Women and Rape?

I think the core issue that this particular poster was conveying is that females are not forced into parental responsibility at all while men are, not some idea that child support is like winning the lottery (I look at that comment as sarcasm).

A woman and a man create a child, she has absolute right over what happens while that child grows inside her. No one is arguing that (well, some are but it's a pointless argument to make). However, a woman has every opportunity, especially now, to avoid any parental responsibility.

Abortion: her right and inarguable as things stand; it should be cut and dry. The father has no choice in the matter.

Adoption: while things have matured in family court on this issue, it isn't a given that if the father wants the child he'll get it should she simply refuse to let the natural father have the child. A few years back there was a big ruckus when Florida tried to pass a law stating any woman giving a child up for adoption had to at least make good faith attempt to contact the father (in case he was willing to take on his parental role). Women howled and gnashed their teeth. The law obviously didn't pass.

Safe-Haven: women can just up and leave the child at an authorized drop-off, no questions asked and no consequences. This can also be done without the father's consent or say so. Imagine what would happen if the father tried doing this without the mother's say so.

What choice does a man have? None. He is forced by law under threat of prosecution to provide care for the child should she decide to keep the child.

What I think the person above was getting at is IF the father has no say, and IF the father doesn't want the child but she decides to give birth anyway, THEN he should be afforded the same option out of parenthood that she has during, through, and after the pregnancy by allowing him to sign off on those rights before the child is born.

The only statement made above counter to this was the woman who said: "That's just the way it is, so live with it". Funny how that wasn't an attitude she'd likely support when people weren't happy with not being able to have their choice of what to do with their body.

That being said, I don't even know why people bother with these kind of debates as one rarely gets any actual debate or logical statements to support the populist side of the debate; they just get a series of logical fallacies and thought-terminating cliches repeated ad infinitum so those holding that viewpoint can be dismissive of any opposing view.

Women don't like hearing the male side of the matter, and that's the problem.

Let's flip the situation for a moment. What if the woman does not want the child, but the man does? Should the man not be able to pay for the birth and keep the child, take care of it, while the women sends life support payments?

*** How is that not fair and just? ***

Clearly we have these biological issues of child-bearing which make this subject a lot more complicated along with gender inequality issues, but at the end of the day, why does a woman hold all the power in these matters? I am clearly talking about the majority of cases where the sex was a *consensual* act. It is not like the woman was any more powerless in preventing the consequences than the man in these cases, yet the man has no decision whatsoever. Both have equal responsibility for the consequences, and both should have equal power in deciding what to do about it.

As far as I see, this is a subject of total insensitivity on *both sides*, not just men towards women about the biological and psychological aspects of pregnancy but also women towards men about their roles as parents or even their own feelings and psychologically impact towards this subject.

I won't stoop to making any assumptions about you or your character, but I happen to be a married man. Feel free to call me a misogynist all you like, but if there's one thing that has become painfully obvious through my relationships with women, it's that men and women are very different: psychologically, biologically, and sociologically. And yet we seem to be very clueless about each other: women being at least equally as clueless about men as men are about women. If we want to shape a better world, I think we have to start understanding and communicating the differences better, and I can't help but think that this particular issue alienates men a bit too much by completely leaving them out of the decision-making process and yet placing significant burden and responsibility in spite of it.

Going with the reverse situation, if a man seriously loves a woman and wants a child, and the woman aborts *his* baby in spite of it, that can also be a lifelong, crippling situation. I know firsthand because I have a friend who went through this situation during high school, and over a decade later now, he's still not over it. He still thinks about the child he could have had, so it's not like any decision made about whether or not to keep a child won't have lifelong impact on both parties. If we're to be sensitive about this particular case, I can't help but wonder why he couldn't simply pay for the birth and take care of the child, freeing the woman of all responsibility for the child she didn't want. Oh wait, that's exactly what I'm arguing for.

Upon thinking of this subject some more, let me try to put my thoughts in a way where I'm not using any sarcasm or exaggeration.

One part of this issue that I find troublesome is that the responsibilities don't seem to even out.

For example, take the typical reply that a man should choose his partners more carefully or that he should have used a condom. This seems to imply that the responsibility of choosing sex partners and exercising birth control rests solely on the man. If that's the case, shouldn't he have the ultimate authority on the child's fate? Why is it that a woman is portrayed to be a helpless victim who is incapable of choosing her partners or preventing pregnancy when it's usually the women who have the ultimate say on who they sleep with and when the most effective, non-surgical means of birth control are designed for women (almost twice as effective as a condom)? If women were such helpless sheep in this matter as they often make themselves out to be, it'd be hard to justify equal rights. It seems as though it's always the man's fault when a woman gets pregnant when it really should be a mutual responsibility.

The other side of this issue that bothers me is that when we start introducing laws into these affairs, we rarely get justice. I agree that a responsible man should try his best to support his child, but introduce some higher authority between the parents and what we end up with is battling, struggling, lack of practical compromises, and a child caught in the middle of it all.

I was the 'victim' of a divorce. My mother took custody and my father earnestly paid child support. I missed his presence most of my life while my mother brought in some really strange boyfriends to the house, including one who liked to watch porn at midnight with the volume so loud that my sister and I could hear it all through the house and were too afraid to go downstairs to even get a glass of water. I needed my father there but he was too busy working two jobs to pay for the child support. I don't know if my case was exceptional or not, but I know it was wrong. In my case, abortion and birth control wasn't a part of it; my parents wanted children, but the child support and all the legal affairs still put a huge wrench between us.

Ultimately I just think two grown adults should share responsibilities. If we can put all the gender and biological differences aside, we might realize that the best thing for a child is mutual cooperation between parents, and that generally comes from sharing responsibilities and working out differences together. Appealing to a higher authority and trying to force one party to do this or that just has this kind of alienating effect of pitting both parties against each other to the point where the children are just left in the middle of the battle. There are some things that money can't buy that two adults should just seek to work out properly instead.