SubscribeAdvertise here: Contact FM.
The thing is, though, mathowie, a man's decision to wear a condom or not is really his last reproductive choice.He could not have sex with women. That'd be a reproductive choice.
No, it's weird that a man can decide not have a child and in some cases be tricked and forced into having and supporting one anyway.It's weird to read things like this on MetaFilter after a discussion of "should I wear a condom when my girlfriend's on the pill." Man. Are you guys all wearing full body condoms while your female s/o's are taking five different forms of the pill AND wearing the birth control patch?
I am not advocating for anyone to give up their rights. What I am advocating for is trust, not fear. I would like to assume that the poster is in a trusting relationship. And I would like to assume that in relationships where sex is involved, discussion of a possible pregnancy is also involved. And what bothers me is that people in this discussion are so heavily weighing down on the fear side of "what IF she DOES get pregnant oh noes!" that there's no trust for the woman in the situation. Granted this is an anonymous question based on the user's self-admitted paranoia, but if they as a couple are having this dialogue about birth control in the first place, it seems reasonable to me to assume that he trusts her and her ability to decide for herself what's an acceptable risk.
My recommendation, which I'm surprised to see hasn't been mentioned already, would be to try it once. (After you've both had STD testing, of course.)
If you're really, really worried about a possible pregnancy, try it in the day or two before she gets her period (since she's on the pill, you have a pretty good idea of when this would be) when she's least likely to be fertile.
If you feel uncomfortable and freak out that the pill isn't reliable enough as a form of birth control - go back to using condoms. Easy as that.
Many single women and lesbian couples mistakenly believe that they can protect their families by entering into donor contracts which state that their known donors are not the legal fathers of their children. For the most part, parentage is determined by law, not by contract. There are two reasons for this: (1) the right to have parents lies with the children, who weren’t parties to the contract; and (2) it is against public policy to allow men who by law would be legally responsible for children to contract out of this responsibility. What this means is that a donor contract will not prevent a man from being a legal father if he would otherwise be a father under the law of the state in which the child was conceived and/or born. For these reasons, many states will not honor a donor contract, even if all the parties remain in agreement with its terms.Sperm Donor Ordered to Pay Child Support - 5/2007
There are significant risks to all parties involved. The risk to a donor is that either the mothers or the state will come after him for child support if the mothers become unable to support the child themselves. This is a very real risk, as states around the country have become increasingly rigorous in enforcing their child support statutes.
The risk to the mother(s) is that a man they never intended to be a parent to the children will have an enforceable right to visitation – or even to shared custody – against their will. Again, this is a very real risk, especially for single mothers (given strong public policies in many states favoring two parent families) and for lesbian couples in states that do not offer the non-biological mother the opportunity to forge a legal relationship with the child through second-parent or co-parent adoption.
Nobody's really sure, Nick. Believe it or not, the law is just catching up with these newfangled biological advances. There's a case pending before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on the issue of sperm donor child support, and some states have handled it by statute. Most courts that have considered the question have ordered the donor to pay support, which may seem a perverse result, but the issue is more complicated than you might think....
In 2005, 91 percent of child support collections have gone to families. Welfare recipients now make up just 16 percent of our caseload; the largest group of clients is families who no longer need public assistance, in large part because of child support collections. Preliminary data indicate that, in FY 2005:This helps make clear why the state has an interest in encouraging two-parent support.
* The program collected $23 billion.
* The total caseload was 15.9 million.
* The FPLS returned employment or address information for over 4.7 million individuals during FY 2005.
* During FY 2005, the Multistate Financial Institution Data Match (MSFIDM) program located a quarterly average of 2.1 million accounts containing financial assets owned by 1.1 million obligors.
* The number of paternities established or acknowledged was 1.6 million.
* The number of new support orders established was 1.2 million.
The Child Support Enforcement (CSE) Program is a Federal/state/local partnership to collect child support: We want to send the strongest possible message that parents cannot walk away from their children. Our goals are to ensure that children have the financial support of both their parents, to foster responsible behavior towards children, to emphasize that children need to have both parents involved in their lives, and to reduce welfare costs.
Hold men accountable for pregnancy and its range of costs, including abortion and maybe even including delivery, but grant them the same options regarding parenthood that women have.
posted by NortonDC at 7:59 AM on August 5
Custodial mothers were more likely than custodial fathers to have child support awards, 64 percent compared with 40 percent. About three-quarters of custodial parents with awards received at least some of the child support that was due. Forty-five percent received all payments and another 31 percent received some payments, but not all thatwas due.Looks like the imbalance is closing and rather rapidly. But still:
Between 1993 and 2003, the proportion of custodial parents and their children living in poverty fell from 33 percent to 24 percent. The 2003 poverty rate was higher for households maintainedby custodial mothers (26 percent) than those maintained by custodial fathers (13 percent), as shown in Figure 3.
What I'm proposing treats the abortion rights as inalienable from the pregnant woman."What if he agrees to be a co-parent when the pregnancy is discovered at 6 weeks, can he withdraw the consent at 29 weeks? Does he have a 24 hour window to decide, a week? Can he change his mind after the baby is three months old and cute and burbling; what about when it is five?"
posted by NortonDC at 7:17 PM on August 5
only one person has the right, the sole and inalienable right, to choose to end the pregnancy.
posted by NortonDC at 12:30 AM on August 6
In all States, the birth mother and the birth father, if he has properly established paternity1, hold the primary right of consent to adoption of their child. Either one or both parents may have these rights terminated for a variety of possible reasons, including abandonment, failure to support the child, mental incompetence, or a finding of parental unfitness due to abuse or neglect. When neither birth parent is available to give consent, the responsibility can fall to other legal entities, such as:So, for instance, if the baby is born and the father is a total no-show, the court might terminate his right of consent, or simply assume his consent. This is why it's recommended that men who want to oppose the adoption of their children (and assume custody) are recommended to establish paternity in as many ways as necessary as soon as possible after the birth. But in cases where he is a no-show at that time, and consent is assumed, it's actually possible for him to come back later and sue for visitation rights, or even for the adoptive parents to seek support from him. Whether those cases are successful varies, and they're quite rare, but the theoretical standard is that unless his parental rights are formally terminated there is at least hte legal possibility that he can assert them later.
An agency which has custody of the child
Any person who has been given custody
A guardian or guardian ad litem
The court having jurisdiction over the child
A close relative of the child
A "next friend" of the child, who is a responsible adult appointed by the court
What's truly novel (at least for this discussion) in TheOnlyCoolTim's thinking is separately addressing the risk the couple accepted together, pregnancy...So, yeah, it's that the boundaries of the risk of pregnancy are set and shared by both, while parenthood is limited by the desires of one person.
posted by NortonDC at 7:53 PM on August 4
What's being discussed is a new legal framework that maintains shared responsibility where shared consent exists, namely in assuming the risks of pregnancy...
posted by NortonDC at 5:55 PM on August 5
the burdens of unwanted pregnancy are the product of mutual consent and must be born mutually to fullest extent that the law can orchestrate.
posted by NortonDC at 12:30 AM on August 6
Also, I'm arguing for men to be held strictly accountable for the risks they do individually influence and knowingly accept, the risks of pregnancy, more strictly than they are now, as far as I know.
posted by NortonDC at 10:01 PM on August 6
In 1732-3, a woman pregnant with a bastard was required to declare the fact and to name the father. In 1733, the putative father became responsible for maintaining his illegitimate child; failing to do so could result in gaol. The parish would then support the mother and child, until the father agreed to do so, whereupon he would reimburse the parish - although this rarely happened." Peter Higginbotham.In 1832 the Trickster Girlfriend makes an early appearance:
Also: "Any person after 24 June 1733 charged on oath with being the father of a bastard child shall be apprehended and committed to gaol until he gives security to indemnify the parish from expense.
"The Commissioners thought that poor men were at the mercy of blackmail and perjury by unscrupulous women.... The bastardy clauses of the Act of 1834 were in line with the opinions of the Poor Law Commissioners. The laws which had enabled a mother to charge a putative father before the magistrates were repealed"And things got tougher with the "New Poor Law" in 1834:
A Bastardy Clause Act made all illegitimate children the sole responsibility of their mothers until they were 16 years old. If mothers of bastard children were unable to support themselves and their offspring, they would have to enter the workhouse; the putative father became free of any legal responsibility for his illegitimate offspring. Not only did this remove the not infrequent problem of disputed fatherhood, but it was envisaged that the measure would discourage women from entering into profligate relationships.But only ten years later, we find a change in policy. The bastardy laws are taken out of the poor codes and shifted over into civil law. You no longer had to be on the poor rolls for this law to apply: it was civil law, the law of the land. Why the change?
Took bastary procedings out of the poor law authorities and turned then into a civil matter between parents. Finer.And in 1868 the Poor Law Amendment Act
Enabled an unmarried mother to apply to the Petty Sessions for an affiliation order against the father for maintenance of the mother and child, regardless of whether she was in receipt of poor relief. This was probably in recognition that the 1834 Act had not reduced illegitimacy (by making it harder for mothers to claim maintenance), but in fact increased it (by enabling men to avoid some of the responsibility for their actions).
Restored to the parish the power to recover from the the putative father the cost of maintenance of a bastard child by providing that, where a woman who had obtained an order against the father of her child herself became a charge of the parish, the justices might order payments to be made to the relieving officer.The Poor Laws remained in effect in Britain until World War II (!). At that time, they were repealed and replaced with new civil law which took over essentially the same function and stated:
that for the purposes of the Act, (a) a man shall be liable to maintain his wife and his children, and (b) a woman shall be liable to maintain her husband and her children. A woman's children included her illegitimate children and a man's children included any children of whom he had been adjudged to be the putative father. (This is a narrower set of people compared with the poor laws).Meanwhile on this side of the pond, there was a similar evolution of poor law to civil law. As early as 1808, the government is working to shift the burden of support for poor children from the public to their own relations:
Section 43 provided for recovery proceedings by the National Assistance Board from persons liable to maintain under section 42.
When single motherhood began to emerge in nineteenth-century America, the judiciary was the only institution of the American state that could deal with dependency among single mothers and their children: The poor laws were being overwhelmed by population growth and urbanization, and private charities and state poor-relief agencies had not yet appeared. The first child support statutes built on this judicial innovation, codifying a child support system that relied primarily on payments from absent parents, instead of on public supports for families."So
By 1886, 11 states had made it a penal offence for a father to abandon or refuse to support his minor children. Typically, it still needed evidence that without this support the children would be a cost to the community.The big move here was the Social Security Act, which created the AFDC bureaus and also an incentive for them to get people off public support:
Aid for Dependent Children. ADC (later AFDC; F = Families) established a partnership between the federal government and the states by providing appropriations to those states which adopted plans approved by the Secretary of Health and Human Services. The states in turn provided a minimum monthly subsistence payment to families meeting established need requirements (such as an absent parent not providing support). This later gradually drove child support enforcement, in order to reduce expenditure on AFDC (see events below).The clampdown on use of public funds got more serious in the 1970s with Social Security amendments designed to reduce the welfare budget . In 1977 it becomes legal to garnishee wages for nonsupport.
"Care for children" becomes one of the few entitlements for welfare. Compared with other countries, this tends to make "child support by parents" a prominent objective.
(gjc) The mother can make the decision to put the child up for adoption without anyone's consent (because she has the option to not list a father on the birth certificate) and walk away and suffer no legal consequences. The father does not have that right. QED.gjc says the mother has the option to unilaterally put a child up for adoption, walk away and suffer no legal consequences, while the father does not have that ability. You, Miko, say he does have that ability, but then your followup doesn't actually back up that assertion in any way. Instead, you describe his ability to fight the woman's attempt to give the child up for adoption, which does not in any way define his ability to put a child up for adoption unilaterally, walk away, and suffer no legal consequences, which are the rights you have just asserted he possesses. It's a non-sequitor, and at the end of that exchange you've provided no evidence or reasoning to indicate that gjc's assertion is untrue. It still stands unchallenged.
(Miko) Actually, he does. If the mother does not name him, but he wants to contest the adoption, he has to establish paternity, which in most states can be done by filing an affadavit or statement of paternity. He might be required to undergo genetic testing to approve it. Generally, fathers can't oppose adoption unless they intend to apply for full custody.
As for your bullet points, living under an unjust system doesn't signal consent to the system, nor does it pledge one to the maintenance of it. Realizing that the man is denied equality of reproductive legal freedoms by the current law doesn't make it just, it just makes it known."The framework you're proposing is a revolutionary change which would threaten the legal status of adult women as independent entities by suggesting that men are somehow responsible for decisions made during pregnancy."
posted by NortonDC at 5:55 PM on August 5
that wasn't NortonDC's argument, which instead of a total opt-out afforded men rights and responsibilities during pregnancy.No, that's incorrect as far as granting men any rights over any person during pregnancy, which is how your statement reads to me. For example:
(Miko) She's immediately on the hook, because from that point until birth, she is in charge of what's going on in her body.
(me) Actually, I'm saying she's totally in charge of the pregnancy AND that the man is still on the hook for the burdens of the pregnancy to the degree that the law can compensate and balance for them. Violent agreement regarding her being in charge, with me placing more responsbilities on him with no additional influence.
(Miko) There is no way to give the male legal power over that.
(me) More violent agreement on this point, all along.
NortonDC - First you say this: First, holding him responsible for the end while excluding control of the middle is unconscionable.Sure thing, happy to. Upon deciding to have sex with each other, both participants accept the risk of pregnancy, and only pregnancy. They have shared opportunities to control the magnitude of that risk, and, under this proposal, shared responsibility if that risk manifests itself in a pregnancy. If that happens, then the pregnancy does exist and both people are responsible for the pregnancy because they both decided to accept the risk of creating it.
And yet you've claimed several times over that your position does nothing to threaten a woman maintaining sole control of her body and the pregnancy it's housing.
Could you possibly clarify these two positions? Because they seem to me to be starkly contradictory.
I've only ever called one thing "unfair" in this discussion, and that's making men pay child support for children they did not sire. Other than that, using scare quotes while complaining about what you imagine I've called "unfair" isn't showing much except that you're not actually responding to my words."to a claim that requiring men to "opt-in" as fathers is more fair"
posted by NortonDC at 12:30 AM on August 6
We have equalityunder the law now, in that each individual of each gender is responsible for and has rights to the control of his or her own actions and body, and is responsible to support and has rights regarding his or her children.I'm disappointed that you're announcing your departure before you reconcile statements like that above with your acknowledgment that women, who don't even have to list a father on the birth certificate, can legally abandon a child. I remain eager to read your explanation of how the right for one gender to legally abandon its offspring equals the legal incapability of the other gender to do so.
I didn't acknowledge that, actually. What I mentioned was that even in "safe haven" states, there is often a requirement to make an attempt to establish maternity and paternity. But let me be clear that 'safe haven' is absolutely an area of non-settled law. They are wide open to challenge and are so new that they have rarely been tested. State legislation on it all over the place; safe haven will necessarily end up in the upper courts before there is any consistent pattern that sets it on a par we have with the mass of family law which I've been referencing. For instance, in some states the recipient of the infant has to file an abandonment charge with the police and the parents have to decide whether to appear for it.In other words, it's legally impossible for only the woman to legally "abandon" the child under the conditions of contemporary (and unchallenged) safe haven laws. Both parents have to legally abandon the child. And what happens after that in family court is not true abandonment, but the same thing that happens in adoption cases: the court terminates the parental rights of both parents and assigns a custodian.
But to your point: what you'll find especially interesting is that upon being notified of a baby left with a safe haven, whatever the local child welfare department is has to petition the court to terminate both parents' parental rights...which are in effect up to that point. Again - both parents are responsible in the eyes of the law until their rights are legally terminated. Safe haven is a de facto abandonment by both parties with decriminalization. The court process is the same as for abandonment: terminate parental rights. There cannot exist a condition in which a child has no custodian.
Currently, all states with safe haven legislation permit a mother to abandon her infant anonymously, never giving the father’s name nor contacting the father, thereby drastically reducing a father’s ability to contest custody or adoption of their children. These concerns raise questions about whether a father’s constitutional rights are being violated by current safe haven laws. Of the 45 states that have safe haven legislation, only 12 provide procedures to safeguard fathers' rights. The other 33 states do not provide for any search or do not require that any notice be given to the father.Oof, not looking so good for the man, or for someone arguing that "We have equalityunder the law now." Looking more closely at the details doesn't help much:
Safe haven legislation can be split into four categories. Laws in the first category provide for notice by publication or through the media. The second category requires a search of the putative father registry and provides that notice should be sent to any potential father who has registered. The third and most common category of safe haven laws is silent about providing notice to fathers. The fourth category specifically states that a search for parents and notice are unnecessary if the identities of the parents are unknown.So the various laws either mean: that an ad is put in the paper (no help for unknowing fathers), that the man must preemptively list himself in a government database of potential fathers because he thinks he might have a child coming along soon (again, no help for unknowing fathers), that nothing be done for fathers, or that nothing be done for men not already identified as the parent of the child.
The parent that did not abandon the infant may legally claim parental rights over the baby and ask for child support from the abandoning parent. Both parents may choose to to abondon the infant and if they are not identified their parental rights and responsibilities are severed by the courts. An infant that is abandoned by the mother without the father making an effort to know the woman he had sex with was pregnant has already been abandoned by the father.No. "The parent that did not abandon the infant may legally claim parental rights over the baby and ask for child support from the abandoning parent." No on several counts. The parent that did not abandon the infant may not know that the infant exists, or they may merely have the misfortune of living somewhere in the majority of states that fail to "provide any safeguards to protect the rights of putative fathers," per Miko's link. And we still don't have any hard evidence that any woman in America has to pay child support after availing herself of legal abandonment. We've seen Miko say that this is the case, but she has provided nothing more than that assertion.
I agree with the reason agregoli stated so succinctly: once you're legally responsible for a financial matter, you can also have some contractual rights in the matter. Having a case for contractual rights related to someone else's pregnancy threatens the sole and independent legal status of the pregnant person. I think contractual rights would inevitably enter into this immediately, because if the NortonDC plan were in effect, the woman would most likely need to be required to prove she is pregnant (to avoid claiming a false pregnancy and collecting money for it) and then prove that she'd had an abortion (to disallow any later claims for pregnancy support money). Boom, violation of privacy, new contractual rights. That's ugly.But earlier Miko asserted that
While pregnant, sheis legally responsible for making decisions regarding the fetus inside her within the constraints of law. It is she that must comply with state and federal law outlining when and how an abortion might take place; it is she who seeks and accepts legal protection if her pregnancy makes her unable to physically do her job, it is she who invokes the Family and Medical Leave act if she needs time away from work. It is she who, in some states, may be held legally responsible if a toxicology report shows signs of alcohol or drug abuse at the child's birth, and, in some states, she who is legally required to take HIV tests, and in some states, she who must comply with parental notification if she is under 18. It is she who bears the responsibility for neonatal care and is financially liable for the resulting bills and/or the Medicaid paperwork. There is an entire body of law in a cross-section of legal fields dealing with the condition of pregnancy, for which the person who is pregnant is immediately responsible for complying with.I see a serious conflict between these two lines of reasoning, one of which says we mustn't make financial concerns contingent upon pregnancy, and one which triumphantly declares that we do make financial (and other) concerns contingent upon pregnancy. While I don't agree with your projection regarding any creation of pregnancy rights for the man, I do wonder how you reconcile these these two ideas, Miko.
posted by jessamyn at 4:08 PM on August 2, 2008