From: pepke@ds1.scri.fsu.edu (Eric Pepke)
Newsgroups: alt.child-support,soc.men,soc.women
Subject: Re: children as appendage
Date: 21 Aug 92 21:32:58 GMT
Reply-To: pepke@ds1.scri.fsu.edu (Eric Pepke)
Followup-To: alt.child-support
Organization: Florida State University, but I don't speak for them

I'm not posting to alt.abortion.inequity because I don't get it.

In article <2318@unet.UUCP> linda@wendy.net.com (Linda Hill) writes:
>Should an accidental pregnancy occur, *I* would then decide what to do about
>it.  I am pro-choice and would likely choose an abortion.  I realize that's
>unfair to the man who may actually want the child formed of his union with me,
>but it's my body and I refuse to be a baby factory for someone else.  On the
>off chance that I decided I wanted to carry the pregnancy to term and keep the
>baby, I would never expect an unwilling father-to-be to participate in any
>way past conception.  If it's my decision alone to have the child, then I
>accept full responsibility for it.  If I were able to carry the child to term
>with the intent of giving it up for adoption (which would be very difficult
>since I can't imagine going through a pregnancy and then giving the baby away),
>and I knew the father wanted to raise the child himself, I would do everything
>in my power to see that he had custody at birth.  That would be his choice and
>I would not be financially responsible for it.

This seems to me to be quite a fair position to take.  However, please realize
that these decisions are not neccessarily within your power to make.  You may
not have the ability to refuse child-support.  Regardless of the decision you
make, or any sort of agreement you sign with the father, the state has the 
power to toss it out at any time.  The rationale is that the state is acting
int the Best Interests of the Child, and the child was not party to any
agreement, so the agreement is unenforceable.  (Of course, we all know that 
the state doesn't give a tinker's dam about the Best Interests of the Child,
or else they would enforce visitiation or stop encouraging parents to become
enemies.)

There have been several anecdotes posted to alt.child-support of mothers and
fathers who came to mutually agreeable decisions and has those decisions
tossed out at the whim of the court as the result of a wave of politicking.

>My husband thinks this attitude is appalling (especially coming from an avowed
>feminist) because it places no responsibility whatsoever on the man.  The man
>is free to hop in and out of the sack willy nilly without a care in the world.

>I think that this is pretty much the way of the wild and that the human species
>will never be so evolved that the majority of males can intelligently control
>their sex drives.
  ...
>[K'Char has already pointed out my sexist assumption that men are driven by
>their penises, but most of what I read and the way I hear men speak about
>women makes me believe this is true _in general_.  I'm believe that the sex
>act is physical for _most_ men and emotional for _most_ women.]

I think that this is sexist as well.  Not neccessarily the belief in your 
last sentence, which may or may not be accurate, but rather the conclusion
that you choose to draw from it.  You say that sex is physical for most men
and emotional for most women.  You conclude that this causes men to be 
unintelligent about sex and women to be intelligent about it.  In reality, 
neither physical drives nor emotional ones cause people to be particularly 
intelligent.  Selecting just one sex to berate is indeed sexist.

We all left the savannah a very long time ago.

>I do find it ironic that on this newsgroup it is men gnashing their teeth
>about women who won't go and get abortions so that they won't be stuck with
>paying child support, 

I haven't seen this claim made, except as a kind of in-your-face reductio ad 
absurdum.  Most of the men are "gnashing their teeth" to have the situation
that you posted in the first paragraph I quoted.

> while at the same time there is a powerful contingent of
>men in this country who are ready to take that option away from women like me.

Never forget that there is a powerful contingent of women who would take away
your option as well, and you ignore them at your own risk.

The idea that men are all ganged up against women on the subject of abortion is
a fantasy.  I understand the psychological purposes it serves, but as fantasies
go, it is very costly.  When you make the decision not to recognize a certain
class of enemies, you make the decision to give those enemies extra power.  The
cost may be the loss of legalized abortion itself.  Are you willing to pay it?

>So are these, to us, archaic child support laws based on pre-legalized abortion
>days?  If so, I would want to make absolutely sure that legalized abortion is
>here to stay before legislating the child support laws out of existence.

OK, let's imagine a world.  There is no legalized abortion.  In fact, there is
no abortion of any kind--the gestation period takes four seconds instead of
nine months.  There is no child support of any kind--the woman has to pay for
the child herself, should birth control fail.  There is no adoption of any
kind--the woman has no choice but to raise the child.  There is, however, 
birth control with about the same effectiveness we have in this world.

Think for a minute about the kind of deal that a woman would have in this world.

Now consider this: There are a lot of men, including me, who would be 
absolutely OVERJOYED to have such a good deal, because it is so much better 
than what we currently have.

Before you berate men for gnashing their teeth, please try to understand the
conditions of our existence in society.

-EMP
Newsgroups: alt.child-support,alt.dads-rights,soc.men,soc.women