Reply #131: You missed the point. [View All]

[Tansy_Gold]

Oftentimes women would just as soon NOT HAVE SEX because they don't want babies. Unfortunately, there are many circumstances under which women do not have that choice: they are economically dependent on the man who is pressuring them to have sex is the most common. Or they are underage and don't really understand the consequences.

This discussion, however, is about whether or not men should have the right to prevent a woman they've gotten pregnant from having an abortion and, tangentially, if they should be required to accept financial responsibility in the event she chooses not to abort.

The man has the opportunity to avoid responsibility by avoiding sex. If he doesn't want to pay child support, don't have sex. By engaging in sex, regardless what assurances the woman has given him regarding her fertility or lack thereof, he is accepting the risk for all the potential consequences -- that she will become pregnant, have an abortion against his will, and/or ask for child support.

Women who voluntarily engage in sex also assume the risks of pregnancy, but they have far less opportunity to escape the responsibility than men, and you would restrict them even further just so you could give the men even more rights, more protection, more freedom from responsibility.

The man's duty for child support is not to the woman -- it is to the child. While the woman can give up, hypothetically, her right to SEEK support, and even promise the man that she won't ask for it, he still owes a duty to the CHILD. He accepted that responsbility when he had sex with the woman, with a woman over whose body he should not have any control either to force her to abort or force her to carry to term.

Men can't have babies and men can't get abortions. they shouldn't have any say over the women who can and do.