Should men be allowed to have a "legal abortion"?

metrovelvet

From what I can see its not too hard for men to do this anyway, so what you are talking about is removing the legal risk, however small or big it may be?

So what happens to those who would do this without legally formalising it? ...They could swan back in at anytime and claim rights to the child?

What I am talking about with an 'opt in clause' for dads as an option is not a case of the courts making them fathers, after all when women choose not to abort or give their child up they are essentially opting in, no court is making them be a mother except by a defacto assumption of full custody, so that they choose to be a father, they legally commit to time and financial support for their children, which if they fail to live up to, rights can be revoked and perhaps some kind of consequence, perhaps financial [if only because I cant think of another one at the moment] would follow.

SugarHigh

metrovelvet wrote: »

From what I can see its not too hard for men to do this anyway, so what you are talking about is removing the legal risk, however small or big it may be?

yup

So what happens to those who would do this without legally formalising it? ...They could swan back in at anytime and claim rights to the child?

They'd be in the same situation as someone who did it today. So yes they could do that which is a shame but it isn't really connected to whether this law should be brought in or not. Someone who is capable of doing that has obviously figured out how to get around the legal system.

What I am talking about with an 'opt in clause' for dads as an option is not a case of the courts making them fathers, after all when women choose not to abort or give their child up they are essentially opting in, no court is making them be a mother except by a defacto assumption of full custody, so that they choose to be a father, they legally commit to time and financial support for their children, which if they fail to live up to, rights can be revoked and perhaps some kind of consequence, perhaps financial [if only because I cant think of another one at the moment] would follow.

Yes I agree with this it. If you don't give up your rights to your child then you have to carry out your responsibilities regarding time and money.

metrovelvet

I don't know.

I get the idea behind it, I get why people support it too.

But to me the litmus test of what kind of human being you are is how you treat your offpring, so if we as a society elect legislators who would enact the ability to legally abandon your children without great sacrifice, when you are not the custodial parent and have minimal obligations to start with, is not the kind of society I would be proud to live in.

Count Duckula

metrovelvet wrote: »

I don't know.

I get the idea behind it, I get why people support it too.

But to me the litmus test of what kind of human being you are is how you treat your offpring, so if we as a society elect legislators who would enact the ability to legally abandon your children without great sacrifice, when you are not the custodial parent and have minimal obligations to start with, is not the kind of society I would be proud to live in.

But we already have a society like that, as mothers can put their children up for adoption and into state care at any point.

SugarHigh

metrovelvet wrote: »

I don't know.

I get the idea behind it, I get why people support it too.

But to me the litmus test of what kind of human being you are is how you treat your offpring, so if we as a society elect legislators who would enact the ability to legally abandon your children without great sacrifice, when you are not the custodial parent and have minimal obligations to start with, is not the kind of society I would be proud to live in.

But isn't that exactly the type of society we live in for women? If th couple aren't married the mother could even give the child up for adoption without the fathers permissions AFAIK. The mother can decide to give up her guardianship(through adoption) but I don't think the father can make that choice for himself it needs to be removed from him. If a court decides to remove guardianship from the father it can but he can't just ask for it, he would need to do something wrong first.

If a parent wants to give up their child I don't think it's good for either of them to refuse. Being raised by someone who will probably end up despising you isn't going to be positive.

skregs

I think everyone is missing the point that abortion is wrong and is illegal for a reason.

metrovelvet

SugarHigh wrote: »

But isn't that exactly the type of society we live in for women? If th couple aren't married the mother could even give the child up for adoption without the fathers permissions AFAIK. The mother can decide to give up her guardianship(through adoption) but I don't think the father can make that choice for himself it needs to be removed from him. If a court decides to remove guardianship from the father it can but he can't just ask for it, he would need to do something wrong first.

If a parent wants to give up their child I don't think it's good for either of them to refuse. Being raised by someone who will probably end up despising you isn't going to be positive.

Mothers also have 100% enforced custody if they dont give the child up for adoption. Mothers also carry out the risks and the costs of the pregnancy financially, psychologically, publically, professionally,physically, etc.

Women cant give up a child straight off the bat. Her name still HAS to go on a birthcert, she still HAS to show up at the hospital n the day the child is born and she also HAS to take care of the child for a certain amount of time before adoptive parents take the child.

So we are nowhere starting out equal. The mothers have enforced full care of the child, the fathers do not.

If the dads had forced 100 custody, I might have some sympathy. But they don't. Maintenance in this country is a joke anyway.

Seriously, they should be able to legally abandon their kids, kids they are not even required to take care of in the first place.:rolleyes:

The Corinthian

The present situation is that both men and women have a choice to run the risk of an unplanned pregnancy if they have sex.

No matter what a woman chooses (abortion, adoption or keeping the child) there is a price she will have to pay, be it financial, emotional, social or otherwise. As such it is also appropriate that a man share the consequences of that unplanned pregnancy.

However, and this is where people who seem to be focusing on abortion seem to forget, is that men presently are not forced to suffer the consequences of unplanned pregnancy, but of the woman's choice that follows it - a man is not paying maintenance, etc. because he got a woman pregnant, he's paying because she chose to keep and raise the child.

It seems strange that no one has picked up on this - after all, a man is not liable to pay maintenance, etc. just because he gets a woman pregnant. That legal liability exists only if she chooses to keep the child. He's not even theoretically legally liable for anything until after the birth.

So it has absolutely nothing to do with a woman's right to her body, unless you want to talk about the opposite case of forcing a woman to go to term, which is not what this thread is about.

A woman, on the other hand is not forced to keep and raise the child - that's complete nonsense. Keeping a child is a conscious and unilateral decision by the woman in question which effects the future of not only the child, but of the man and the families associated with them. Bizarrely, the child's interests are not even paramount in this decision - only the mother's; she could be a junkie and she would still get to make the choice to keep it, or conversely be the best person to raise the child and choose not to. So the present situation has little to do with the child either.

As such, it would seem appropriate and just that a man suffer the consequences of the pregnancy - a simple manner of doing so, for example, would be to impose a cost and share liability for damages in the event of medical complications.

However, if he chooses not to be a father, then it should be treated in the same way as if the child had been adopted - no rights whatsoever, for ever, but also no legal responsibilities either. It would also be appropriate that a man be forced to make such a decision early on (as long as it is shown that he has been consulted).

And if he does choose to be a father, he should be given equal rights to the mother - after all, he's made his commitment clear - although this to is a scenario also not covered by the thread topic.

flowerchild

Count Duckula wrote: »

Was the son aware of who his father was then? I can't imagine the devastation of not having a father drove him to suicide - there are plenty of children raised in single parents families that aren't psychologically scarred by a lack of a parent.

But if he KNEW who the father was, then was was irresponsible parenting by the mother. Emotional blackmail. She knew her former lover wasn't going to get involved with the child and didn't want to, but at the risk of devastating that child through his ignoring if it, she told the son so as to put pressure on the father.

He knew who his father was. It was not just the mother's decision. The father's family knew and were also devastated by what happened. The father's brother and father were in contact with the child/teenager but my friend as the father still refused to be involved. And the child felt very rejected.

Count Duckula wrote: »

You think so? It seems to me that abortion tends to be a moral thing; you either support it or you don't. In that way, if a woman isn't ready for a child or indeed knows she never wants one, whether the father is present or not she's not going to be putting her body through trauma when she doesn't want to. The father's place in her life will not affect how she decides when it comes to the impact on her own life and body, nor should it.

Do I think that the presence or absence of a father will impact on a decision to have a baby or an abortion? Absolutely.

Otis Driftwood wrote: »

Ive known and know alot of people that were abandoned by a parent and they turned out to be successful and well adjusted adults so for you trying to paint that guy as the sole contributing factor to that poor young mans suicide is nothing short of disgusting.

My friend thought he was to blame for rejecting his son. He then went and killed himself. True story.

Up de Barrs

skregs wrote: »

I think everyone is missing the point that abortion is wrong and is illegal for a reason.

I think most people on this forum wouldn't agree with you. Ideally both partners would make the decision together but at the end of the day most men will accept that it is a woman's right to choose.

metrovelvet

^ That is a terrible story flowerchild.

Without knowing the ins and outs of it and just getting superficial knowlege here, yes children learn very young to blame themselves for these things.

However, I suspect most single mothers are aware and sensitive to this, and take strides to counteract the child blaming themselves with extra investments into ego development and self esteem building, with hope and also with learning to forgive the parent who betrayed them. Whatever way people want to tinker with this intellectually about rights and philosophies, the child FEELS the abandonment regardless.

It would be nice if you could say more because I find it hard to believe that this suicide rests entirely on the father's rejection, although you do see it commonly in addictions- a kind of chronic suicide- where as teenagers and adults try to drown and suffocate the big holes in their hearts.

The Corinthian

flowerchild wrote: »

He knew who his father was. It was not just the mother's decision. The father's family knew and were also devastated by what happened. The father's brother and father were in contact with the child/teenager but my friend as the father still refused to be involved. And the child felt very rejected.

Touching, but I'm not sure what it has to do with the topic at hand. Parental rejection will take place regardless of whether there is 'male abortion' or whatever you want to call it or not. It's simply that we live in a society where parental rejection by one parent is vilified and the other we are told we should have sympathy for.

I knew a girl in college who was adopted and sought out her birth mother. She wrote to her and in the reply she was politely but sternly told not to contact her again. She suffered from depression following this.

True story also, but equally irrelevant to the topic.

Up de Barrs wrote: »

Ideally both partners would make the decision together but at the end of the day most men will accept that it is a woman's right to choose.

Men don't really have a choice but to accept this and have been conditioned to accept it without question - not exactly the same thing as actually accepting it.

After all, think about it; you may accept that it is a woman's right to choose to abort or not. You may accept that it is a woman's right to put the child up for adoption or not. You may accept that it is a woman's right to keep and raise a child or not. But does it make sense that you should also pay for that her right to choose?

metrovelvet

Someone is always going to pay for it eventually.

If fathers don't contribute it would mean increased levels of poverty, which leads to more crime, which we all pay for in terms of a legal system, a police force, prisons, and not to mention personal cost of being robbed or mugged or what have you.

Or it could mean more children in state care, which is also costs money to the tax payer and the general population.

And of course a bigger welfare bill, which again, the tax payer covers.

So I guess some people would rather have the general population pitch in, instead of the men who created these children, and some people would rather take the risk of increased levels of crime and poverty, as well as more children as wards of the state, to give a man the right not to pay for his kids.

The Corinthian

Someone should pay - the person who made the choice. Otherwise it sounds like they want to have 100% of the choice but others to help them pay for the consequences of those choices.

If one wants the unilateral right to make a choice, they should pay for it themselves. Or make a different one. One should not expect society and everyone else who had no part in that choice to help foot the bill for them.

metrovelvet

Society will pay anyway. State care costs money. Wards of the state costs money. Crime costs money.

What people are talking about here is to go back to the days when illegitamacy was still a status and kids born out of wedlock got no protection whatsoever and were sent to orphanages, the humaneless Irish theocracy, and men who were not married were not accountable to the children they created.

Not a world I want to live in.

The Corinthian

Society already pays. What you are suggesting is that it's OK for society to pay for a woman's choice, but not for a man's. Or that if society should not pay at all, that a man should pay for her choice instead.

Either way it still comes down to making others pay for a woman's choices.

And hiding behind children to legitimize such inequity is disingenuous - as I have already pointed out, it has nothing to do with what is best for the child. If it were, there are many mothers who would not be legally allowed to keep their children and others forced to do so - for the best interests of the child.

metrovelvet

What? That doesnt even make sense it is so divorced from reality.

Everyone is paying for kids they didnt choose to have. ITs called education, including third level.

All the people who didnt vote for Obama are still paying taxes.

Its simple. Keep it in your pants. When you dont you choose to take the risk, and you choose to take the risk that the choice will be the woman's.

And dont worry when dna testing while pregnant becomes accepted by the circuit courts, those costs will be shared too.

And lets not forget that the next several generations of Ireland's children will be paying for mortgages they had no choice in and will have nothing to show for them.

The Corinthian

metrovelvet wrote: »

What? That doesnt even make sense it is so divorced from reality.

If it doesn't make sense to you, you'll have to explain why rather than using blanket dismissal tactics.

Everyone is paying for kids they didnt choose to have. ITs called education, including third level.

Not everyone. I think you'll find that there are lot of people on social welfare who are being paid for their kids, not the other way around.

Its simple. Keep it in your pants. When you dont you choose to take the risk, and you choose to take the risk that the choice will be the woman's.

Let me get this straight - so if a man wants to avoid the long term social and financial (potential, depending upon what the woman chooses) consequences of an unplanned pregnancy, he should keep it in his pants. If a woman wants to do the same, then there's no problem as she can choose whether to keep a child or not, regardless of the father's wishes or the best interests of that child, so she can be as sexually irresponsible as her libido allows. Is this what you are suggesting?

And dont worry when dna testing while pregnant becomes accepted by the circuit courts, those costs will be shared too.

Irrelevant. The point I made was to underline how the financial liability has nothing to do with an unplanned pregnancy - even if a DNA test was taken and returned positive during pregnancy, a man is still not legally liable until after birth.

And lets not forget that the next several generations of Ireland's children will be paying for mortgages they had no choice in and will have nothing to show for them.

I'd be more concerned about the children who will be paying for their single parents because the LPA ended when they reached adulthood.

K-9

The Corinthian wrote: »

And hiding behind children to legitimize such inequity is disingenuous - as I have already pointed out, it has nothing to do with what is best for the child. If it were, there are many mothers who would not be legally allowed to keep their children and others forced to do so - for the best interests of the child.

Probably a fairer comparison is that there are plenty of fathers who shouldn't be allowed to have children and others forced to do so! It doesn't really have to be compared and contrasted to women as if it is some advantage they enjoy.

The Corinthian

K-9 wrote: »

Probably a fairer comparison is that there are plenty of fathers who shouldn't be allowed to have children and others forced to do so! It doesn't really have to be compared and contrasted to women as if it is some advantage they enjoy.

Not really the point I was making. This inequity between the genders is often defended as being for the good of the children. The reality is that it has nothing to do with the good of the children, it's simply a choice made by a woman in her interests and or wishes - the good of the children may be a consideration, but often it is not. Legally, the good of the children doesn't even register outside of the most extreme of cases.

Thus claiming that it is for the good of the children is frankly a disingenuous argument.

CoolGirl101

I think it should be legally a mutual decision, it is funny how if a underage man has sex with an overage woman, he is still blamed, yet when it comes to something like terminating life, women can manage all on their own!

Women's rights have gone way too far, and men need to have as much say as we do!

K-9

The Corinthian wrote: »

Not really the point I was making. This inequity between the genders is often defended as being for the good of the children. The reality is that it has nothing to do with the good of the children, it's simply a choice made by a woman in her interests and or wishes - the good of the children may be a consideration, but often it is not. Legally, the good of the children doesn't even register outside of the most extreme of cases.

Thus claiming that it is for the good of the children is frankly a disingenuous argument.

Unless we set up some body to officiate on whether a woman aborting or putting a child up for adoption, is in the best interest of the child, parents decide and if it's a single parent family, the mother decides. Can't see that happening any time soon!

I don't think abortion or adoption are fair comparisons to paternal abdication. With abortion well, the child isn't born and with adoption, a couple or single person takes on all responsibilities willingly and the mother wants to give up the child.

With paternal abdication the child would still exist and he isn't really adopting the child.

metrovelvet

^ With one exception. The bio father can adbicate all rights and responsibilities if another man adopts his child.

The Corinthian

K-9 wrote: »

Unless we set up some body to officiate on whether a woman aborting or putting a child up for adoption, is in the best interest of the child, parents decide and if it's a single parent family, the mother decides. Can't see that happening any time soon!

Why not? Personally I think that there are plenty of cases where it is not in the child's best interests to stay with the mother, for example. It may be better off in the custody of the father or with adoptive parents. There appears to be practically no protection for children from this, which is why I reject the argument that claims that it is done in their name.

The World is full of people who are not psychologically equipped to be parents - recently I heard of one who's reason for having a child was that she wanted someone who would love her. FFS!

I don't think abortion or adoption are fair comparisons to paternal abdication. With abortion well, the child isn't born and with adoption, a couple or single person takes on all responsibilities willingly and the mother wants to give up the child.

All I have suggested is exactly the same as your description of adoption - where one person (the mother) takes on all responsibilities willingly.

metrovelvet wrote: »

^ With one exception. The bio father can adbicate all rights and responsibilities if another man adopts his child.

You're confusing abdication with usurpation.

metrovelvet

TC,

I am not confusing anything. A bio dad can abdicate his paternal rights and obligations if another man adopts his child.

A mother can abdicate hers if she lets someone adopt her children too.

I think you are confused yourself.

The Corinthian

Not at all confused.

Abdication is a voluntary action - one chooses it. If involuntary then it is always qualified by being referred to as "forced". Usurpation is always forced.

Unless a father a guardian, then any adoption of by another man does not require his consent - it is involuntary by nature. He may be happy that it has happened or not; either way it's still involuntary and thus a usurpation.

I suggest you look up the terms in a dictionary for further clarification.

metrovelvet

The vast majority of them are guardians and the ones who never applied for it abdicated their rights anyhow, so no I dont need a dictionary and I dont need snide comments either.

Clearly, you dont want to discuss things civilisedly or to garner some sort of understanding on these complex areas, but some sort of victory in an argument and to me that is not always that interesting.

The subject at hand is interesting and worthy of exploration and consideration of several perspectives but this can't happen if you are going to hang onto erroneously representing things as fact which are simply not true. It will only lead to confusion and ultimately a fictitious discussion.

The Corinthian

metrovelvet wrote: »

The vast majority of them are guardians and the ones who never applied for it abdicated their rights anyhow, so no I dont need a dictionary and I dont need snide comments either.

Clearly, you dont want to discuss things civilisedly or to garner some sort of understanding on these complex areas, but some sort of victory in an argument and to me that is not always that interesting.

I don't think you're in a position to accuse someone of being 'confused' and then get upset about 'snide comments' TBH.

The subject at hand is interesting and worthy of exploration and consideration of several perspectives but this can't happen if you are going to hang onto erroneously representing things as fact which are simply not true. It will only lead to confusion and ultimately a fictitious discussion.

Without guardianship, it is not abdication, but usurpation.

If you are discussing men who do not want to be fathers (hint: the thread topic) then of course they will naturally not seek guardianship (why would they?) and as I already said "he may be happy that it has happened or not; either way it's still involuntary".

So if there is a need "to hang onto erroneously representing things as fact which are simply not true", I would suggest it is fulled by a need to put culpability on men, no matter what.

Otis Driftwood

Folks can we keep to the topic at hand without the sniping please.

Cheers,
OD.

K-9

The Corinthian wrote: »

Why not? Personally I think that there are plenty of cases where it is not in the child's best interests to stay with the mother, for example. It may be better off in the custody of the father or with adoptive parents. There appears to be practically no protection for children from this, which is why I reject the argument that claims that it is done in their name.

The World is full of people who are not psychologically equipped to be parents - recently I heard of one who's reason for having a child was that she wanted someone who would love her. FFS!

All I have suggested is exactly the same as your description of adoption - where one person (the mother) takes on all responsibilities willingly.

You're confusing abdication with usurpation.

I'd be all for a body that would vet parents, preferably before sex!
Considering the amount of checks on adoptive parents I'd be all for it. Do you think it could happen here or is it just some theoretical body?

I can tell of plenty of cases of parents wanting children for stupid reasons but most of it is anecdotal, like your story above.

The mother by default accepts responsibility willingly by choosing bot to abort or adopt. I wonder would a father abdicating result in a higher abortion rate?

Are there any countries that have a system like this?