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First, let me preface this by stating the obvious: I am totally pro-choice!

However, I do have some trouble reconciling some parts of the pro-choice philosophy. This is one of them. I actually found that it was best illustrated in this very pro-life cartoon:




This is a problem that I've been struggling with for a while, it seems to me that while a woman should most certainly be allowed to not be a mother after she becomes pregnant then it should also be allowed for a man not to be a father if a woman becomes pregnant. However, this is wrong. I hate feeling hypocritical, and maybe i'm just looking at this issue the wrong way...

Thoughts?

If the man doesn't pay up though, then the woman has to leech more government social system money in order to raise the child. Because otherwise, it is not fair for the child itself to grow up in poverty conditions just for the fact of being born. That means that everybody has to pay up for the child, not primarily the father which is not fair for the rest of the society. Have enough of that scenario in America, and our social system money would really be in a strain.

Women tend to be poorer than men, and especially with child in tow, employment and educational opportunities tend to be limited. Whereas when men are unattached, their employment opportunities and financial abilities rise. Why should the woman, who takes care of a dependent, stay in poverty while an unattached man with no dependents get richer?

By making the man pay up, whether or not he wanted to be a father, he has to a) get a job, go to work and b) contribute to the social services system, and social security and income taxes. It would help buffer the system as a result of unwanted and mistaken breeding and the idiocy of stubbornly keeping a pregnancy to term on the mom's part.

When it comes down to sex, the women get the objective short end of the stick. Men just pump bodily fluids for a few minutes. Women have to really worry that they will get pregnant. For men, being with child is not that big a deal, many of them pass the real responsibilities to the woman at least during the child's most needy, irritating, and dependent early years. For women, it can mean domestic bondage. Women have more at stake when it comes to their fertility and babies/children then men do.

Men really should be thankful that their genetics get passed down at all if they become an involuntary father because they did no biological work at all in order to see their genes get passed to the next generation.

It's a shame that unwanted reproduction happens; it is expensive for society to support it and it causes more pain and suffering. It is in the spirit of pro-choice to reduce needless, reckless suffering by creating unwanted life. Unwanted life isn't a life at all. Every person should belong and be wanted.

What I suggest that might help the scenario: Educating the mom to help steer her away from a pregnancy that is unwanted by the father, and encouraging job/school opportunities instead. Some women think that making babies is a source of income. Well, there's certainly better sources of income out there. Plus, she's likely to find a willing man to have babies with down the line if she really wants a baby. And, fathers that don't want the child should offer the woman to get a free abortion out of his tab- think of it this way, it's cheaper to pay for an abortion than to raise a child for 18 years.

You're assuming every man wants to have his genes passed down to the next generation. This would be little solace for a seriously childfree man who got 'oopsed'.

The difference is biology. Monentary support does not equal bodily domain.

I am not for allowing a man to use finances to coerce a woman into having an abortion, therefore I am not for making child support voluntary. I refuse to feel good or bad about that. *shrug*

Set up a system where, if a man can legally choose not to pay child support for his offspring (which he could thereby claim NO RIGHTS TO, by the way), a woman can collect the same amount she'd be entitled to from the government for that child if she still chooses to have it, and I'll think about changing my stance on this. This would be massively abused, as our current welfare systems are, mostly by those who don't need it, and those who do need it would probably be ******** over by the bureaucracy just like they are now. I'm totally aware of that.

I didn't make nature make biology unfair, but the fact of the matter is that men and women contribute different things to pregnancy.

I'll bring back that sig one of these days.

I know what the point of the cartoon was, I was just saying it failed in its message.

Whilst our current system is a little unfair, I really don't see a way of fixing it without coming back to the whole reason child support was introduced in the first place. Women were telling men they were pregnant and men were scarpering. You'll just end up with lots of moms on welfare.

I don't like it, but our current system is the best I can think of.

Thanks guys! you've really helped me sort out alot of this in my own mind.

This pretty much summed up my thoughts on the matter, and the gist of the arguments I've had my way.