If a guy gets a girl pregnant and he wants to keep the kid and she wants an abortion, what are his rights?

[imported_Baloo]

Boberfet, fathers are not stuck with whatever is initially set for child support - they can appeal at any time until the child is 18. Talk to a lawyer, they can advise on how to proceed to lower you child support payment.

 

[Locut0s]

The woman is the one who has to go through pregnancy and child birth and usually also ends up being the primary caregiver. She is the one who should decide. Having the father decide for the mother whether she will keep the child or not is not right, she should not have to go through child birth for ANY reason unless it's her decision. The man can always find someone else to have a child with.

 

[BoberFett]

Originally posted by: Baloo
Boberfet, fathers are not stuck with whatever is initially set for child support - they can appeal at any time until the child is 18. Talk to a lawyer, they can advise on how to proceed to lower you child support payment.

Apparently you missed that "ability to earn" issue. And while the mother has a small army of county attorneys, judges, family services offices and other assorted government working freely for her, the father who is being financially ass raped somehow has to come up with the cash to hire his own private attorney?

Unless you've been on the receiving end of a child support bill, you have NO idea what you're talking about.

 

[jagec]

Originally posted by: Garth

Originally posted by: jagec

Unfortunately, this discussion will go nowhere, since clearly we have some fundamental disagreements. You state those things as facts, when they are the very issues under contention.

No they aren't. These are well-established legal principles.

You say that as if legal principles are handed down by God. They are just as flawed as anything else; perhaps more so. Discussions about abortion wouldn't turn into flame wars if everyone agreed that the laws were perfect as they stand.

Originally posted by: Garth

Consenting to unprotected sex IS tantamount to consenting to the possibility of becoming pregnant, in much the same way that choosing to go skydiving is consenting to the possibility of dying.

False, and your attempt at analogy is a terrible one. For one, accepting the possibility of a certain outcome is not the same as consenting to the outcome. Every time you get behind the wheel you accept the possibility that you'll be hit by a reckless driver, but that doesn't mean you have no rights when such a person hits you.

Once again; I live in the real world, you live in the legal world. I'm sure that all of those rights of yours would be very useful to me if a reckless driver were to hit my vehicle and leave me dead in a pool of my own blood.
Besides, the reason why you have rights in such a situation is that someone else was negligent...if, instead of getting hit by someone else, I lost control and ran into a telephone pole, I think my rights would be somewhat abbreviated. And that's basically why abortion laws should be more lax in cases of rape, where the woman had little to do with the matter.

Originally posted by: Garth

It's a law of nature.

Pregnancy is not a "law of nature." Good grief. :roll:

It's not? Sex is a mechanism which is designed to set in motion the creation of a new creature. Sure, we like to mess with it with condoms, pills, and so on, but those remain the fundamentals. If you have unprotected sex, without all of the modern fanciness designed to shift the underlying biology, there is a very real chance of pregnancy. And all the laws in the world won't make this less of a fact.

Originally posted by: Garth

If I choose to set off fireworks on the 4th, I'm responsible for any fires that result, even if I never wanted anything more than a loud noise and pretty lights.

You are responsible for any violations you caused to the rights of others. Nothing about becoming pregnant violates anyone's rights but the mother's if the pregnancy is unwanted.

Your fundamental assumption is that the fetus has no rights at any point. We're not arguing about the current state of abortion laws; any fool can read those in a book.
Mind you, my views on the matter are similar to BD2003's...there is a difference between a 2-month old and an 8-month old fetus. I would ascribe them no human rights, and full human rights, respectively. I won't pretend to know exactly where the line should be drawn, but it seems logical to put it somewhere in the second trimester.

Originally posted by: Garth

You can't have all the rights without any responsibility.

There is nothing negligent about becoming pregnant. The mother owes no duty to the zygote for that reason.

Oh, I disagree. Taking no action to avoid an undesireable result is the definition of negligence. As for duty, I tend to subscribe to the idea that we're responsible for the results of our actions, if we undertook them having a full understanding of the consequences. Especially so when those consequences involve life or death in some way.

Originally posted by: Garth

I don't understand your second section, it seems to have no resemblence whatsoever to what I was talking about.
/edit: reread it a couple times. It's a poor example. A more realistic one would be inviting a mosquito into your house and expecting it not to bite you. It's in the nature of the beast.

It is my advice to you to bring your career in analogy construction to an rapid and abrupt halt. You are an obvious failure.
If we are to hold that fetuses are analogous to mosquitoes then you have automatically conceded the debate, because there are no laws against the killing of unwanted mosquitoes.

It's kind of hard to take your judgment on the quality of my analogies seriously, since you seem to misunderstand exactly what an analogy is. My example was simply stating that causality can't be denied by our mere wishes. There is no literal mosquito. I agree that it's an awkward analogy, but to be fair, so was yours.

 

[0roo0roo]

when males are given the ability to carry babys to term by medical science then maybe he'll have some say if he wants to keep it alive himself.

There are legal principles to support laws against that type of scenario, actually. Read up on "squatters rights." Basically, if a mother hasn't decided to terminate her pregnancy within a reasonable amount of time, then she sacrifices her right to terminate the pregnancy on demand. The fetus can be said to have earned "squatter's rights" by occupying her body with her full knowledge and therefore tacit consent on her part.

i guess we should not treat cancer or other deseases after a certain period of indecision too. squatters rights!

 

[voodoodrul]

At this point I can say one thing. I'm glad we all agree and have successfully resolved this issue for all parties. I have restored faith in the reasoning power of humanity. Lets all have tea.

/sarcasm

=o)