From: perez@mgr.hjf.org (Charles Perez)
Newsgroups: alt.dads-rights
Subject: Re: Right To Not Support
Date: 19 Aug 92 19:46:25 GMT
Organization: HJF AIDS Research Project, Washington DC

In article <VIXIE.92Aug11031515@cognition.pa.dec.com> vixie@pa.dec.com (Paul A Vixie) writes:
>perez@mgr.hjf.org (Charles Perez) wrote:
>> We have a situation where the pregnant woman has absolute control over
>  [1]
>> whether to have a child. She can have the child over the father's
>                           [2]
>> objections. She can abort over the otherwise-father's objections. She has
>              [3]                                                   [4]
>> the power. She has the sole choice. Therefore, she should have the sole
>             [5]                      [6]
>> responsibility for having a child. Sex is sex, not procreation. The link
>                                     [7]                          [8]
>> between sex and procreation HAS NOT BEEN ENGINEERED, so the connection is
>> not a matter of choice.
>
>This is one of the clearest formulations I've yet seen of these thoughts.
>I don't agree with them, but I'll try to match them for clarity in my rebuttal.
>I have numbered Charles Perez' assertions rather than breaking up his text.
>
>I agree with [1] with the reminder that she did NOT have absolute control
>over whether to become pregnant -- she needed help.  [2] and [3] are true.
>[4] is a no-op.  [5] is true.  But at [6] we have a problem, since in my
>estimation it does not follow, either from [1-5] or from out-of-band know-
>ledge.  I'll get to that in a minute.  [7] is a no-op, true, uncontested.
>[8] is false or at best misleading.
>
>Consider [6].  Since the mother had the sole choice of whether to abort --
>no choice was offerred to the father on this matter since it wasn't his
>body -- should she be solely responsible for the consequence called a child?
>You say yes, I say no.  Let's look at the reasons.
>
>From your point of view, the woman could have aborted yet did not choose to
>do so -- so since she had the option not to become a mother, the fact that
>she is a mother is not the father's problem and the child should not become
>his shared responsibility.  From my point of view, the mother's decision
>would have applied to the fetus and is irrelevant once a child is born.

What you have not addressed is when the woman has the sole right to
abort or not to abort. If the man has a say, then he is jointly
responsible if a child is born. If he had sex believing that abortion
is wrong, then he becomes responsible at conception. If, however, the
woman can shut him out of deciding whether to continue her pregnancy
to term, then she has made the sole choice to have a child or not.
That her decision applies to a fetus is not irrelevant to whether a
child is born. That her decision controls whether a child is born makes
it her responsibility alone.

Sperm doners enable the children their sperm fertilize to be born. Are
they responsible for their genetic offspring? After all, they made their
choice when they donated the sperm.

>If there had been _nothing_ that the father could do to prevent the
>pregnancy -- say he was raped, for example -- then your conclusion would
>make sense to me.  But this is not the average case.  In the average case,
>a male and female both choose to have sex.  Any man who is not a rape-
>victim who chooses not to have sex is pretty much immune from the respons-
>ibility of fatherhood.

The same reasoning applies to her parents (and his parents, for that
matter). If they had not had sex, their daughter would never have
gotten pregnant. Are they responsible for raising (or at least paying
for) their grandchildren? After all, Grandpa made his choice when
he dropped his pants, and Grandma made hers when she spread her legs.

>
>But, you may well ask, why is it that if a man has no choice about abortion,
>can he still be held responsible for the resulting child?  Isn't it, you
>could ask, the same as not having a choice about the sex act itself?  
>
>No.

I never asked that. I argued that sex and procreation weren't the same
decision.

>
>In the case of the sex act, a man has a free choice available to him which
>would, if taken, prevent him from becoming an unwilling father.  "Just say no."
>The default disposition of most sperm cells is to be reabsorbed by the man's
>body.  "Default" means that if nothing is done about this, it happens.  An
>act of choice is required to cause a non-default result.

Again, the same reason applies to grandparents.

>
>In the case of a developing fetus, the default result -- that which will
>occur if no choice is made -- is that a child is born.  As in the man's
>case, a woman had the option of whether to engage in the sex act but also
>currently has a choice as to whether to abort the fetus before it can do
>that.  But whereas the initial fetus requires a proactive choice -- where
>nothing happens unless a choice is made, the fetus->child transformation
>requires a reactive choice -- where SOMETHING will happen unless a choice
>is made.

The same reason applies to life itself. Just because the default result
of living is dying doesn't negate the right to life. It doesn't take the
resulting choice to live or to die out of the individual's hands.

>
>I'm not going to address the possibility of a male who engages in sex without
>knowing that a child might be the default result of his actions.  Children
>having children is a borderline case, not relevant to the core issues.
>
>I'm trying to outline an inversion here -- reactive before, vs. proactive
>after, sex and implantation have occurred.  This has nothing to do with the
>reasons why a woman can choose abortion and a man cannot; it does, however,
>go straight to the issue of why an abortion is something a woman "chooses"
>and is singly responsible for, whereas the lack of an abortion is something
>that noone "chooses" and noone is directly responsible for since there's
>nothing to BE responsible for.  Fetus->child transitions more-or-less
>"just happen" whenever NO choice is made to prevent them.  (Medical
>accidents, spontaneous abortions, and miscarriages, excepted, of course.)

So, not choosing is *not* a choice? I thought it *was*.

Seriously, if the woman can overrule the man no matter what he wants to
do, then she *always* has a choice and he never does.

>
>In closing, I'll address [8], which is a nonsequitur since the lack of
>engineering or even of intentionality does not release one from
>responsibility for their actions.  Ignorance of the law -- even a
>physical or biological one -- is not an excuse.

That fertility is *not* an engineered state is evidence that the man
was not *trying* to impregnate the woman. That a loaded gun in good
repair goes off when you pulled the trigger *is* engineered, which is
why you are always responsible for willfully firing a gun when you
pull the trigger. However, just because you get in your car and drive
doesn't mean you were *trying* to have an accident. Auto accidents
are a *mitigatable side effect* of driving. An accident could be
your fault or nobody's fault.

Even if your carelessness results in an accident (nto that you were trying,
or else you could be up on charges of assault, reckless endangerment,
or even attempted murder) and someone else is hurt, you would not be
responsible for what happened to that person if, for some reason,
she refused medical care. Legally, the doctrine of mitigating
damages saves someone from having to pay damages for a lost leg that
would have been saved if medical care had not been refused. Likewise,
a pregnant woman who decides to have the child with no say-so from the
man has taken responsibility out of the man's hands along with the
power.


-- 
==========================================================================
That which is necessary is never evil. If an evil seems necessary, look
to your context; that's where its root lies.  - Charles Perez
==========================================================================
From: larryf@hpnmdla.sr.hp.com (Larry Ferreira)
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1992 17:29:08 GMT
Subject: Re: Re: I'm Pro-Male-Choice\
Organization: Hewlett-Packard, Santa Rosa, CA