Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!aero-c!nadel From: gcf@mydog.UUCP (Gordon Fitch) Newsgroups: soc.feminism Subject: Re: birth control failure? Keywords: feminism,men's rights,parenthood,choice,children Message-ID: <9106102152.669@mydog.UUCP> Date: 11 Jun 91 01:52:39 GMT References: 676071224@lime.cs.duke.edu> <9106062203.1796@mydog.UUCP><676577065@lear.cs.duke.edu> Sender: news@aero.org Organization: The Aerospace Corporation, El Segundo, CA Lines: 191 Approved: nadel@aerospace.aero.org Originator: nadel@aerospace.aero.org | In article <9106062203.1796@mydog.UUCP> gcf@mydog.UUCP (Gordon Fitch) writes: | >I may have missed something, but everyone in this discussion | >seems to be forgetting that the claim against the father comes | >not from the mother but from the child. gazit@cs.duke.EDU (Hillel Gazit) writes: | 1) If the claim comes from the child, then why the *mother* gives it | up in a case of artificial insemination? [ This argument seems to have wide popularity; Robert Coleman also advanced it, or something like it. Is it the party line now?] The difference between artificial insemination and the usual method seems so egregious as not to merit much comment. Artificial insemination, as it is usually practiced, and the laws surrounding it, cannot have a great deal of effect on the usual methods of parenthood, and the laws surrounding them, because the latter are a great deal older and more firmly established. In general, you do not establish precedents backwards, which is what this argument tries to do. I don't know why the argument is seen as so clever as to merit mention by at least two people; it seems fairly silly. I suppose, in the throes of passion, a man could stop and have the woman sign a paper waiving her right to sue for child support, should she become pregnant. She would have to have a lawyer along, of course, to check the document, and a notary public. Is this a new form of sex? | 2) If the claim comes from the child then why the man should be sued | even when the woman has enough money? Why a woman can not take | a full responsibility for the result of her choice? Why is it | so bad if she will pay for her choice, but it is just fine if | she charges someone else? In principle, both parents are responsible for child support according to their incomes and custodial duties. It does not matter who has _enough_ money, but who has the money, period. (That is, if we are going to hold people individually accountable for their reproductive activities. I'll go into this a little further below.) | 3) If the claim comes from the child, then why the support is by | percentage of the father's income? E.g. Were the $1356 that | Allen Wells was ordered to pay a child's support or an alimony? For exactly the reason I give in the previous paragraph. I do not know what name was given to the sum Mr. Wells was ordered to pay, but if it was for the support of his children it was not alimony. However, since the recipient pays taxes on alimony, and the supporter pays taxes in the case of child support, some people arrange to pay child support as nominal alimony for tax reasons. | 4) If the child's good is a top priority then why not to force a | woman who can't support a newborn to give it up to adoption. | Why a situation of an unmarried mother and an angry father is | better than an adoption by a pre-screened couple? "Good" isn't the same as "right": I have a right to drink beer, but it isn't necessarily good for me. No one said the situation was "better for the child." The child's claim on its father does not proceed from its good, but its right. | >Hillel, and usually his | >antagonists as well, persist in avoiding this point so they can | >get on with the war between the sexes. | | I think that in practice women's rights come before child's right, | and child's right before men's rights. You'd have to present a lot of cases -- maybe all of the cases, unless you could show that your sampling method was unbiased -- and demonstrate that your view had something to back it up, if it's going to be more than a mere expression of petulance. | Gordon persists in avoiding | this point, but he tries to give moral and legal arguments why a | break in condom (or a woman's lie about birth control) should | destroy a man's life. I'm not avoiding your point; I don't think you have completed the process of making it. As to "destroying a man's life": very few men are forced to engage in vaginal sex, and all of us know what the rules are. Our society _could_ arrange things so that all men were perfectly free of any responsibility for the results, but it hasn't, because in general people want to affix responsibility for important liabilities, like the support of children, onto individuals. As I have pointed out in previous incarnations of this discussion, there are several alternatives. We could communize child support. We could say that children have no rights to support whatever. We could say that mothers, but not fathers, had responsibility for children -- perhaps with some compensation, as was the case with the Navahos, who allowed only women to own land, because only women were responsible for raising children (or so I have heard). As it happens, we have a tradition and practice of individual parental responsibility which the general public seem very enthusiastic about. You can try to change this, but I think you've got a long way to go, because just as a lot of men don't want to pay for the possible results of their own sexual activities, so they don't want to pay for the results of someone else's, either. Do they? And you can't replace something with nothing. uunet!infmx!robert@handies.UCAR.EDU (robert coleman): | ... A |mother who decides to have a child when she doesn't know who the father is |has committed a crime against the child. A mother who chooses not to make |publicly known who the father of the child is, because she wants full rights |to raise the child, has committed a crime against the child. Strictly |speaking, parents who get divorced are forcing the child to share the |emotional aspects of living with parents on a part-time basis, and are |committing a crime against the child. ... None of these are crimes, as far as I know. Some of them may be torts. It is extremely difficult to get an emotional aspect into court, however. | The law obviously does not deal consistently with the issue. For |some bizarre reason, a child has these "rights" only if the parents are |divorced, or if Mom is making the decision to raise the child singly and |*decides* not to take full responsibility. On the contrary, both parents can be sued for failure to support, whether they are married, divorced, or just hanging around. | People normally feel that, in |the above cases, the child does not have any claims against the parents. |Why should the child, which does not exist at the time an abortion |decision must be made, have a claim against the father, who does not wish |a child, in this exceptional instances? The fact that the child does not exist at the time an abortion decision must be made seems entirely irrelevant to the issue. No issue of child support arises until the child is born. | In particular, why should the child's |rights hinge on whether the Mother unilaterally *decides* to name the Father? I believe that the child, or someone representing the child's interests, might be able to sue the mother to compel her to testify. This usually would not be done because there would not be enough property at stake to make it worthwhile. Welfare departments often try something like it, though. | How do you feel the child's "rights" should be applied in the above |situations? You need to answer this question before we can take seriously |the "exceptional" cases. I wasn't describing my feelings. I have been trying to describe what I know of our laws and customs. I rather like the Navaho system, myself. | In the meantime, we'll continue to debate the father's right to an |abortion, which occurs before there is a child, with the understanding that |it wouldn't really matter whether the claim is brought by the possible child |or the mother; the mother's right to an abortion is not affected by the |possible existence of a child, and the father's rights should not be affected |either. The mother's right to abortion rests on her right to control her body. The closest thing to a right of abortion in a male is the male's right to not have vaginal intercourse against his will. In other words, he has a right to control his body just as a woman does. Since he does not carry the child, no amount of control of his body can secure for him a right of abortion. If, given publicly known and generally agreed-upon laws, he engages in vaginal intercourse with a fertile woman, he has signed up for the risks involved, and I can't see what the complaint is. As I said above, you can try to change this arrangement, but I don't think it will go over, especially if you have no argument but that you're being treated unfairly and someone else should pay. Everybody says that. -- In all of the argument about what I said, I still haven't seen anyone put herself or himself in the position of the dependent child, or the taxpayer who may wind up paying for the child's support when one or more of the parents cop out. That, as I said, is where the issue is. The war of the sexes is mere teenagery beside it. -- -- Gordon Fitch