, or worse, they're thrown in jail, and then how the hell are they gonna pay? If social services was *helpful* rather than assuming that non-custodials are out to scam the system and get out of paying their fair share, and if it provided mediation to help non-custodial parents who don't have issues like abuse convictions get fair visitation with their children, you'd see a lot more participation by non-custodial parents.
I agree that it is unfair that men can't "abort" their financial responsibility to a child -- but a woman who carries a child to term, starts to raise it, and then decides to dump it on the man and run can't do so either. The only reason women have more control is that the control issue applies to their *own bodies.* Men have whatever right to control their own bodies that technology will allow them, the same as women, but once a baby is born that's it -- it's not part of anyone else's body and the parents must both be responsible. (If a woman wants to adopt out and the father doesn't, and he demands custody, he can get child support from her. It's not as if child support is a woman thing only.) But I think the men's rights movement should be focusing on making child support fairer and more responsive to the actual needs of non-custodial parents as well as custodial ones (why is child support strictly enforced but not visitation rights?), not barking up this ridiculous tree. It's a control-of-finances issue, not a control-of-body issue, and the law has never, ever had a problem with the idea of controlling citizens' finances.