From: kpscarr@leland.Stanford.EDU (Karen Pelton Scarr)
Subject: Re: Pre-Sex Contract
Organization: DSG, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA
Date: Sun, 20 Dec 92 17:31:55 GMT

In article <BzKDCM.HAB@mentor.cc.purdue.edu> hrubin@pop.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes:

>be the legalities, the decisions MUST be the same.  It is only because
>of religion-based "morality" that this is close to the case.  I have
>proposed, in this group (misc. legal), that bringing a child to term
>without, at a reasonable prior time at which abortion is possible, some
>financially responsible individual or group directly accepting the
>obligations, and agreeing to the rights, of the subsequent upbringing
>and support, should be at least a major case of grand theft, and that
>the consequences should include whatever is necessary to remove the
>burden from society, or to compensate society for the burden.  Prison
>should not be used, as nobody benefits from that.
>
>Nobody should be able to produce a burden on someone else as stated above.
>Both parties at conception acquire rights thereby, and the rights of both,
>to bear or not to bear, should be respected.  In the event of a dispute 
>over the subsequent action, it should be considered a non-trivial matter
>of civil law.  Separating the biological and the financial choices, and
>ignoring the interests of either to have, or not to have, the child, is
>a perversion of equity.
>-- 
>Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907-1399
>Phone: (317)494-6054
>hrubin@snap.stat.purdue.edu (Internet, bitnet)  
>{purdue,pur-ee}!snap.stat!hrubin(UUCP)

Au contraire--your view is terribly perverse.  The world you describe--with
perfect information, infallible birth control, and dispassionate views about
pregnancy and childbirth, in which a woman treats an abortion as lightly as
a trip to the dentist--does not exist.  And indeed, by treating a child--
regardless of its parentage or financial situation--as a burden on society,
rather than a valued future participant, you reduce her to the status of a 
commodity (taking the woman's body with it).  So the woman has to scramble
and pin down some "financial arrangement" to ensure that society does not
share in her burden before 21 weeks is up--or else do the "responsible" thing
and abort the child.

As long as women are the ones who bear children, and the ones who bear primary--often *sole*--responsibility for raising them, the choice to have or have not
is theirs.  And as long as men father children, and are financially better off
than women, they should contribute money for the child's upbringing (at the 
very least).  Men should not be able to escape their responsibility for 
"externalities" like children simply by claiming that the mother was a willing
participant in the sexual act, and that she knew he didn't want children.
Accidents happen--and children are not as easily cleaned up (i.e., aborted) as
car wrecks.  

Under your vision, what's next?  Court-ordered abortions?  Court-ordered
pregnancies?  Can't you see that giving the father an equal say is not such an
easy imposition of equity--or equality?
     
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