Letters to the Editor
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robert franklin
i feel we're at an impasse.
you are talking around all of my points. let me repeat: the man HAS rights over his reproductive future already—which are legal and protected. He exercises them based on his OWN body's genetic and biological make up and DECIDES with FREE WILL how to exercise it. The way a man exercises CHOICE over REPRODUCTION is with one act... SEX. that's it, it's biology's fault. not women’s. women have more decisions to make other than where to ejaculate or whether to get ejaculated in. Don’t like it? Get a sex change. Don’t tell me that you deserve MORE rights over my body. I don’t tell you where to ejaculate. The reason why you don’t and shouldn’t have a say over what comes next… IT’S IN MY BODY.
saying that men should have a say AFTER they've HAD their say is saying that MEN have MORE rights than WOMEN.
and AGAIN, you guys are the ones who are accepting the pro-lifer false equivocation. Abortion is NOT a get-out-of-jail card. Abortion is a serious and painful medical procedure. Pregnancy is painful too. Both can and do seriously affect a woman’s body. AND: the right to an abortion has little to do, metaphysically or legally, with the decision to have a child or the decision to be the parent in that they are separate and not always causal. women can become a parent in other ways (adoption) and women can have a baby and not become a parent and women can be pregnant and not have a baby that lives, and women can have an abortion. men can adopt. that's the only alternative though. you say, but men and women have children together all the time? no, women have children and men stick around. that's incidental. they also aften don't stick around and women still have babies. It’s everything to do with the right to control one’s body, what’s in one’s body, and what comes out of one’s OWN body. And that is, fundamentally, a right to privacy. Abortion right and Parenting Rights are not the same thing and ONLY pro-lifers make that argument.
Again, you want to talk about PARENTING rights? Okay, they are, and I believe I’ve said this before and you ignored me, not really rights like the right to privacy or freedom of religion. They are derivative in nature in that they follow only when one IS a parent. Not before. And one is a parent ONLY after one has exhausted one’s reproductive rights (men: ejaculating into a fertile female without choosing, on his own, to use contraception that he can control; women: allowing themselves to be ejaculated into without choosing, on her own, to use contraception that she can control, and then choosing to stay pregnant, and then choosing to be healthy during her pregnancy, and then choosing if she’ll have drugs for the labor or not, etc) and a living child has been gotten out of it’s mother. Also, Parenting Rights, in THIS country, are derivative of the Child’s Right to be taken care of. Don’t like that? Fine, but it’s a different issue. In this country, the Child’s Right to be taken care of TRUMPS a Parent’s Rights over the child, or even over him or herself. Parent’s only have Parenting Rights insofar as the exercising of said rights do not interfere with the Child’s Rights to be taken care of (defined by our government through nutrition, education, shelter, love, physical safety, etc.). Want to change it? Lobby for family friendly subsidies.
you don't get that at all and can't acknowledge the logic because you're so pissed about all those millions of women screwing you over cause you’re so rich and your sperm, nay, your genetic code is so special to them? then we have nothing left to say and try having this conversation with the next woman with whom you'd like to have sex. good luck with that. it sure will make you look like a cool guy.
keep equivocating. please, and also patronize the female posters as if they are the ones not using logic... cause, y'know women ain't cut out fer that.
face it: MRA is about having one's cake and eating it to. end of story. the only way you think that that's what women get is because you think abortion is easy or fun and a way of avoiding something as opposed to a legitimate means of taking responsibility for something. "Roe for men" doesn't even make sense as it's not about you reproductive rights, it's about your parenting responsibilities. DIFFERENT.
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I think it's a worthwhile discussion...
Last year, just before my 39th birthday I got pregnant. In the end I decided to have an abortion. However, if I had decided to have the child, I wouldn't expect my boyfriend to automatically pay child support.
Why?
1) We talked about it early on in our relationship. We both didn't want children. He said he would support any decision I made. We never did discuss what would happen if I changed my mind. I made the assumption that since he'd made his wishes known that I'd be the one to take sole financial responsibility for the child if I decided to keep it.
2) We used birth control. Consistently, but not always perfectly. But pretty much 98% of the time. That was also consistent with our mutual stated intention not to have an unplanned pregnancy. I had very powerful emotions when I found I was pregnant and in the interim before I had the procedure. It hurt. But not enough to cloud my mind
3) Half the genetic material required for a successful pregnancy has to come from a male, right? Women who want to have children no longer need to be in a hetrosexual relationship in order to have a child -- they can go to a sperm bank.
If we're going to really say that ideal pregnancy is a planned pregnancy consented to by both involved parties then let's be consistent. You can't have it both ways.
That's my two cents...
Anon.