If a woman is allowed to abort for any reason up to a certain point without the father's consent, then the father should be able to claim he'll take no responsibility for the child up to that same time.

Now, if for whatever reason a woman *can't* abort (government intervention, w/e), then yes, the father should be equally responsible for the child, even if he didn't want it. How you work that out, I have no idea. You can't make a man carry a fetus; perhaps he should have more of the financial burden? I don't know.

So, to be clear, looking at 2 scenarios:

Woman is pregnant. She doesn't want the kid, but the guy does. She should be allowed to abort.

Woman is pregnant. She wants the kid, but the guy doesn't. She should be allowed to keep the kid, but the guy should be able to abdicate all legal responsibility.

Do those not seem about as equal as it could get? The only alternative I see is if abortion would require the consent of both parents, which I don't think is a better solution.

@Abge I wanted Krellin to answer that since he wants no abortion.

@Abge I have no problem with that to an extant. It would be a really easy system for men to abuse. Opps I knocked this girl up, she has no intention to abort so I should just give up my rights. Wash, rinse and repeat. There are guys like that out there.

I don't know how anyone could support no abortions without requiring significant legal involvement from the father and be able to sleep at night.

@CF

And there are women who get pregnant just for the child support.

My point is, I think a woman should have the right to chose, but, somehow, the man should too.

@Abge I do as well. I just don't know how to do and yeah there are women like that as well.

This is why I'm for giving contraceptives away like no tomorrow. Less headaches from this if there's a less likely chance of people using abortion.

I agree completely. The reality is that people are going to have sex. Just get over it and let's all move on.

Condoms should be everywhere and the pill should be completely covered by insurance.

If contraceptives were easily and cheaply available, there'd really be no excuse for unintentionally getting pregnant.

I sincerely doubt that many women get pregnant just for the child support.

On the topic of abortion, every woman has the right to her own body and unless you can prove that the embryo/fetus is a fully formed person, it's not murder. If you want to keep fetuses from being aborted, hand out condoms and support sexual education. Also, if life is so precious, stop eating meat. Seriously. There's no scientific consensus on whether or not fetuses can feel pain. Adult animals can. And if you respect life so much, look at your own choices.

At no point does the mans body come into anything here...Ummm ok that came out wrong. Let me try that again.

At no point is a mans body affected by pregnancy. The issue at stake here is one of a woman having the right to decide what happens to her body. At no point in the process of pregnancy is the man's body affected at all. So explain again. Why does the man get a say in it? It's not about who's baby, it's about who's body it's growing in.

Just catching up while I'm supposed to be working...Abge makes some great points about men's responsibities.

To answer your question myself, Celtic, in the case of NO ABORTION, then Fathers should be held 100% equally responsible for the life they bring in to this world. There is nothing more despicable than asshole fathers that won't support their children. Likewise, there is nothing more despicable than women not protecting their own bodies and using abortion as birth control....or, alternately, as others have pointed out, women using their womb as a fast-track to a government check.

I'm all for forced-sterilization for the grossly irresponsible....and before any of you yahoo's fly off the handle, I'm also for the castration of certain males... (yes...yes....Putin comes to mind...lol)

***Side note -- wow, what a pleasant, unabrasive conversation....stunning. It must be the calming affect of the female that is present!

"If contraceptives were easily and cheaply available, there'd really be no excuse for unintentionally getting pregnant." - Accidents happen. It's rare but they do. No method of birth control is 100% effective (and don't say abstinence, that's not a method of birth control).

@Mafia

That's quite the double standard. Why should a man have to pay to support a child he didn't want for 18 years if a woman could have aborted it if she wanted to?

@Mafia

Yes, I understand this, but the chances of getting pregnant while on the pill and using a condom are pretty rare. Even if accidents did happen, they would happen a lot less and this wouldn't be such a big deal.

"and don't say abstinence, that's not a method of birth control)."

Yeah, if you didn't truncate my first paragraph you'd have seen that I explicitly stated that abstinence wasn't a sustainable birth control method.

+1 abgemacht

Your comments are by far and away the most sensible things I've seen on this forum for a while. Yes, there is some potential for abusing the system, but at the end of the day we're all responsible for determining whether the person we sleep with is an arse before sleeping with them.

The comment about abstinence wasn't directed at you.

My apologies. You had quoted me, so I thought your entire response was directed to me.

Also the bit about men not really being involved wasn't directed at you either. I disagree that not paying child support should be a simple matter of just saying "nope, I said she should get an abortion". Implement a rule like that and about 1% of men will pay child support from here on out. I understand where you're coming from on this one, but think about it. With a rule like that you will leave single mothers completely impoverished, with no recourse whatsoever. But you know what? That doesn't mean you get to decide what women do with their bodies either. Just as you can't withhold medical procedures from women, you can't force them (and "get an abortion or you'll have to raise, care for and provide for this child entirely on your own" counts as "forcing" for our purposes here) to get medical procedures either. The only issue at stake in terms of abortion is not just "can I afford to care for this baby". The real question is "do I want a living thing growing inside me". That is the question. And once again you've somehow managed to make it all about men.

Oh yeah, everything outside the brackets was directed at you, everything inside the brackets wasn't. I did not make that clear.

Wait a minute....Since when do women have rights?

@Mafia

Yes, as I said to CF, my proposal was an oversimplified solution. But, my point still stands. If a woman is allowed to have 100% control over the fate of what will eventually be a child, there should be some sort of recourse for the man.

"And once again you've somehow managed to make it all about men."

I was directly responding to a question posed by CF, thank you very much.

"Yes, as I said to CF, my proposal was an oversimplified solution."

Making a generally applicable rule in a matter so complicated as an opt-out from children care is no mean feat. You can only provide guidelines according to which each individual case will be judged but then you run the risk of having degrading "opt-out commisions" just like we had "abortion commisions" during the communist rule. Though heated divorces at court set some precedents for the way it would look like. And if a reasonable solution cannot be found, the law overwhelmingly favouring women is still a pretty good thing. The amount of cases when the opt-out would be justified would be pretty low after all if the guy made a good partner screening aforehand .

"Condoms should be everywhere and the pill should be completely covered by insurance."

This is a good place to start. The AND is really important, especially since each option has its supporters. I'm a condom guy myself.

I do agree if women have 100% of control whether or not they can have abortions, then men should have 0% responsibility. Don't take this as a I am a man and men are better. No those douchebags knocking girls up are just as bad as the girls who are getting pregnant. Plus if the parents don't want the kid then they should just put it up for adoption. Sex is a two way act(most of the time just to get the children not to post it after I post this) both should be held equally responsible. If I was using a buzzsaw and my hand got cut off, then there is no one to blame but myself.

And when women get pregnant it is not just there body anymore. There are two forms of life and anothers DNA.

@abge, in an ideal world i would probably agree with you, but we have lived in a world of males dominated females for sooo very long. The cultural left overs will continue to leave women subjugated for many years to come.

Equality would be great nut we're a long way off...

@orath

Yes, I suppose that's a fair point.

For fuck's sake, I can't believe we're having the abortion debate *AGAIN*.

I'm going to give you guys a real example and I'm interested in what you think:

I have a friend. She has two children and is a good mother. The father of those children does not live with her, but does play an active part in the children's upbringing, and has regular contact with them.

My friend decided that she does not, at the moment, want any more children. So she got a contraceptive implant.

A few months after getting the implant, she found a new boyfriend. They wanted to have sex. Her implant should have meant that pregnancy was very unlikely. But to be on the safe side, they used a condom too.

The condom broke. She didn't get the morning after pill, because her implant should still have made pregnancy very, very unlikely.

Unfortunately to their dismay, a few months later, she found that she was pregnant.

The boyfriend was quite young and immature. He would *not* have made a good father at that point. He had, in my view, taken every reasonable precaution - he was wearing a condom while having sex with a woman fitted with a contraceptive implant. It was not his fault she got pregnant. He was not "careless" and they did not make a "mistake".

My friend, already working hard to look after two kids, could not face the prospect of raising an additonal child, to a different father. Again, she had taken every precaution and did not get pregnant due to being "careless" or making a "mistake".

So as soon as she found out she was pregnant (at which point she was about 3 months pregnant), after consulting with her boyfriend, who agreed, she decided to have an abortion.

I don't think she did anything wrong.

Do you?

That seems perfectly reasonable to me.