From: fwang@okeefe.helios.nd.edu (Fu-Quan Wang)
Newsgroups: soc.singles,soc.women,soc.men,misc.legal
Subject: Re: Pre-Sex Contract
Date: 20 Dec 92 18:48:03 GMT
Reply-To: fwang@okeefe.helios.nd.edu (Fu-Quan Wang)
Organization: University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame

In article <BzKMBp.4ou@mentor.cc.purdue.edu>, hrubin@pop.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes:
|> In article <1992Dec20.173155.27492@leland.Stanford.EDU> kpscarr@leland.Stanford.EDU (Karen Pelton Scarr) writes:
|> >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.
|> 
|> 
|> 
|> >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?
|> 
|> You jump to many conclusions.  I suspect that in the not too distant future,
|> women will not necessarily bear the children they conceive, even if it is
|> necessary to have a woman physically carry them to term.  This is a somewhat
|> dangerous and time consuming occupation, and deserves compensation.  These
|> alternative methods of bearing one's children should not be rejected by the
|> legal system as enforceable contracts, as they now are.
|> 
|> Nor is it necessary that the physical parents raise the children; if they
|> can make suitable arrangements, there is no reason why others cannot be
|> hired for some of the work.  But any arrangements should be a matter of
|> equity, and I see no reason why the mother has any more rights here than
|> the father.  The act of bearing the child is compensable, but the genetic
|> makeup is roughly equal, and what we know about raising children is zilch.
|> 
|> But I WOULD make a person born without at some time having someone 
|> with reasonable presumption of doing so deliberately accept financial 
|> responsibility a non-person.  And since I consider heredity to be of 
|> much greater importance, I believe that a man can have an interest in
|> fathering a child by a woman acceptable to him, and that this interest
|> must be considered in any decisions.
|> 
|> You are using your ideas of morality to cloud the issues.  I do see the
|> future of man as a viable species in grave danger by those who do not
|> recognize these issues, and who condone placing burdens on society, and
|> forcing those who do not wish to accept the decisions of others as binding
|> on them to pay for those decisions at every turn.
|> -- 
|> 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)
Just for fun