Letters to the Editor
-
Equality is a tricky issue
This lawsuit is going to hurt the image that children have of grown men as protectors of their families, which in the end will further bolster the power held by women and further erode the power held by men in our society.
So, yeah, guys -- go for it. All you have to lose is -- what children respected you for in the first place.
-
Call it science fiction, but...
We should be past it already, in truth; condoms are almost 100% effective IF USED PROPERLY. I've never made anyone pregnant, because I was careful not to. Still, it's far from easy to ensure that reproductive outcomes always match our preferences. If that were not so, we'd have NO DOUBT that both sex partners are responsible for any child that results.
Better technology is frequently the best cure for human error. Further research will eventually give us safe and effective male, as well as female, contraceptives.
Call it science fiction if you must, but I foresee a time when most teenagers will have safe, reliable, reversable preventive measures implanted or otherwise put into effect at puberty. Doctors will reverse the procedure for adults on request, but not for children. The definition of "adult" for this purpose will eventually include a demonstrable potential to support and care for a child.
All this will not be mandatory in the foreseeable future (unless or until environmental concerns and population growth make it necessary), but - mandatory or not - it will be much easier than today, I think, to assign responsibility. Parents with religious objections, for instance, can leave their children vulnerable to unplanned pregnancy only if they are willing to share the attendant costs and risks.
-
There's something that Feits is missing
"In the case of my client, there is this child, and presumably the child will be very smart and go on to postgraduate studies, and the client would be paying for a significant part of his life. I don't want to minimize that either."
But suppose the client gets out of paying, and the child is still very smart, but could only afford to attend a state college because the poor single working mom couldn't collect child support. Forget postgraduate studies.
So now you have a smart child whose future was impaired by a selfish sperm donor. The kid's talent has been wasted and is less available for society. And the kid will probably project his or her anger towards the father on ALL MEN.
So the client wins, but society, the child, the mother and the general respect given to men loses.
-
Don't both parents have to want an adoption?
Someone wrote:
That was an Ah-Ha! moment. Simply replace the word men with the word women, and reread the sentence. The fact is the legislature long ago did this, most likely in every part of the USA. It is called adoption. Woman doesn't want child, even in a world without abortion, give it to the state and have no further involvement -- by law. Man doesn't want child, but woman does? Suck it dad, the mom can opt out of her financial and other future responsibilities, but you cannot. Not only isn't that fair, it clearly discriminates against men.
---------
Don't both parents have to want an adoption? I mean, if the dad wants to keep the already-born child, I think he should get to, and the mom should have to pay child support.
Adoption's not a good comparison to deadbeat dads, anyhow, because in the case of adoption, people find someone else to bring up their kid... its not like they are abandoning the responsibility, they have found a willing person to take their place.
-
Same damn argument?
A couple months back there was a similar article by Farhad Manjoo, talking about the desire of men to avoid resonsibilty for the children that they father through unprotected sex. I notice that here many, if not all, of the same responders, some of whom have submitted letters virtually identical to the ones published back then.
In that spirit, I will re-submit my own two cents: this is not about abortion rights, or even (really) about child support payments. This is about the "right" that some men feel they have to enjoy condom-free sex.
I would NEVER suggest that either men or women are not entitled to enjoy their sexuality, that they must be celibate until marriage or that pregnancy is a suitable "punishment" for sexual freedom, as a large number of right wing conservatives continue to state. However, freedom is meaningless without responsibility. Your right to enjoy your own sexual desires ENDS when it comes into conflict with another person's body, health or future.
There is no universal "right" for men to have "bareback sex" -- something which is actually quite risky and dangerous in today's environment of possible STDs. I fully realize that bareback, condomless sex is more pleasurable than using contraception, but that doesn't make it an inherent right.
In the case of the young man filing the lawsuit, it would seem that he took a very casual conversation wtih his girlfriend and proceeded immediately to practice bareback, condomless sex because that's what felt good at the moment. I seriously doubt that he actually investigated whether or not this young woman (technically at the peak of her fertile years) was absolutely sterile. Having "some medical problems" is hardly a guarantee of complete infertility, especially at such a young age. It's also possible she was badly informed by some incompetent medical professional, or maybe a neurotic hypochondriac....or maybe she simply wanted to enable him to have the bareback, condomless sex he apparently wanted so badly.
So I am going to restate what ought to be entirely obvious to the many hateful cheapskates posting here: there is a simple basic method to avoid this problem 99% of the time and that is to use CONDOMS PLUS SPERMICIDE. Even condoms alone are very effective and despite what is sometimes written here, they are exceptionally well made (I mean, brand name US condoms) and rarely break. (Comedian Howie Mandel had a funny skit where he actually pulled one over his HEAD, which gives the lie to the often claimed idea that they can be "too small".) However, to cover even that small possibility, the addition of spemicide provides ample extra protection to deal with that.
If you use this method every single solitary time you have sexual intercourse, the effectiveness rate is virtually that of the pill (98.5%). That would make unplanned pregnancy an extreme rarity, and furthermore -- more importantly -- it puts control of an unwanted pregnancy entirely in the hands of the MAN. It is absolutely untrue that there are "no birth control methods for men"! HA! Condoms were around long before the pill or other high tech methods.
When researchers do polls about unplanned pregnancy, it nearly always turns out that the parties involved were not using protection, or using it inconsistently (i.e., "I thought I couldn't get pregnant during my period") and so forth.
The young man in the lawsuit seems very much like someone who drives without a seat belt and then is shocked...SHOCKED....when he gets injured in an accident, and proceeds to suit the car manufacturer or the seat belt company or the maker of the utility pole that he ran into.
I'll just say it again for good measure: CONDOMS PLUS SPERMICIDE, EVERY SINGLE TIME and then all you terrified, child-hating, cheapskate misogynists can get on with your existence of using women for sex without the slightest caring or emotion or empathy towards them.