Thanks Gulliver. As with daneel, I’m in general agreement with what you say here. But this statement interests me.
If the child were simply part of her body, wouldn’t that seem to absolve the man of responsibility? It seems to me that if we want to assert his obligation we need to say “the child is his” too.
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When I was an employer, I was more likely, all else being equal, to hire men and women with children, because they were usually more motivated to do their job competently and on time. Although deadbeat shame records weren’t available to me at the time, and the issue never came up in a couple hundred new hires over six and a half years, I would have to think about whether to hire a deadbeat dad/mom. At the minimum, I would need some legally-binding guarantee that the child support payments be garnished directly from wages/salary. I don’t know if any such guarantee exists, having never had occasion to ask any counselor-at-law, but if it doesn’t exist, it should. My main hesitation would be that a deadbeat is not, by definition, very reliable.
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Once the child is born, custody is a matter for the court to decide, as it’s then a separate person. His role in its creation creates his responsibility to it. As for pregnancy, body-sovereignty is the linchpin of all liberty. He has no claim on what she does with hers without a prior legally binding contract.
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It’s a shame to see how easily all the sex-negative tropes are wheeled out about this. Forcing people to become parents as punishment for having intercourse isn’t buried far from the surface, it seems. And this just illustrates all the problems with social shaming as a means of control that the article brings up.
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Pragmatic realism is not negativity.
Nature does the forcing. And it isn’t punishment, it’s consequences. It’s truly scary to think anyone can’t comprehend the distinction. That the woman can choose after conception and the man must decide before is the biological reality. Biology doesn’t care about human ideas of fairness. The flu isn’t fair. It still happens. Creating and abandoning a child is shameful, not having pregnancy-free sex. Welcome to the modern world, where contraceptives have evolved way beyond spilling the seed in the dirt. Medicine says you’re welcome, now use common sense.
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I’m sure now that he’s on twitter Aaron Ace Anderson will get that one hundred and seventy thousand dollars paid up right away.
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I was left wondering why they didn’t shame on facebook.
But yeah, this is obviously either a political stunt or a deeply unrealistic governor, or both. A real resource would be a law requiring any employers to check an unpaid child support registry and report the income of any employees on it.
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Where I come from they take a percentage out of your wage before it ever reaches your pocket. Problems like this don’t exist.
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How have they solved unreported/under-reported income?
As an employer, neither I nor my company was ever served with an order to withhold income for garnishment of any outstanding debts. Incorporation was in the state of Virginia. Most of our employees lived and worked in the state of California. My understanding is that state laws govern civil court-ordered collections. Which state or country do you come from, if I may ask?
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There’s still something funny going on here though I can’t quite put my finger on it.* If the baby within her is just part of her body then surely his role in creating it is no more relevant to rights and duties than those of a prosthesis manufacturer. Can you find a better analogy to show where I’m going wrong?
- Though I suspect it has to do with the issue of personhood.
It’s a part of her body which he voluntarily acted to jointly conceive and which will separate and become another person if she lets it. Prostheses don’t do that (yet). And to anticipate your next question: no, having a part in the conception of what will temporarily be an extension of her body doesn’t entitle him to property rights over any part of her body, including the extension (fetus) or the rest of the body needed to gestate the fetus. And to anticipate your next question: yes, a person’s body is their property (a word literally meaning one’s own).
I know of nothing analogous to the creation of a person.
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If you’re both driving the vehicle, you’re both responsible for any accidents.
Until the fetus can be transferred to the guy and he can have that decision he should be required to buy pregnancy insurance. Or just fly solo.
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That’s an interesting idea. I’m what you might call a progressive capitalist, in that I don’t think capital markets are going anywhere and we should try using them in new ways to see if we can find a new way to solve problems like inequalities in the accumulation of capital. So the idea of pregnancy insurance fascinates me. Even if it can’t be made to work, exploring the idea could be illuminating. Ways to evaluate risk while respecting sexual privacy of both (or all) partners. Ways to protect gaming and manipulating new insurance market against fraud.
A more likely and very real near term possibility is an artificial womb, which could really make it a joint venture. In fact, given the likely high expense for the first few decades of artificial womb technology, insurance would probably be the only way it could be made available to anyone without extreme wealth.
ETA: Of course it still won’t be his decision to make if the pregnancy begins in her body, since she’ll have right of first refusal and is under no more obligation to give it up to him than to abortion. On the other hand, by the time it’s possible to alter the male body to gestate a fetus, cheap, easy infallible temporary birth control will likely be widely available, so only the truly careless will accidentally conceive (at least in lands not ruled by religious fundies, who haven’t historically been amendable to women’s rights anyway).
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Insurance: I do really doubt that any insurance company would offer - that it would be affordable if it were - and that the kid still wouldn’t end up hating dad for abandoning her/him.
ETA: Of course it still won’t be his decision to make if the pregnancy begins.
Sure. Just as it wouldn’t be hers to force him to carry.
But these are just unlikely thought experiments. This guy above has tons of options as it is.
Get a vasectomy
Don’t date women who can conceive- lots of women can’t, are post menopause, trans women.
Have sex that doesn’t involve penetration
Date guys
Buy sex toys
I’m sure that’s an abbreviated list - but - it’s his job to make it. Start taking responsibility here and he won’t need to think about trying to get out of his responsibilities later.
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Are you a minor child?
That would explain some things, but more seriously, that you would compare your personal debt to child support, while talking about how it’s could easily be mistaken identity… it says tons.
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Exactly.
Indeed. And in no way am I saying people shouldn’t have heterosexual penetrative sex at child bearing age/condition. But it carries risks and those risks have responsibilities, whether the participants are aware and like it or not. That’s biology, not punishment as some apparently think.
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It’s an interesting issue that is quite different in many ways from the issue of families where the partners split up and one doesn’t continue to support their children. In some ways, there’s no existing social contract in casual sex where the parties agree to support each other, while it does exist much more a more established relationship or marriage.
These are all pre-sex, much as women have the option of crossing their legs, sleeping with women, getting their tubes tied, using sex toys etc. The problem is, sometimes conception from hetero sex happens and one or both partners don’t want a child, not just because of the risks from a pregnancy or foetal health problems or anything to do with the foetus while it’s inside the woman’s body, but for purely social reasons like:
They don’t have the money or time to support a child
They don’t want to raise a child with this person
They don’t want a child right now
These are valid and much-cited reasons for women to have the right to take action after conception (even if the guy wants to keep the child), but the answers so far for men have been “suck it up and take your responsibility - you shouldn’t have had sex if you weren’t prepared to have a child”. It does show some of the disparity, as there is a series of options for women at this point, including the morning after pill, abortion and adoption. Sorry, but while I have never had sex outside of marriage and never plan to, insisting that everyone who has sex leading to conception has made a good part of the same commitment I have in an unreversible way is unrealistic and explicitly rejected by sex-positive women in their own case. There may not be an easy answer, but I think it should at least be recognised that these solutions are not really sufficient.
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They obviously haven’t heard of “privacy” in AZ
So you’re saying that his penetration and ejaculation were a mechanical response he had no control over?
Is such is the case, the earning and payment of money should be roughly the same.
#</case closed>
And everytime he files a claim the premiums get higher and higher…
