From: beaver@castor.cs.psu.edu (Don Beaver)
Subject: Privacy -- and Waiting Periods for Men (Male Choice Revisited)
Distribution: na
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1993 15:46:53 GMT

<1i7uatINN7ph@gap.caltech.edu> peri@cco.caltech.edu (Michal Leah Peri) writes:
>payner@netcom.com (Rich Payne) writes:
>
>><1i4ul0INNjf6@gap.caltech.edu> peri@cco.caltech.edu (Michal Leah Peri) writes:

>>> ... However, requiring a woman to notify anyone of 
>>>her pregnancy is a violation of her privacy.

>>The notion that the pregnancy is not the fathers business, but the child after
>>birth is is a bit odd. If she wants to raise the child herself, she need not
>>notify the father at all. If she wants child support, then the father has 
>>a need and a right to know about the pregnancy.
>
>No, he has a need and a right to know about the birth.

Ironically, it seems you haven't done much fiscal (or family) planning.

You would like to enforce a two-year waiting period for men to
get married.  (Or even to have sex again, but this would undoubtedly
trigger a moral outcry from you, against those "repeat offenders.")

Otherwise, how can a man be sure that a child of his has not been born 
and that a paternity suit is not in process?

Certainly, we must allow nine months for the pregnancy, a year
for the woman to consider her choice about the paternity suit
(and solidify the custody decision in her favor) -- or even
just for notification (she is a burdened single parent, after all);
plus the usual 90-day period for service of legal documents.


The Supreme Court's denial of husband notification, by the way,
is not based on "privacy of pregnancy" but on the pragmatic argument that
notification/waiting would infringe in practical terms on a different 
privacy right -- the right to make decisions regarding one's body.  Many 
"pro-choicers" have argued that even a 24-hour waiting period is an 
infringement.

I suggest that Michal's waiting-period position for fathers' "rights" 
is an extreme infringement against their right to privacy and to
the pursuit of happiness, as well as to the children born in these 
unhappy circumstances:  it prevents any practical means for men to
exercise their rights, and it prevents any prctical means for children 
to be placed in the better home, which very well may be the father's.
It also infringes on the rights of the father's other children, whom
he has no power to protect.


>> Unless, as you seem to feel,
>>it really does not matter what the father feels/wants/can afford, the women
>>has every right to make the decisions for him, after all, the idiot unzipped
>>his zipper. 
>
>That is exactly what I feel.  The woman has a right to make decisions 
>regarding the outcome of the pregnancy, because it occurs within her body.

And the man should have a right to make decisions regarding the LEGAL 
outcome of the pregnancy, because it affects not only him but his
other biological (and innocent) children.


>And if the child is born then the father *is* obliged to support. Regardless
>of what he feels/wants/can afford.

What about what his wife/children feel/want/can afford -- when he gets
married a year after the condom broke and then the "victimized woman"
decides to sue for paternity?


If you would BLAME him for "unwisely" getting married, how is he
supposed to make such decisions "wisely" if he is denied the
necessary information?

Has he no right to exercise family planning in the modern context
of legal abortion?

Don
-- 
beaver@cs.psu.edu                       Opinions from the PC-challenged
Newsgroups: soc.men