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Originally posted by Tau Zero:
At least part of the asymmetry would not be addressed by outlawing abortion; one party would still be able to cheat much more readily on contraception than the other.

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And by the way, I have heard (from personal friends who have had this happen) of men tricking their partners into believing that a condom was in use, even though it wasn't. (One trick is to put the condom on, but quickly slip it off when she can't see it.) So while it's a bit more work for men to cheat about contraception, it does happen. After all, men hate condoms.

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I think that precoital contracts would address that.

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But aside from the utter elimination of any trace of romance, there is the much larger problem, as I've been saying, that the law is really much less interested in you, or your partner, than in the child. Like it or not, if you've fathered a child, you have responsibilities towards it. Period. The law is not really trying to put the woman in a favored position (after all, the legislators are nearly all men); rather, the law wants to ensure that the child is provided for. That this, along with human concealment of estrus, puts the woman in a position to make certain decisions without your approval, is a side effect. If you don't like it, you can always abstain.

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Originally posted by Mindy Viridis:
Thus taking the child away from its mother, over the mother's objections? I feel fairly confident that any proposed legislation to that effect would end the career of any elected official who sponsored it.

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Oh, my, how romantic. Yes, the champagne is wonderful, the music and lighting perfect, and now, if you'll just read and sign this document for me, we can send the notary on his way and retire to the boudoir...

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... the law is really much less interested in you, or your partner, than in the child¹. Like it or not, if you've fathered a child, you have responsibilities towards it². Period. The law is not really trying to put the woman in a favored position³ (after all, the legislators are nearly all men); rather, the law wants to ensure that the child is provided for⁴.

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1. Not true.� If the law were only concerned with the child, the law would first look for non-coercive ways of insuring the child's welfare, and only then turn to coercive measures.� The facts are otherwise, as any victim of mandatory wage garnishment can testify (the law won't even let you try to keep a payment schedule).

2. False again.� If the child has been adopted there is no support obligation.� This also takes care of the child's needs just fine.

3. False.� Many state laws put women in a favored position.� For instance, I understand that California will allow an unmarried woman to give up a child for adoption over the father's objections. �The father can adopt the child, but he cannot get support payments from the mother! �The situation is as asymmetric, and grossly unfair, as you can get.� I'm astounded that these laws have been upheld by the courts, but they're biased.

4. If the only goal is to provide for the child, there are many ways to do this other than by coercing one parent to pay support to the other.� Allowing the coercive support scheme as a default provides incentives to deceive and otherwise poison relationships. �I think it is high time to change this.

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Originally posted by Tau Zero:

I think that precoital contracts would address that.� The two parties could agree on what they intend to do, and the person who violates the contract loses their discretion to the one who kept it.� For instance, if the person responsible for contraception (say, using the pill or getting a vasectomy) violates the contract, the other party gets the option to dispose of custody of any resulting child.� This could be "I keep it, you lose all rights and pay support" (single dad gets revenge on lying wife) or "I choose to offer the child for adoption, and you have nothing to say about it."� This would remove almost all incentive to lie about birth control, and pretty much relegate the current mess to the trash-heap of history.

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Originally posted by Tau Zero:
Besides, we're probably talking about a newborn here, with few attachments.� Whatever emotional harm occurs will be to an adult who should have seen it coming and could have avoided it by acting differently, no?

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You don't know about my or Mindy's background, so it would be wrong of me to take offence where obviously none was meant. But I have to tell you, that you are wrong about this.

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Originally posted by Sad:
?

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Originally posted by Mindy Viridis:

As I said in my response to Veldrane, equality or fairness is far from the only consideration in family law. Besides, you're looking only at the father, as if the child wasn't itself a person. Does a child not have a right to its father's support?

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If you don't then you should be pro-abortion. But also need to accept that just as the mother's rights would take precendence over the child's so do the father's. He has just as much right as she does to 'abort' his responsibilities.

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We can't force a father to love his child (though he's a beast if he doesn't, regardless of how the child came to be)...

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Originally posted by Astrid Leuer:
How d'you get the *child* to sign up to this contract? I think the problem is that the act is carried out by two people, and that the consequences are born by a third, and we're not likely to find any solution to *that* problem any time soon.

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Originally posted by Tau Zero:
Public officials take children away from their mothers without said mothers' consent all the time, in cases of neglect.

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Bearing a child without bothering to assure the means to care for it is incipient (even premeditated) neglect.

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Besides, we're probably talking about a newborn here, with few attachments.� Whatever emotional harm occurs will be to an adult who should have seen it coming and could have avoided it by acting differently, no?

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This is all moot, anyway, since there is exactly zero chance that any of your ideas will get into law in any civilized country. As I've said before, The Tau Zero Elimination Of Unfit Mothers Act would be a tombstone for the career of any legislator stupid enough to sponsor it. (I notice you've neglected to respond to this rather crucial point so far. You seem far more interested in theorizing, or perhaps just whining about how men are mistreated by a legal system devised and interpreted almost exclusively by men, than in actually coming up with an alternative that anyone other than yourself would regard as an improvement.)

Pardon me for reformatting the rest of this, but if we get into layers of footnotes, it's going to be totally incomprehensible.

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If the law were only concerned with the child, the law would first look for non-coercive ways of insuring the child's welfare, and only then turn to coercive measures. The facts are otherwise, as any victim of mandatory wage garnishment can testify (the law won't even let you try to keep a payment schedule).

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And by the way, mandatory wage garnishment only applies if you don't voluntarily live up to your responsibilities, at which point your unwillingness to keep to a payment schedule is a matter of record. Why should they give you another chance?

In addition to the child's provision, the government also has the goal of preserving families, which is why divorces used to be much harder to get than they are now. This implies that parents and children shouldn't be forcibly separated except in dire cases such as severe abuse or neglect. If the father doesn't want to stick around, the government no longer tries to make him stay (by not allowing divorce), but he still has financial responsibilities.

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If the child has been adopted there is no support obligation. This also takes care of the child's needs just fine.

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I think there's a deeper issue here that you're missing. The government doesn't really want people to put their kids up for adoption. There are a number of reasons for this, but primarily, it's a burden on the state that ought to be borne by the people who made the child in the first place. It really isn't the government's responsibility to raise your child, or find someone else to do so, though they provide the service for those who really need it (a category which does not include self-absorbed men who don't want to pay child support, or women who need financial assistance). You seem to think that adoption is just this trivial little thing that people just do whenever it isn't convenient for them to have a child, but that isn't how it's supposed to work.

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Many state laws put women in a favored position. For instance, I understand that California will allow an unmarried woman to give up a child for adoption over the father's objections. The father can adopt the child, but he cannot get support payments from the mother!

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Moral: don't have children out of wedlock! Or didn't you see that particular train coming?

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If the only goal is to provide for the child, there are many ways to do this other than by coercing one parent to pay support to the other.

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If you think about it, not having children out of wedlock, and taking care of contraception yourself rather than insisting that your partner mess up her metabolism with pills, would solve your end of the problem more than adequately. But of course, that's asking you to take responsibility, which appears to be an issue for you.

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Originally posted by Tau Zero:
Oh for Pete's sake...

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I think we're talking at cross purposes. I was just pointing out that, in trying to pursue some sort of idea of equality between the mother and father of a child in these contracts, the problem arises that harm is done to a blameless child.

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I think we would be doing well to allow either parent to force an adoption into a two-parent household rather than create a situation where the child would be raised by a single parent whose lifestyle is supported by coercion.

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I don't think you can treat adoption in anything like so trivial a manner. It's not just a matter of handing over a bundle of flesh from one human being to another; it's highly traumatic. (I also don't understand how a child's right to be supported by its parents can be considered "coercion").

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Originally posted by Mindy Viridis:
[to Astrid:]
You seem to be saying that chivalry, even in today's usage, implies that the chivalrous man is, under other circumstances, a fighter, and you seem to infer from this that a woman treated "chivalrously" should keep in mind that the man is basically dangerous despite his good manners. I'm not sure I agree with that. Certainly it was true back in the days of knights in armor, but I think that aspect of the word has withered from disuse.

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Originally posted by Astrid Leuer:
I don't think you can treat adoption in anything like so trivial a manner. It's not just a matter of handing over a bundle of flesh from one human being to another; it's highly traumatic. (I also don't understand how a child's right to be supported by its parents can be considered "coercion").

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Trauma for the adults in this scenario is possible, I agree.� But let me tell you about trauma produced by the system as it is.� Fathers of out-of-wedlock children are routinely denied visitation.� Mothers are free to take their children and leave the city, the state or even the country.� These fathers will have their wages garnished automatically upon the entry of a support order (there is no option in the USA any longer, garnishment is required by law), but they cannot even get legal aid to obtain a visitation order.� Increases in support will be made automatically, but they won't be able to get enforcement of a visitation order even if they have one (this often happens even in the case of children born in a marriage).

Then there is the abusive support system. �If the father isn't making enough money, income will be "imputed" to him and support assessed on the fictitious income. �(I know someone this happened to. �He had a PhD, but couldn't get a job in his field in the USA; all he could get was menial jobs.� Because he had a PhD, Friend Of the Court imputed a very large income to him.� He was forced to leave the country where he could get a job teaching American history, but couldn't see his kids.� It was either that, or be jailed for "arrears" in his support, arrears based on money he could not have earned.)

You want to talk about trauma?� There's trauma for you.� A one-time separation is over and done, but the on-going legal, financial and emotional screwing of the support system can continue for 20 years.

This situation is almost entirely the fate of men.� Women who lose custody are seldom assessed support, and rarely charged much if they are.� Why's a legal system run mostly by men so biased?� It's because the lawyers run the system, and screwing higher-earning people is a lot more profitable than screwing low-earning people. � I used to think the women's movement was about equality, sharing the work and the difficulties, but equality in this area seems to be pass�.

I think a little agreement, legally enforcable and stating what the two parties will do in the event of certain contingencies, would be a fine way to avoid this kind of mess.� I think the reason you don't like it is that you'd prefer to hold all the cards and have all the options. �You want the option to use people, and have the law back you up.� Pardon me if I shed a few crocodile tears over the prospect of you finding yourself unable to get any sex, because no man will sleep with you without giving you the keys to his future.

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Originally posted by Mindy Viridis:

Originally posted by Tau Zero:
Public officials take children away from their mothers without said mothers' consent all the time, in cases of neglect.

That last clause is the crucial one. Sure, there are special cases where desperate measures such as government intervention are warranted. You've said nothing to indicate that your example was one of them. Getting pregnant by accident, and needing financial assistance from the child's father, hardly qualifies.

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Bearing a child without bothering to assure the means to care for it is incipient (even premeditated) neglect.

What a load of crap. (I think that's the USian expression.) So by that definition, the entire underclass is perpetually guilty of "incipient (even premeditated) neglect", and should have their children taken away from them.

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Besides, we're probably talking about a newborn here, with few attachments. Whatever emotional harm occurs will be to an adult who should have seen it coming and could have avoided it by acting differently, no?

And this is the person who was just saying that I need to learn something about empathy???

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If the law were only concerned with the child, the law would first look for non-coercive ways of insuring the child's welfare, and only then turn to coercive measures. The facts are otherwise, as any victim of mandatory wage garnishment can testify (the law won't even let you try to keep a payment schedule).

That the law should favor non-coercive measures doesn't at all follow from the desire to ensure that the child is provided for. Please spell out whatever syllogism you're using, if you have one, which I somehow doubt.

And by the way, mandatory wage garnishment only applies if you don't voluntarily live up to your responsibilities, at which point your unwillingness to keep to a payment schedule is a matter of record. Why should they give you another chance?

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The current system is anything but cheap.� First, you are wrong; the Federal government now requires that all support orders be enforced by mandatory wage garnishment.� Worse, most states process the payments through a bureaucracy.� Many of these bureaucracies have a lousy record of getting payments through on time and in the correct amount.� This screws both parents, and to add insult to injury their taxes have gone up to pay for it.

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In addition to the child's provision, the government also has the goal of preserving families.

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That's the problem.� Support law appears to have grown from divorce law.� If there never was a family, then most of the assumptions of the law are erroneous.� Take the computation of support.� It's not based on need, it's based directly on income.� I've seen a cite of a case where a poor single dad, living in a trailer, was sued for support by a much wealthier woman who decided to sleep with him.� Her child would lack for nothing important if she just went on her way, but taking support from the dad amounted to taking food from his little girl's mouth.� Guess what?� The law
at the time didn't even allow the father's custodial burden to be considered!

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If the child has been adopted there is no support obligation. This also takes care of the child's needs just fine.

Sure, IF the child is adopted. Do you know how many children enter the government foster-care system and NEVER get adopted?

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Besides, you still have to demonstrate that the mother is an unfit parent before you can take her child away from her.

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You seem to think that adoption is just this trivial little thing that people just do whenever it isn't convenient for them to have a child, but that isn't how it's supposed to work.

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There are definitely asymmetries about having children, but they're not all on one side, although your particular variety of self-obsession seems to see only the disadvantages that affect you. The man isn't the one getting pregnant. If the man won't marry the woman, he doesn't have to raise the child. I can see why men would prefer that casual or uncommitted sex not have consequences, but I think it's better for society as a whole that that's not the case.

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Moral: don't have children out of wedlock! Or didn't you see that particular train coming?

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Of course there might be other methods that would work, perhaps even work better. But once you've got a system that basically works, you don't change it without cause.

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A lot of divorce and support law has changed in the last 40 years, including the institution of no-fault divorce in most states.� Was this changed without cause?� Define "cause".� Should the assumptions behind the entire support system have been re-thought as a part of these legal changes, plus societal changes (like the increased earning power of women invalidating the assumption that "man=breadwinner, woman=homemaker")?� I think so.

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If you think about it, not having children out of wedlock, and taking care of contraception yourself rather than insisting that your partner mess up her metabolism with pills, would solve your end of the problem more than adequately. But of course, that's asking you to take responsibility, which appears to be an issue for you.

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Originally posted by Sad:
As in Gordon R.?

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Mindy, Tau, you both make the same error here -- you assume the system was designed. The original system, the one that existed back in the '50s, was designed to preserve families, discourage divorce, keep mothers in the home, and preserve an ex-wife's income.

Then it was near randomly modified, by people who didn't approve of its goals and who 'thought' in slogans. The result is multiple injustices, to men, women, and children (a father can get stuck supporting kids he didn't want, because he "ought to be responsible," but a mother can't, because "she has the right to control her own body." Meanwhile, once a husband is upper income and the kids are in college, he can dump the fat broad who raised his children for a trophy fluff half his age, while she gets to live on minimum wage).

If We, the People, were interested in justice, we'd start over from scratch and replace this abomination.

Mindy: One day, you must explain why it is some people's 'personal preferences,' which can't be considered evil, make you so angry. Could it be that you consider them morally wrong??? *duck*

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Originally posted by Saintonge:
Mindy, Tau, you both make the same error here -- you assume the system was designed. The original system, the one that existed back in the '50s, was designed to preserve families, discourage divorce, keep mothers in the home, and preserve an ex-wife's income.

Then it was near randomly modified, by people who didn't approve of its goals and who 'thought' in slogans. The result is multiple injustices, to men, women, and children (a father can get stuck supporting kids he didn't want, because he "ought to be responsible," but a mother can't, because "she has the right to control her own body." Meanwhile, once a husband is upper income and the kids are in college, he can dump the fat broad who raised his children for a trophy fluff half his age, while she gets to live on minimum wage).

If We, the People, were interested in justice, we'd start over from scratch and replace this abomination.

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Thank you for the USian history lesson; you have filled in some useful details for me. But I'm somewhat disturbed by the way you contrast a father being forced to pay child support with a woman's ability to get an abortion. These aren't opposites, since the father is being forced to provide for a living child, whereas an abortion means there is no child to support. It would be more accurate to contrast the woman's right to an abortion with the man's inability to force the woman to have an abortion (for which I hope you will not argue), and the man's responsibility to pay child support with the woman's responsibility to raise the child (in which case, the man is clearly getting off easy; he is no longer required to marry the woman and serve as a real father, as he would have a few decades ago).

There may well be problems with the current system. If some of T0's claims are correct, then those may indicate areas that need work. For example, I would say that if a father is making a reasonable effort to earn a good living and paying a reasonable percentage of his income to support his children (assuming that he's not married to their mother and she has custody), then he ought to have visitation rights unless a court has determined that there are good reasons to keep him away.

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Mindy: One day, you must explain why it is some people's 'personal preferences,' which can't be considered evil, make you so angry. Could it be that you consider them morally wrong??? *duck*

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More fundamentally, I think you still don't grasp post-Nietzschean concepts of morality. (Cheap shot: As might be expected of someone who was influenced by Ayn Rand.) Don't confuse local impressions with universal metaphysical judgments. Cheetahs aren't evil, though it's quite understandable if gazelles hate and fear them; cheetahs eat gazelles because that's their nature, and it isn't part of their nature to worry about how the gazelles feel about it. Part of what distinguishes us, as humans, from cheetahs and gazelles is this ability to understand and sympathize with other points of view. Can you as a man understand why a woman may not want to have sole responsibility for contraception and child-rearing? If not, then in my view, you're just another predator like the cheetah. If so, then I think you ought to accept some of that responsibility for yourself, and act accordingly. This has nothing to do with "good" and/or "evil" as universal judgments, but rather with my nature as a human who wants to live with other humans in relationships of mutual respect and harmony, which I assure you a man and a woman will not have if he gets her pregnant and then says, "Well, that's your problem, you deal with it and don't ask me for anything, because I don't want kids."

Another, perhaps simpler, way of putting the difference is that "good" and "evil", as words, tend to be used in a falsely-objective manner, implying a universal judgment, whereas I recognize only judgments relative to the observer and biased by the observer's preferences.

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Originally posted by Mindy Viridis:

Thank you for the USian history lesson; you have filled in some useful details for me. But I'm somewhat disturbed by the way you contrast a father being forced to pay child support with a woman's ability to get an abortion. These aren't opposites, since the father is being forced to provide for a living child, whereas an abortion means there is no child to support.

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It would be more accurate to contrast the woman's right to an abortion with the man's inability to force the woman to have an abortion (for which I hope you will not argue), and the man's responsibility to pay child support with the woman's responsibility to raise the child (in which case, the man is clearly getting off easy; he is no longer required to marry the woman and serve as a real father, as he would have a few decades ago).

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There may well be problems with the current system. If some of T0's claims are correct, then those may indicate areas that need work. For example, I would say that if a father is making a reasonable effort to earn a good living and paying a reasonable percentage of his income to support his children (assuming that he's not married to their mother and she has custody), then he ought to have visitation rights unless a court has determined that there are good reasons to keep him away.

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No, it's a personal preference based on my ideas of what kind of society I want to live in and what kind of society I think can work. If, for example, a man can impregnate a woman and simply say, "This is not my problem," as T0 seems to want it to be, then men have no incentive whatsoever to prevent unwanted pregnancies. (And I think we all know how men hate condoms.)

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Effectively, this would place the entire burden of contraception on women, and encourage men to pursue sex irresponsibly. (As if they don't already.) The problem with this is not that it is "evil", but that it's not the kind of society I want to live in.

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You also seem to be worried that this would somehow encourage men to pursue irresponsible sex? Ok, what would encourage a woman to pursue irresponsible sex? Knowing that even if she does get pregnant she can end it at any time? Wow...women already have the incentive to pursue irresponsible sex. Equality states that men should have the same rights and/or incentives.

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More fundamentally, I think you still don't grasp post-Nietzschean concepts of morality. (Cheap shot: As might be expected of someone who was influenced by Ayn Rand.) Don't confuse local impressions with universal metaphysical judgments. Cheetahs aren't evil, though it's quite understandable if gazelles hate and fear them; cheetahs eat gazelles because that's their nature, and it isn't part of their nature to worry about how the gazelles feel about it. Part of what distinguishes us, as humans, from cheetahs and gazelles is this ability to understand and sympathize with other points of view. Can you as a man understand why a woman may not want to have sole responsibility for contraception and child-rearing? If not, then in my view, you're just another predator like the cheetah.

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If so, then I think you ought to accept some of that responsibility for yourself, and act accordingly.

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This has nothing to do with "good" and/or "evil" as universal judgments, but rather with my nature as a human who wants to live with other humans in relationships of mutual respect and harmony, which I assure you a man and a woman will not have if he gets her pregnant and then says, "Well, that's your problem, you deal with it and don't ask me for anything, because I don't want kids."

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Another, perhaps simpler, way of putting the difference is that "good" and "evil", as words, tend to be used in a falsely-objective manner, implying a universal judgment, whereas I recognize only judgments relative to the observer and biased by the observer's preferences.

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-Vel

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Originally posted by Veldrane:
There is no child to support *after* the abortion procedure. Until the abortion takes place, the mother is being forced to provide for a living entity.

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Getting off easy? From the (few) cases I have seen, I would not think of using the term 'easy'.

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This is not valid to the argument... I agree with you on this point, its just not valid to the topic.

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I don't hate condoms (kinda like them actually) and I am a male. So, next time you use this you can change 'men' to 'some men'...

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Um, contraception != safe sex. NO sex == safe sex.

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With the exception of STDs, all contraception does is cause a reduction in the percentage of a successful conception. It not really preventing the possibility.

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You also seem to be worried that this would somehow encourage men to pursue irresponsible sex? Ok, what would encourage a woman to pursue irresponsible sex? Knowing that even if she does get pregnant she can end it at any time? Wow...women already have the incentive to pursue irresponsible sex. Equality states that men should have the same rights and/or incentives.

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Can you, as a woman, understand why a man may want to have the responsibility of raising his child, even if he has to be the sole person doing it?

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So, under your ideals of 'mutual respect and harmony, would this be valid?
"Well, Bob, I'm pregnant but I'm having the fetus killed regardless of your feelings towards it because I don't want kids."

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The main reason I support legal abortion is because of the limited cases in which I really do think it's acceptable, such as rape. Obviously a rapist shouldn't have any say in whether his victim aborts the child.

------------------
An email address alteration a day keeps the spammers away!

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Originally posted by Mindy Viridis:

Originally posted by Veldrane:
There is no child to support *after* the abortion procedure. Until the abortion takes place, the mother is being forced to provide for a living entity.
----------------------------------------

And your point is...?
[B]

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[B]
Relatively speaking. He has to pay some amount every month for child support, but is not required to have anything to do with raising the child. It's undeniably a lesser degree of responsibility, which was my point.

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Women who think "Who cares if I get pregnant, I'll just get an abortion" are a vanishingly small minority. Most women regard the prospect of having to get an abortion with considerable discomfort. It also costs money, though I don't know whether health insurance would cover it (I doubt it). So with these considerations in mind, it's clueless at best, highly offensive at worst, for you to suggest that a woman's ability to get an abortion is anywhere near "equal" to the ability a man would have to just walk away from a pregnant girlfriend if he didn't have to worry about being forced to pay child support.

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You seem to keep saying that its just not fair that if a woman wants to end her responsiblity, she has to go through this uncomfortable process that costs money but a man could just walk away from a pregnant girlfriend.
So, if we as a society designed some ordeal that was comparable to abortion (in discomfort, money and time)that men would have to go through to be rid of this responsiblity, you'd be perfectly ok with that?
Hey, that would work as a deterrent too so women wouldn't have to be 'soley responsible' about contraception.

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In my experience, you're in a very small minority, so I don't really see anything wrong with the generalization "men hate condoms".

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There is a natural asymmetry here that makes this more acceptable to me than the opposite case. The woman is the one who has to carry the baby for nine months, then go through childbirth, and spend several weeks healing from it.

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The only thing that you seem to clinging on to is that a woman has to go through some physical ordeal and it just wouldn't be fair to just let the man walk away. Its almost as if you want the male to pay with a pound of flesh to 'make it fair.'

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if you say that men should have a "logical equivalent" available to them, it sounds like you think two wrongs add up to a right.

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Off-topic: I may occasionally be offensive but I'm not clueless. I know you aren't clueless...a little rigid in your thinking but not clueless.

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Originally posted by Saintonge:
If We, the People, were interested in justice, we'd start over from scratch and replace this abomination.

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Originally posted by Mindy Viridis:
With what?

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With something that was thought about carefully, debated thoroughly, and addressed various questions like "What kind of behavior do we wish to encourage? Why? How could people deliberately abuse the system, and how do we prevent that? And what about justice, morality, etc.?"

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Mindy:
All I've heard from T0

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Pardon me, but you seem to have forgotten that I am not Tau Zero.

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Mindy:
I'm somewhat disturbed by the way you contrast a father being forced to pay child support with a woman's ability to get an abortion. These aren't opposites, since the father is being forced to provide for a living child, whereas an abortion means there is no child to support.

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Well, before the abortion, there was a living child, and the mother was supporting it. Abortion on demand mean she not support said child if she does not wish to. The man must. I don't see the reasoning that supports such a rule of law.

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Mindy:
It would be more accurate to contrast the woman's right to an abortion with the man's inability to force the woman to have an abortion (for which I hope you will not argue)

---

Why you care what I would or wouldn't argue is something I don't understand, and will discuss further below.

Otherwise, I see no contrast at all. The women can carry the fetus to term, or abort. The man has nothing to say about it either way. Your contrast is just a restatement of the present rule of law.

quote:

---

Mindy:
and the man's responsibility to pay child support with the woman's responsibility to raise the child (in which case, the man is clearly getting off easy; he is no longer required to marry the woman and serve as a real father, as he would have a few decades ago).

---

If I have understood Tau correctly, and if he has his facts straight, the woman has no such reponsibility, as she may put the child up for adoption at any time. So she can opt out of responsibility, he can't.

Further, if the woman behaves in ways that are extremely likely to injure the child (such as having a series of live in boyfriends, who are statistically far more likely to abuse this child they are not related to than anyone else), or result in it growing up in a life of poverty with a high risk of being murdered (the whole welfare thing), or neglects it to pursue drugs and alcohol, it is extremely unlikely she will be deprived of custody, welfare payments, or child support. So again, it seems she has little real legal responsibility. Why?

As a thought experiment, make your best arguments for what you think men should have to do, and what they should have a right to do. Then do the same for women. Now, switch the arguments, substituting the words 'man' and 'woman.' Do you endorse these new arguments? If not, why not?

quote:

---

Saintonge:
Mindy:
One day, you must explain why it is some people's 'personal preferences,' which can't be considered evil, make you so angry. Could it be that you consider them morally wrong??? *duck*

Mindy:
No, it's a personal preference based on my ideas of what kind of society I want to live in and what kind of society I think can work. If, for example, a man can impregnate a woman and simply say, "This is not my problem," as T0 seems to want it to be, then men have no incentive whatsoever to prevent unwanted pregnancies. (And I think we all know how men hate condoms.) Effectively, this would place the entire burden of contraception on women, and encourage men to pursue sex irresponsibly. (As if they don't already.) The problem with this is not that it is "evil", but that it's not the kind of society I want to live in.

More fundamentally, I think you still don't grasp post-Nietzschean concepts of morality. (Cheap shot: As might be expected of someone who was influenced by Ayn Rand.) Don't confuse local impressions with universal metaphysical judgments. Cheetahs aren't evil, though it's quite understandable if gazelles hate and fear them; cheetahs eat gazelles because that's their nature, and it isn't part of their nature to worry about how the gazelles feel about it. Part of what distinguishes us, as humans, from cheetahs and gazelles is this ability to understand and sympathize with other points of view.

---

We seem to have a communication failure here. I understand the point you're expressing -- I disagree with it, and don't take it particularly seriously, but I understand it.

What I don't understand is why Tau's opinions get you angry. As a putative human being, don't you have the to understand and sympathize with a point of view different than yours?

And the terms you occasionally use, e.g. "civilized," which you seem to have used in a normative fashion. If "civilized" refers only to Mindy Viridis's personal preferences, why should any other human being care about it? Similarly, you say

quote:

---

... I think you ought to

---

Why should your personal preferences shape my life? For that matter, how do you get, logically, from "I, Mindy, would prefer Saintonge do X" to "Stephen, you ought to do X"? In terms of your own expressed theory, it seems incoherent. This is what I am trying to resolve.

------------------
Saintonge

Blabbermouth extraordinaire

quote:

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Originally posted by Veldrane:
You also seem to be worried that this would somehow encourage men to pursue irresponsible sex? Ok, what would encourage a woman to pursue irresponsible sex? Knowing that even if she does get pregnant she can end it at any time? Wow...women already have the incentive to pursue irresponsible sex. Equality states that men should have the same rights and/or incentives.

Originally posted by Mindy Viridis:
Women who think "Who cares if I get pregnant, I'll just get an abortion" are a vanishingly small minority. Most women regard the prospect of having to get an abortion with considerable discomfort.

---

Evidence?

quote:

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Mindy:
It also costs money, though I don't know whether health insurance would cover it (I doubt it).

---

I believe most health insurance does cover abortion, but let's assume that it doesn't. Why not compel the man and woman to split the costs? Or offer the man the option of paying for the abortion or paying child support?

quote:

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Mindy:
So with these considerations in mind, it's clueless at best, highly offensive at worst

---

Again, why do you get offended at other people's expressions of their personal preferences?

quote:

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Veldrane:So, under your ideals of 'mutual respect and harmony, would this be valid?
"Well, Bob, I'm pregnant but I'm having the fetus killed regardless of your feelings towards it because I don't want kids."

Mindy:
There is a natural asymmetry here that makes this more acceptable to me than the opposite case. The woman is the one who has to carry the baby for nine months, then go through childbirth, and spend several weeks healing from it.

---

So, a woman who carries a child to term is inconvenienced for a year, say. Should the man then be required to pay child support for a year, and then have his obligations end?

quote:

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Mindy:
The main reason I support legal abortion is because of the limited cases in which I really do think it's acceptable, such as rape. Obviously a rapist shouldn't have any say in whether his victim aborts the child.

---

Are you saying that in cases of consenual sex, you wouldn't have any problem with restrictions on abortion?

Preface:

In the US, there have been a number of changes in technology and law which have changed the relationship between people and the state, and people to each other.� To give a partial list:

1. (1950's?) A Supreme Court decision held that states could not bar the sale of contraceptives.
   
2. (1960's) The invention of the birth-control pill, allowing women to effectively turn their fertility on and off at will.
   
3. (1970's) The legalization of abortion in New York, followed a couple years later by the Supreme Court decision in the case of Roe vs. Wade.� This was a great stride in women's rights, allowing women to nullify the effects of contraceptive failure or a bad decision.
   
4. (???) The injectable female contraceptive Depo-Provera.
   
5. (circa 1990) The implantable female contraceptive Norplant.
   
6. (September 2000) The FDA approval of the (contra-gestative/abortifacient) drug Mifepristone, aka RU-486.

There have been some other trends going on in and around this:

1. (Since 1900) In divorce, the former presumption of custody of minor children going to the father was replaced by a presumption of custody going to the mother, and now an on-going shift to presumption of custody to the "primary caregiver" (usually, but not always, the mother).
   
2. (1960's and onward) The replacement of divorce laws requiring a showing of blame by "no-fault" laws.
   
3. (same time frame) The increasing trend toward single parenthood instead of "shotgun marriage".
   
4. (same time frame) Replacement of alimony (deductible to the payer, taxable to the recipient) by child support (neither deductible nor taxable).
   
5. (1980's and onward) The rise of the term "deadbeat dads", and the increasing stigmatization of most non-custodial fathers under that label.
   
6. (same time frame)� Legislative increases in child-support mandates (which just happened to follow publication of a study which claimed that the standard of living of women fell sharply following divorce, while mens' rose... a study based on no data and which data showed the exact opposite when it was finally gathered).

So now we come to the immediate discussion.� Mindy and I have a conflict of priorities/morality.� She is placing something - the right of one party (but not the other) to self-determination, or the sanctity of the mother-child bond - above all considerations of equality or fairness.� Her words:

quote:

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No, it's a personal preference based on my ideas of what kind of society I want to live in and what kind of society I think can work.

---

1. People should be held responsible for the things they can control, and harmless for those things they cannot control.
   
2. Above all, truthfulness and square dealing should be rewarded, deceit and fraud should be punished.� When one party has wronged another, discretion in the matter should go to the party hurt by the wrong.
   
3. Where people have been honest and forthright with each other, their agreements should be enforced like any other contract.
   
4. When there is no explicit agreement, the law should attempt to arrive at some equitable resolution to any disputes.

Way, way back on this page, back on September 15 (hey, Snaggy, why aren't there response numbers [and response bookmarks] so we can keep track of these things more easily?) Sad wrote:

---

In the physical harm realm, men can't get pregnant -- but can begat kids.� And consequently be held financially/legally/etc. responsible for them.� Somehow a pregnancy rape seems *far* more intense, but this is not trivial in the least.
...
While it's not rape, I know several guys whose wives lied about the pill and got pregnant. They explicitly did not want to have children. She flat out lied to him -- result being that he's responsible for this child.

---

quote:

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It would be more accurate to contrast ... the man's responsibility to pay child support with the woman's responsibility to raise the child (in which case, the man is clearly getting off easy; he is no longer required to marry the woman and serve as a real father, as he would have a few decades ago.)

---

Maybe living in such an unnatural place as San Francisco has colored your perceptions, but in most of the world men prize their role and place in the family, as breadwinner, as counselor, as role model, as companion.� From what I've seen, being tossed out of the family unit is a painful, embittering, often devastating experience.� And make no mistake, "tossed out" is an accurate description.� No-fault divorce laws combined with presumptions of custody leave men/breadwinners out in the cold when the other parent decides they don't like the marriage any more.� I don't suppose that you've ever seen the pain of a father pauperized by support decrees and only seeing the child(ren) on alternate weekends.� I have.

Let's get this back to the subject of irresponsibility.� In the cases Sad describes above, who would you argue was irresponsible, the women or the men?� Is it responsible to be deceitful?� Is it responsible to violate your partner's trust?� Should anyone ever get a reward for doing so?

You must have missed that, because that's what Sad described above:� the callous and deliberate use of deceit to obtain a payoff through the legal system.� The problem is that the law does not recognize right or wrong when bestowing custody or assessing support responsibilities, and I argue that this should be one of the two primary purposes of the courts (the other being the welfare of the child).

When people state their bona fides, I think it's perfectly all right for them to put their agreements on paper so there is no disagreement later.� Every credit-card charge slip contains contract language, so why not this?� When two people have agreed that they have no intention to make a baby, and then one of them decides that this isn't what they're going to do, what should the responsibilities of the other person be?� Who should be bound by this one-sided change of heart?

This comes right down to the pathological case, where a woman has decided she wants a baby despite her agreement with her partner(s) to the contrary.� Maybe the partner put up money for an abortion, and she ignored it or even spent it on something else (this has happened).� Should the partner have to pay her to raise the child, which is what support amounts to?� (It actually amounts to more than that because of the implicit alimony now built into mandated support levels, but I digress.)� Or should the ex-partner's responsibility end with finding a suitable home for the child, whether it involves the woman or not?

This is why I'd argue for mandatory surrender of parental rights in the pathological case.� In California, as of the last I heard, an unmarried mother can surrender her child for adoption over the objections of the father.� In the case of deceit such as contraceptive fraud, I think the man should have the option of taking custody of the child himself (and getting support from the mother), or disposing of custody as he sees fit.� If that means that the child is adopted into an unrelated family over the mother's objections, it is only her just desserts; had she not gone back on her agreement, there would never have been a child involved.� If there was an agreement to marry, and the woman went back on that, one has to ask why she conceived a child with someone she found unsuitable as a partner (it's a little late for that when you're already pregnant).

I propose changing the law to create a very large incentive to avoid having a child involved absent an agreement to at least cover the contingency of a child, not just for one party but for both parties.� Children would still get taken care of just fine because that would be the first responsibility of the adults involved, but different people might wind up doing it.� I think this would eliminate the phenomenon of deceit in short order, and there would be a lot less misery coming from it.� Less misery is good, no?

There's also the fact that dealing with an agreement before a roll in the hay means facing issues that some people ignore.� Consider it the legal equivalent of a condom.� You might decide to use it, or if you can't agree you might just call the whole thing off.� And that is probably a good thing too.

Stephen:� Agreed that the system was not designed.� AAMOF, way back on September 19, I wrote:

quote:

---

Support law appears to have grown from divorce law.� If there never was a family, then most of the assumptions of the law are erroneous.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Tau Zero:
Preface:

In the US, there have been a number of changes in technology and law which have changed the relationship between people and the state, and people to each other.� To give a partial list:

1. (1950's?) A Supreme Court decision held that states could not bar the sale of contraceptives.
   
2. (1960's) The invention of the birth-control pill, allowing women to effectively turn their fertility on and off at will.
   
3. (1970's) The legalization of abortion in New York, followed a couple years later by the Supreme Court decision in the case of Roe vs. Wade.� This was a great stride in women's rights, allowing women to nullify the effects of contraceptive failure or a bad decision.
   

---

The Supreme Court decision was Griswold vs. Connecticut, 1965. It was something of a hoax, in that the law was not being enforced (the Connecticut ACLU had to advertise for someone to complain about it), and the right of "marital privacy" the Supremes discovered somehow became a right of "straight privacy, regardless of wedlock," but not "gay privacy." I am opposed to the idea that any five Supreme Court Justices can rewrite the law at will to whatever they think the stupid citizens ought to do.

Similar comments apply to the Supreme Court's infamous ruling of Roe vs. Wade, which it waves around as the cape to distract the pro-life bull, but which actually is not the 'law' the Supremes enforce. (pop quiz: Can you tell me when Roe was abrogated?) Our current legal doctrine is: 'A fetus is a human being, and it's murder for anyone but the mother or her designated agent to kill it, but if she kills it, it wasn't human after all.' Bah, humbug.

quote:

---

Tau:
There have been some other trends going on in and around this:

1. (Since 1900) In divorce, the former presumption of custody of minor children going to the father was replaced by a presumption of custody going to the mother, and now an on-going shift to presumption of custody to the "primary caregiver" (usually, but not always, the mother).
   
2. (1960's and onward) The replacement of divorce laws requiring a showing of blame by "no-fault" laws.
   
3. (same time frame) The increasing trend toward single parenthood instead of "shotgun marriage".
   
4. (same time frame) Replacement of alimony (deductible to the payer, taxable to the recipient) by child support (neither deductible nor taxable).
   
5. (1980's and onward) The rise of the term "deadbeat dads", and the increasing stigmatization of most non-custodial fathers under that label.
   
6. (same time frame)� Legislative increases in child-support mandates (which just happened to follow publication of a study which claimed that the standard of living of women fell sharply following divorce, while mens' rose... a study based on no data and which data showed the exact opposite when it was finally gathered).

---

I don't think I ever mentioned that my mother was a felon.

She would not have thought of it that way, but in her youth in New York, friends of hers wished to divorce. At that time, New York law only allowed divorce in cases of adultery. So she got on the stand, swore to tell the truth, and then lied, saying that the husband was cheating on the wife.

Later on, my parents divorced, bitterly and messily, and I learned that all these things are rather complex. For instance, my mother was awarded alimony and child support, but after a while got neither, as my father had effectively zero income. When he did have money again, she got much less child support, and no alimony. He was arrested several times because she complained (truthfully? falsely? I don't know) that he hadn't paid on time.

Certainly her income fell sharply when she divorced, but that was about 1959-60. What happened in the '80s, with the rise of women having careers? I don't know, I have no data.

The one thing that has become clear over time is that divorce is generally devastating for the children.

My point: if a law isn't broadly congruent with the moral ideas of society, people will find a way around it. That's another reason why the Supreme's rewriting of various laws was a bad idea. In the '50s, people's ideas about marriage changed to the point that the old laws were seen as unjust. What we replaced them with is frequently pretty bad too.

Other times it's not. Did I mention that I was divorced? J. and I married in haste, got on each other's nerves very badly, and finally split. No children. Should we have had to prove that one of us was at fault? We both were.

This is why I think we as a society need to sit down and go over the whole issue from scratch.

Oh, about family stability: in the '60s, the law was changed, both de jure and de facto, to encourage welfare supported single motherhood. There's a scene in George Gilder's Visible Man where an unmarried mother goes downtown on the day she becomes old enough to be eligible for welfare, and swears under penalty of perjury that she doesn't know where the father of her child is. (He's at work, where he's been earning the money that kept them and their child fed and housed for the past two years. But that day, he gets himself fired). Then she meets some people she knows, who work for the welfare dept., and tells them why she's there, and what a great guy she lives with.

That she is confessing to having just committed a felony doesn't occur to her or to the welfare workers.

quote:

---

Tau:
My priorities ...

Where people have been honest and forthright with each other, their agreements should be enforced like any other contract.

When there is no explicit agreement, the law should attempt to arrive at some equitable resolution to any disputes.

---

Thinking about this, I find it interesting that the courts will allow and enforce pre-nuptial agreements, but not 'pre-conceptual' agreements.

Thinking further: what happens when their is a genuine failure in birth control, rather than either person lying?

"My Grandfather sells prophylactics.
"He punctures each one with a pin.
"My Grandmother does the abortions.
"MY GOD HOW THE MONEY ROLLS IN!"

quote:

---

Tau:
I don't suppose that you've ever seen the pain of a father pauperized by support decrees and only seeing the child(ren) on alternate weekends.� I have.

---

I don't know if you've ever seen the pain of the children caught in this mess, not understanding what's going on, pulled back and forth by parents using them in their war with each other, but I have. I lived it. It's ugly.

quote:

---

Tau:
{out of order} I know several guys whose wives lied about the pill and got pregnant. They explicitly did not want to have children. She flat out lied to him -- result being that he's responsible for this child. ...

Let's get this back to the subject of irresponsibility.� In the cases Sad describes above, who would you argue was irresponsible, the women or the men?�

---

Another question, and, imao, a better one: How do you expect to get men to be responsible for their acts, when the law looks on them as walking sperm banks/wallets? It appears to be our present policy that men are unnecessary for the child's development, and need have no say in how a child is raised. Just fertilize the woman and pay up for 18 years, 9 months.

So if he's a poor man, his life may become Hell, if he's rich enough he is merely inconvenienced, but in neither case do we seem to be holding him responsible for much of anything except the monthly check. Is this what we want?

quote:

---

Tau:
Stephen:� Agreed that the system was not designed.� AAMOF, way back on September 19,

---

AAMOF?

------------------
Saintonge

Blabbermouth extraordinaire

quote:

---

Originally posted by Saintonge:
AAMOF?

---

As A Matter Of Fact.

---

Saintonge wrote:
The Supreme Court decision was Griswold vs. Connecticut, 1965. It was something of a hoax, in that the law was not being enforced (the Connecticut ACLU had to advertise for someone to complain about it), and the right of "marital privacy" the Supremes discovered somehow became a right of "straight privacy, regardless of wedlock," but not "gay privacy." I am opposed to the idea that any five Supreme Court Justices can rewrite the law at will to whatever they think the stupid citizens ought to do.

---

I disagree with you about the meaning of Griswold.  First, even if the CT law wasn't being enforced, it could have been (and similar laws were probably used as threats in other jurisdictions); selective enforcement is not a defense as far as I know.  The only way to be free of such a law is to have it rescinded or invalidated, and a national precedent that such a law is null and void is the best way to accomplish this.

Second, the privacy right recognized in Griswold is the right to control childbearing.  It doesn't necessarily recognize the right to engage in sodomy between any two people, regardless of their sexes or state of matrimony.  I agree that it's silly to regulate either of them, but giving hetero couples the right to not make babies unless they want to (which is implicitly enjoyed by gays) seems like a step toward fairness to me.

Last, Griswold didn't tell anyone what to do.  It told the government that it had to butt out and let people do what they feel is right.   Someone once wrote "The most fundamental right is the right to be left alone" (I believe it was a sitting Supreme Court chief justice).  Truer words were never spoken.

Roe was abrogated by Planned Parenthood vs. Casey, if not earlier.

---

Similar comments apply to the Supreme Court's infamous ruling of Roe vs. Wade, which it waves around as the cape to distract the pro-life bull, but which actually is not the 'law' the Supremes enforce. (pop quiz: Can you tell me when Roe was abrogated?) Our current legal doctrine is: 'A fetus is a human being, and it's murder for anyone but the mother or her designated agent to kill it, but if she kills it, it wasn't human after all.' Bah, humbug.

---

1. The "pro-life bull" didn't exist as such before Roe.
   
2. Roe recognized a distinction between actual and potential human life; the question isn't when it is human, but when is it a life.  This distinction is ages old; laws which distinguish between murder, infanticide (much lower penalty) and abortion prove this on the secular side, and even Catholic doctrine held for some time that there was no life before "quickening".
   
3. Getting back to the topic of a few posts ago, the core of Roe is that some people (women, at least) have the right to choose whether and when they will take on the bearing and/or raising of a child.  The state has an interest in potential life when it becomes independently viable, but not before.  The state has no interest that allows the regulation of birth-control devices, for example.

---

The one thing that has become clear over time is that divorce is generally devestating for the children.

---

---

Other times it's not. Did I mention that I was divorced? J. and I married in haste, got on each other's nerves very badly, and finally split. No children. Should we have had to prove that one of us was at fault? We both were.

---

---

Oh, about family stability: in the '60s, the law was changed, both de jure and de facto, to encourage welfare supported single motherhood.

---

---

Thinking about this, I find it interesting that the courts will allow and enforce pre-nuptial agreements, but not 'pre-conceptual' agreements.

Thinking further: what happens when their is a genuine failure in birth control, rather than either person lying?

---

---

I don't know if you've ever seen the pain of the children caught in this mess, not understanding what's going on, pulled back and forth by parents using them in their war with each other, but I have. I lived it. It's ugly.

---

---

Another question, and, imao, a better one: How do you expect to get men to be responsible for their acts, when the law looks on them as walking sperm banks/wallets? It appears to be our present policy that men are unnecessary for the child's development, and need have no say in how a child is raised. Just fertilize the woman and pay up for 18 years, 9 months.

---

---

Saintonge wrote:
The Supreme Court decision was Griswold vs. Connecticut, 1965. It was something of a hoax, in that the law was not being enforced (the Connecticut ACLU had to advertise for someone to complain about it), and the right of "marital privacy" the Supremes discovered somehow became a right of "straight privacy, regardless of wedlock," but not "gay privacy." I am opposed to the idea that any five Supreme Court Justices can rewrite the law at will to whatever they think the stupid citizens ought to do.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Tau Zero:
Since IANAL, I feel no obligation to remember the name of Griswold as well as I remember Joule and Boltzmann.

---

I'm not a lawyer either. I used Google to find information on it.

quote:

---

Tau:
I disagree with you about the meaning of Griswold.� First, even if the CT law wasn't being enforced, it could have been (and similar laws were probably used as threats in other jurisdictions); selective enforcement is not a defense as far as I know.�

---

The American Communists Lawyer's Union didn't have any cases available, to the best of my knowledge, of that law or any similar law being enforced or threatened with enforcement anywhere in the U.S.

If the people of Conneticut wanted it not to be the law of Connecticut, they could have repealed it through the regular political process.

If the people of the United States wanted all such laws invalid, they could pass a Constitutional amendment to end them.

And the Supreme Court could have invalidated the law on free speach grounds, without suddenly discovering a very vague 'right of marital privacy,' which they extend to cover the acts they wish to protect, and deny them to those they don't wish to protect.

I'd rather have the laws made by the people, or their elected representatives, then any five appointed for life 'Justices' who pretend they are discovering what was already in the Constitution.

quote:

---

Tau:
Second, the privacy right recognized in Griswold is the right to control childbearing.� It doesn't necessarily recognize the right to engage in sodomy between any two people, regardless of their sexes or state of matrimony.� I agree that it's silly to regulate either of them, but giving hetero couples the right to not make babies unless they want to (which is implicitly enjoyed by gays) seems like a step toward fairness to me.

---

First it was "married people have a right to privacy in their own bedroom," then it was "any man and woman have a right to privacy in one of them's bedroom," then it was "any pregnant woman's right to privacy in a bedroom has stretched to an abortion clinic." As legal theory, that's nonsense. The fact that it suddenly didn't extend to two men having sex in the privacy of one of them's bedrooms is just proof that they Supremes decide what they want the law to be, and then proclaim that the Constitution requires the law to be that. And I abominate that practice.

quote:

---

Tau:
Roe was abrogated by Planned Parenthood vs. Casey, if not earlier.

---

Much earlier. Give up, or care to try again?

---

Saintonge:
Similar comments apply to the Supreme Court's infamous ruling of Roe vs. Wade, which it waves around as the cape to distract the pro-life bull, but which actually is not the 'law' the Supremes enforce. (pop quiz: Can you tell me when Roe was abrogated?) Our current legal doctrine is: 'A fetus is a human being, and it's murder for anyone but the mother or her designated agent to kill it, but if she kills it, it wasn't human after all.' Bah, humbug.

---

quote:

---

Tau:
More than a few nits there:
The "pro-life bull" didn't exist as such before Roe.

---

I didn't say it did. Just that Roe is constantly argued about as if it's important, when it is not the law of the land in any meaningful sense.

quote:

---

Tau:
Roe recognized a distinction between actual and potential human life; the question isn't when it is human, but when is it a life.� This distinction is ages old; laws which distinguish between murder, infanticide (much lower penalty) and abortion prove this on the secular side, and even Catholic doctrine held for some time that there was no life before "quickening".

---

You miss the point as usual. The current 'law' that the Supremes enforce has nothing to do with Roe. Said law is, effectively: "If X causes the death of a fetus against the mother's will, the fetus was a human being, and X was a murderer. If X causes the death of a fetus with the mother's consent, that's fine." As a legal theory, that's contemptible. But it is what the Supremes enforce.

quote:

---

Tau:
Getting back to the topic of a few posts ago, the core of Roe is that some people (women, at least) have the right to choose whether and when they will take on the bearing and/or raising of a child.� The state has an interest in potential life when it becomes independently viable, but not before.

---

Yes, that's the core of Roe, but said core has been abrogated. To the best of my knowledge, there are �NO! circumstances when the State's interest in the "potential life" can override any pregnant woman's expressed desire for an abortion, making said interest meaningless.

In sum, the whole "potential life," "first, second, third trimester" scheme of Roe is just fraudulent. The decision should not be cited in support or opposition to anything, since nothing in it has any relevance to the actual laws as enforced by the Supreme Court.

quote:

---

Tau:
Experience since that era proves how badly these ideas {re single parenting} work in practice, and I don't think that any person should be allowed to advocate them without taking responsibility for the pathologies which follow.

---

The First Amendment provides differently, and I am not sure I wish to change that. And how do we "hold people responsible" anyway?

quote:

---

Saintonge wrote:
You miss the point as usual. The current 'law' that the Supremes enforce has nothing to do with Roe. Said law is, effectively: "If X causes the death of a fetus against the mother's will, the fetus was a human being, and X was a murderer. If X causes the death of a fetus with the mother's consent, that's fine." As a legal theory, that's contemptible. But it is what the Supremes enforce.

---

quote:

---

Yes, that's the core of Roe, but said core has been abrogated. To the best of my knowledge, there are �NO! circumstances when the State's interest in the "potential life" can override any pregnant woman's expressed desire for an abortion, making said interest meaningless.

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1. Maybe the legislators really are dumb enough to think they're doing something worthwhile, or
2. Maybe the legislators are cynical enough to realize that the backlash from a law which actually goes into effect would sweep many of them out of office, so they continue to pass un-Constitutional do-nothing feel-good laws and rely on the courts to save their worthless butts from their idiot reactionary constituents.

quote:

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Tau:
Experience since that era proves how badly these ideas {re single parenting} work in practice, and I don't think that any person should be allowed to advocate them without taking responsibility for the pathologies which follow.

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The First Amendment provides differently, and I am not sure I wish to change that. And how do we "hold people responsible" anyway?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Tau Zero:
"Remove the beam from thine own eye."� Until very recently there was no such crime as "feticide" anywhere in the USA.� There were quite a few crimes which produced the death of a fetus, but without exception any act which did so without the woman's consent was an assault on the woman (and if the woman wants it, it's not an assault).� As a non-viable fetus does not and cannot have a separate existence, it cannot have separate interests either.� There is one legal entity involved, and it is the woman.� You may find it contemptible, but it is the only legal theory that works.�

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It may or may not work, but it is not the operational legal theory of the U.S. If someone shoots a pregnant woman in the womb, killing the fetus but not her, said shooter may be charged with aggravated assault on the woman and the murder of the fetus.

quote:

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Tau:
That's not what I see.� I see lots of legislators being driven by special-interest lobbying (allegedly) trying to use the law to get at some problem or other ... These laws could be narrowly prescribed so that they would be legal, but they inevitably are not.�

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As far as I know, wrong. The courts strike down such laws under all circumstances. Can you give me an example of one circumstance in which a woman could wish an abortion, and the state could make it illegal, and have the courts uphold that ban?

quote:

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Tau:
Experience since that era proves how badly these ideas {re single parenting} work in practice, and I don't think that any person should be allowed to advocate them without taking responsibility for the pathologies which follow.

Saintonge:
The First Amendment provides differently, and I am not sure I wish to change that. And how do we "hold people responsible" anyway?

Tau:
By not giving them a free pass whenever they try to push these failed ideas. �In other words, every reporter, interviewer and critic should play hardball with these idiots, just as they should with racist skinheads.� No opportunity should ever pass to force these clowns to confront the tough questions regarding the failure of these ideas and their horrific consequences.

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Ah. I thought you meant some kind of legal responsibility. You meant moral. Sorry I misunderstood.

Given that many of the reporters etc. are in agreement with the idiot ideas, that isn't going to happen, though.

For that matter, given that many reporters, etc. are liars ...

quote:

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Originally posted by Saintonge:
It may or may not work, but it is not the operational legal theory of the U.S. If someone shoots a pregnant woman in the womb, killing the fetus but not her, said shooter may be charged with aggravated assault on the woman and the murder of the fetus.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Tau Zero:
Once again, you're wrong.� There is no national murder statute in the USA; such laws are drafted by the states.� Ergo, the "operational legal theory of the U.S." to which you refer does not exist.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Tau Zero:
Yes, it is logically incoherent.� For this, you can thank the Right to Life movement and its various backers and associates, who took what used to be a fairly cohesive system and messed it up by lobbying the aforementioned legislators for poorly written feel-good laws.� (I should quit trying to post this late!)

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Somehow, I don't see how the system was cohesive when, allegedly, fetuses were not human in law buy aborting them was a crime.

And there wouldn't be a "Right to Life" movement if there wasn't a "Right to Choose" movement intent on making sure that the normal political process can't operate.

Well, it's late early, and I have to work tomorrow today, so I bid you all a fond farewell.

See ya tonite, tomorrow, or Sunday, same geek/blabbermouth time, same geek/blabbermouth channel.

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Saintonge

I've got an idea for you: Why don't we take everyone who is from a "broken" home (a stupid label to begin with) and kill them all? After all, the parents are going to hell because we already know that they're evil; that's why they had kids and the got divorced. It dosen't matter is one spouse was beating or raping or trying to kill the other; the should stay together for the sake of the children. Even if it kills them. And well, if they got pregnant by accident, or because of some misguided desire to control each other; all the more reason to remove them from the gene pool.

The kids are obviously damaged goods, and will never be able to grow and learn from what has happened to them. They will never be able to pull themselves up -- by their own bootstraps if necessary -- to live happy productive lives. They'll never be able to serve as an example to others for how one's circumstances don't have to have any bearing on one's life. Yeah, just fry 'em all!

And y'all will be able to righteously proclaim that you've made the world a better place by removing all the wrong thinking and "damaged" humanity on the planet. Gee -- that sounds just like any number of Yugoslavians, or Palestineans, or Israelis, or Muslims, or Christians or...(add whatever stupid-ass lable you want)

If somebody dosen't say "Stop. It dosen't matter what happened before. We are going to make it different now." then NOTHING will ever change. The name of the game is tolerance. Sadly, many people here are showing how intolerant they are, even though the pay lip service to the idea.
[/rant]

quote:

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Originally posted by greyrat:
[rant]
Right to life...right to choose...divorce is evil...God you guys are narrowing displaying your incredibly narrow views even while you're expanding the discussion! ...

[/rant]

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Now that you've got that off your chest, you might look again, and notice I'm not talking about what you think I'm talking about.

Have a nice day, greyrat.

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Saintonge

quote:

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Originally posted by Saintonge:
Now that you've got that off your chest, you might look again, and notice I'm not talking about what you think I'm talking about.
Have a nice day, greyrat.

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So sorry, but I believe if that were true, I would have gotten at least five paragraphs back.

BTW, this was not directed at you, but quite indiscriminately at the entire thread. I'm glad to see that you had the wherewithal to respond, especially at the bottom of the deep, dark, smelly pit this thread has become

Peace

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Saintonge wrote:
Somehow, I don't see how the system was cohesive when, allegedly, fetuses were not human in law buy aborting them was a crime.

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Believing something that's contrary to verifiable fact is, of course, a person's right.� People can believe whatever they want to.� But this puts things into the realm of faith/religion, and such matters cannot be dictated by law.� The First Amendment is the supreme law of the land, and it says otherwise.� If someone tries to repeal the First Amendment, I will fight them with everything I've got.

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And there wouldn't be a "Right to Life" movement if there wasn't a "Right to Choose" movement intent on making sure that the normal political process can't operate.

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greyrat (who muffed his rant tag, as I just noticed when I looked at the page source)) wrote:
Right to life...right to choose...divorce is evil...God you guys are narrowing displaying your incredibly narrow views even while you're expanding the discussion!

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I've got an idea for you: Why don't we take everyone who is from a "broken" home (a stupid label to begin with) and kill them all?

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Taking you seriously for a minute, a short answer:� Because they're the innocent parties, or at least they started out that way.� I've proposed removing some of the more damaging aspects of the current system, which would have the side effect of making divorce less attractive even if it is no less available.� There are two ways to avoid messing up a kid in a bad situation:� don't create the bad situation, or don't put the kid into it.� Either one will do.� If people's incentives tend to make the choices that create "broken homes" unattractive, we're very likely to have fewer broken homes, no?� Please tell me where this necessarily involves a Final Solution.

From T0:

quote:

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If you were making "A Modest Proposal", I think you failed the subtlety test.

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No, subtlety was far from my plan. See rant tag.

Also from T0:

quote:

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...There are two ways to avoid messing up a kid in a bad situation: don't create the bad situation, or don't put the kid into it. Either one will do. If people's incentives tend to make the choices that create "broken homes" unattractive, we're very likely to have fewer broken homes, no? Please tell me where this necessarily involves a Final Solution.

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If by final solution we say breaking up the household (instead of frying them as I ranted about), simple--

The kid is already in a bad situation. His alcoholic dad beats him and his mom. His mom has a series of affairs simply to know that she matters to somebody (please leave the moral issues of the affairs aside for just a moment). The kid is regularly sodomized by his older brother because the brother learned that was the way to dominate underlings at school (another discussion to leave aside for a moment). The kid is on drugs most of the time to stay numbed out of the situation.

Should we keep this family together?

Do you have a crystal ball to predict how a particular relationship will develop?

BTW the situation described above is not outrageous. It's a blend of just two people I know...and I left out some stuff.

And as an aside, what if I tell you that, broken home or not, the kid grows up to be a talented, capable, well adjusted member of the planet; with a loving spouse, happy kids, a love of life and the desire to make the world a better place for as many people as he can?

Danger. This tread no longer appears to be behaving. Or maybe it just my crappy typing (and OS)