My question to pro-choice supporters

[paulpablo]

Yes I fully support the idea that a man should be able to opt out of parenthood within whatever same time frame a woman is allowed to opt for an abortion.

What if he does that to 15 or 20 women? 100 women? If he has no culpability at all to be responsible for the children he creates, then what's to stop him from running around and fulfilling his biological desire to maximize his reproductive opportunities?

Women are biologically inclined to want to have babies (at least I am once a month when I ovulate), and the big thing that prevents me from having a dozen babies is the time and money I'm not willing to freely invest in them. Women are flooded with hormones to make them bond with the growing fetuses in their wombs, so once they find out they're pregnant, they're already under the influence of some powerful hormones biologically designed to sabotage what may have been their previous desire to remain childless. -Adding to that, women do not get unlimited abortions without impacting their future fertility and chance of successfully carrying a baby to term when they're ready to have one. We don't just get to make 100 babies and terminate them all and expect that our bodies will recover each and every time. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/articl...ncies.html

Men are affected by no such hormonal change and their biological drive to reproduce will no longer be tempered by a dose of reality by having to be responsible for the lives they create.

The first question you're asking is whats stopping a man running around fulfilling his biological desire to maximize his reproductive opportunities.

The answer is women.  They can choose to say no to sex, choose to use many forms of contraception or choose to make the man wear contraception.

Although I do agree with you that in the situation where a man can opt out of parenthood the same as a woman can it would require women to be more careful about sex.  Because you're right that a woman can't really repeatedly go on having an abortions so a woman is more limited to her breeding capabilities.
I agree that it would be an unequal amount of care, the woman would have to be more careful than the man because there would be more at stake for the woman.

That might not be a bad thing for society, sexual selection acts as a big motivator for mens behavior, if women are picking out reliable, stable men to have sex with then that behavior is promoted in society.

 These are my first thoughts, but its a complex issue and I could be totally wrong on the matter, I haven't voted in the poll yet.

[mlmooney89]

I believe the whole "child support" thing came about because of the primitive 50's thinking that women should stay home, raise the kids, and not work.

With modern feminism, the goddamn woman can take care of herself and the child without any assistance from the man.

It's not all black and white. What if the parents planned the baby together and she was a stay at home mom to take care of it. Now she is out of the work force for years and suddenly the father decides he wants a divorce and wants the mom to have custody. That's what happened to my best friend. She quit her job at his insistence and took care of their son. Later it's found out the guy was cheating and he ended up leaving my friend. The friend had to pick up and move back across the country to live with her parents until she could get her feet on the ground. Luckily her parents helped her a lot. What if she hadn't had them to help? Child support is needed and not just to let women be lazy. Plus taking care of a child by yourself is a lot harder than taking care of one with help. If the guy said he would help at the time of pregnancy he should pay child support. It's not outdated.

The only problem here is that you've removed all accountability for the man. Now he can go and impregnate a bunch of women and leave them holding the bag. I think we should be putting our efforts into creating male birth control rather than giving them a convenient out when they screw up and knock some chick up. There are men (I've uh... "met" many of them personally), who would love to germinate the female population with as much seed as they could if they could just opt out of the whole payment and responsibility thing.

You are acting like women just fall over in bed and open their legs. As long as it isn't rape then the women are just as much to blame for all those pregnancies as he is. A women can easily protect herself from just being seeded by saying no to a man that refuses to wear a condom.

As a child forced to grow up in a single parent household without ever knowing a father and desperately wanting one, and having to endure extreme poverty as a result, that anyone could possibly think it's even remotely okay not to hold a biological father accountable for anything is absolutely vomit-inducing. How is there zero empathy or thought being put into this in the first few posts here?

Mmmm k yeah my dad knocked my mom up, shot gun wedding, was married for two years, and then left us and married another women. The first few years of my life were in a mobile home in the backwoods of Georgia. My mom raised herself in the military as a single mom (very hard because the military makes you make plans to give up your child if you are sent anywhere the kid can't go) Instead of saying he would take me he let her risk losing me to her parents. Luckily her first solo station was Germany and I could go with. We moved across the world and the next time I was able to see my father was for his funeral. If he didn't want me so be it, I won't sit here and feel like I am at fault here. My mom wanted me enough to not abort me and that's enough for me. She wasn't around much because of how hard she had to work but I know she did everything for us kids (she ended up remarrying and I now have two sisters) Just because you are given a shitty hand doesn't mean the rest of the country and logic should suffer for it. If the mom can decide to abort then the father should be able to give up the kid. Better off without the asshole dad than living with someone that resents you I say.

Yes I fully support the idea that a man should be able to opt out of parenthood within whatever same time frame a woman is allowed to opt for an abortion.

What if he does that to 15 or 20 women? 100 women? If he has no culpability at all to be responsible for the children he creates, then what's to stop him from running around and fulfilling his biological desire to maximize his reproductive opportunities?

Women are biologically inclined to want to have babies (at least I am once a month when I ovulate), and the big thing that prevents me from having a dozen babies is the time and money I'm not willing to freely invest in them. Women are flooded with hormones to make them bond with the growing fetuses in their wombs, so once they find out they're pregnant, they're already under the influence of some powerful hormones biologically designed to sabotage what may have been their previous desire to remain childless. -Adding to that, women do not get unlimited abortions without impacting their future fertility and chance of successfully carrying a baby to term when they're ready to have one. We don't just get to make 100 babies and terminate them all and expect that our bodies will recover each and every time. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/articl...ncies.html

Men are affected by no such hormonal change and their biological drive to reproduce will no longer be tempered by a dose of reality by having to be responsible for the lives they create.


From the King and I:

A girl must be like a blossom
With honey for just one man.
A man must be like honey bee
And gather all he can.
To fly from blossom to blossom
A honey bee must be free,
But blossom must not ever fly
From bee to bee to bee.

---

Hmmmm, after thought. Who pays for the kids of the women who don't happen to be higher powered CEO's who can afford nannies and house keepers? If the mother gets knocked up by 5 different guys, and none of them are paying for their children or helping her in anyway, it seems to me that the bill is getting footed by the tax payers, because right or wrong, we're not going to let the children suffer from the selfish idiocy of their parents.

Again these comments are acting like women don't have rights, can't say no to unprotected sex, and are just mind controlled baby makers. Hormones will NOT force women to have children.

Human biology makes pregnancy an inequitable situation for both sexes. Guys don't get fair choices. Too fucking Bad! Neither do the gals. Grow up.

Lets say they both want the child, does the woman get the choice of having the man being pregnant? Nope. Does the woman get to scream That's Not Fair! Nope. 

If he does not want to child and she does, he still has an equal responsibility for that life. If he want's to opt out he can, but that should come with a price. 

Guys, if you don't ever want to be in that situation, then you know what to do. Keep it wrapped, get cut, don't partake or butt fuck. I guess you could start having sex outside the species.

Seriously, I've tried to give all the pain and sickness that is coming with this pregnancy to my husband. I have on more than one occasion said it wasn't fair. lol Then again I said the same thing when I used to get cramps from my period. Man, guys have it easy... Although I have to give my guy kudos cause he does a lot to make up for it. When I don't feel well he honestly seems upset that he can't fix it for me and he is always cleaning and cooking so I don't have to. Still, it would be nice to be like ya know what? This baby is making me sick, you carry it for awhile.

[Mr.Obvious]

Bolded

You mean like... a condom?

Condoms don't work 100% of the time. There are a lot of disproportionate and bloated confidence-to-cock-size ratios out there causing men to buy condoms that are a little too big "for comfort."

With consideration to men who would deliberatley impregnate women for no other reason then that they want to and can, and dumping reliable BC and child rearing entirely on the woman seems like a huge step backwards in our cultural advancement.

Yeah, condoms don't work 100% of the time. Nor do female condoms, the pill, IUD, morning after pill, ... (And if you believe our Christian friends, even abstinence isn't fool-proof 100% of the time.) And on that regard; I think I'm on board with you: Better contraception with higher-succesrate is not something I'm advocating against.

But I don't see how creating anything but a 'better condom' would hinder 'deliberate impregnations', when it comes to male contraception.
I mean, the good thing about condoms, male and female, (apart from protecting you from STD's)  is that there is no dispute on wether or not you're wearing them. Both parties know. If you create the 'male pill', wouldn't that give those 'deliberate impregnators' an excuse; 'Don't worry baby, i'm on the pill'? I'm not saying most would take the guy's word on that. But it'll be more than when the product doesn't begin to start with.

That being said: I'm with you. I'd prefer to have the option, at least. If for instance someone is in a safe monoguous relationship and is not feeling ready to have a child and fears the other person might be trying to get pregnant or getting her pregnant, it's better to have your own control on your end of the situation.

But aside from that, even if you were to pump a trillion dollars into contraception research, I pretty much guarantee you, there will, along the way, allways be accidents and mishaps. Even if you get your 99% effective contraception up to 99.99% effectiveness. In regards to that, the discussion about creating a, on a societal level, much-cheaper* fail-safe, equal for both sexes, on the face of it seems quite reasonable. Especially since one does not exclude, nor even influence, the other.

(* 'Cheaper' as in less tax-payers money going into research and development. The ramifications of such a change on the existing system notwithstanding. As such a change could effect birth-rates and thus, in the future,  the entire economy. As well as it could, for example, in the future create more need for an extra funding to single parents or something like that, using tax-payers money. Or in other unforseen ways.)

[brewer]

Hey guys, install one of these and stop your whinin:

[Astonished]

I know our conversations have had their ups and downs, but, with as little offense as possible, FUCK YOU. Not a day goes by I don't wish she had. But after all that suffering, I'll be damned if it was all for nothing. Life is not a gift and I'm not one bit grateful for it. It's my sense of justice keeping me from letting those who spent my entire childhood trying to destroy me win. Things aren't a whole lot better now than back then except that I'm dependent only on myself for sustenance. But nothing's worse than being told that god is a father, or is the father I should want or need. Telling them that he's 32 years late on child support is getting old.

I understand.  However, if a mother can opt out unilaterally but a father can't, that's inequality plain and simple.  I'm sorry you had a shitty dad who wasn't a dad and that left you impoverished.  Take it up with your mother, or the state that failed to help her?  Your angsty feelers mean very little compared to the interest of literally every guy everywhere who didn't want and couldn't afford a kid but couldn't convince his super jesusy girlfriend to have an abortion - as an example.

Fuck you, you understand. Just stop. Yes, both parents are goddamned fucking retards if they go about sex stupidly, but the way society works, a guy can feel less pressure about that because he knows he can just walk away and not even have his name appear on a birth certificate. That goddamn bullshit needs to stop.

[Amarok]

Nope the two scenarios are not equal. Abortion is not equal to child support

---

Nope the two scenarios are not equal. Abortion is not equal to child support

As for woman's responsibility men can do 100 things to prevent pregnancy why the heck should it be solely her responsibility . And as Astonished pointed out our society makes it far easier for the man too walk away.

---

I understand.  However, if a mother can opt out unilaterally but a father can't, that's inequality plain and simple.  I'm sorry you had a shitty dad who wasn't a dad and that left you impoverished.  Take it up with your mother, or the state that failed to help her?  Your angsty feelers mean very little compared to the interest of literally every guy everywhere who didn't want and couldn't afford a kid but couldn't convince his super jesusy girlfriend to have an abortion - as an example.

Fuck you, you understand. Just stop. Yes, both parents are goddamned fucking retards if they go about sex stupidly, but the way society works, a guy can feel less pressure about that because he knows he can just walk away and not even have his name appear on a birth certificate. That goddamn bullshit needs to stop.

100% with you here

[The Industrial Atheist]

That's what my dad did, but he didn't sign a legal document, he joined the military and then went to another state. (The military part sounds weird, I know, but apparently back then they didn't go after you if you were in the military).

I would use a condom every time and maybe have a dose of the morning after pill handy in case I was a dumbass and didn't push the air out the condom before using it.

[Seraphina]

"My body, my choice."

Okay, it does makes sense. You don't want others telling you what to do with your body, that's fine, you know? A unilateral power over whether a baby lives or dies is with it's mother because it's her body and it's her choice, which is fine, but what happens when a woman gets pregnant and the man she had sex with does not want to keep it but she does? 

I mean, obviously, you can't force an abortion, so what do you do for the guy? So my position is that the guy should be able to opt out of parenthood in that situation, so like, no parental obligations whatsoever, it'd be like it isn't even his kid. 
Anyway, that's my position, I think that's fair to everyone involved but I was wondering what pro-choice supportive folks think about it. 

Are you supportive or not supportive of it, why?

Bold is mine-
That's not even a theoretical scenario, some guys already do that after the baby comes along. Instead of thinking ahead and putting on a condom, they just walk away from their progeny, sadly.

-Teresa

---

I believe the whole "child support" thing came about because of the primitive 50's thinking that women should stay home, raise the kids, and not work.

With modern feminism, the goddamn woman can take care of herself and the child without any assistance from the man.

Ay! It's called child support, not "goddamn woman" support...sheesh. If you can't feed them, don't breed them.

-Teresa

[The Grand Nudger]

I somehow doubt that you have clarity of thought on this issue, Astonished.  

In any case, no Tiz - they aren't the same, but since no one is suggesting..as far as I can tell, that a man should be able to force some girl to have an abortion..I don't know why that matters?  Both parents can do 100 things to prevent pregnancy, but that's the sort of small minded "you should have done this or that" thinking that leads inexorably to misery and we don't accept it as a rationale for preventing women from having abortions.  We do not, as a society, feel that we can force a person to become a parent..unless that person is swinging richard, apparently. People could have done this or that, sure, but they didn't and don't...so now what?  

Well, a female can abort, and both parents can put a child up for adoption.  Notice that one of these two things doesn't require the fathers consent?  If a male had some means available to him to opt out, and indicated a desire to do so...that probably ought to factor into whether or not the female carries the child to term...don't you think?  I mean, more power to her if she wants to have the kid and raise it anyway, but that's on her.  Society doesn't make it easy, at all, for either parent to walk away.  I don't know why either of you thinks it does?  People just do it anyway...that's how little they wanted the child, or how incapable they are of supporting a child.  

Trouble is, only one party in this little drama can do so legally, or unilaterally. I can't help but think that people might make smarter reproductive choices (you know..those 100 things?) if the system wasn't so punitive, and the punitive nature of the system probably has alot to do with why there's so much damned misery about it. We shame the sluts who get abortions..and we shame the deadbroke dads. We tell them both that they "should have thought about that". - and now, by god, we'll make them pay.

Maybe we ought to accept both of them at their word. They do not want or are not fit to raise a child - so now what.

[Edwardo Piet]

I am a huge supporter of pro-choice but only kind of indirectly because it's the mother's body. The more detailed reason for me is that the only alternative is the mother being forced to have a baby against her will... and going against someone's will (or choice) with regards to their own body causes them a great deal more distress than it would cause a fetus.

There are exceptions. I'd be pro-life in situations where the baby is like 8 or 9 months old and the mother decides she wants to abort that late just because she has decided she doesn't want a baby after all. But I'm pretty sure abortions that late are illegal anyway.

If there's a complication that would make having the baby a danger to the mother I'm still pro-choice in that case, of course. In fact I'd be pro-abortion even if the mother preferred to risk her own life having the baby, I think.

It's always just about suffering or distress, ultimately. And in 99% of cases that makes me pro-choice.