If a women gets knocked up and the guy wants to have the child but he women doesn't, the guy has NO SAY because it is 'her body'.

However, if the women knowcked up and decides to have the child and the man doesn't want it then the women can force the man to pay for what under the other circumstance she claims is 'her body'.

That is wrong! Women should not be allowed to have it both ways!

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As an attorney who has experienced more years in the family court than he wants to admit. The answer for all of these agrieved men is quite simple:

If she told you "not to worry, I'm on the pill"...or "don't fret, I'm barren",.....

In Texas, you merely execute an Affidavit of Relinquishment to Parental Rights, thereby giving up all rights to the child (no visitation; no contact, no Saturdays at the ballpark...no whatever).

You're off the hook for child support (and she's free to encourage the next sucker to adopt her kid), because you've relinqished your constitutional rights in and to your child.

Easy Peasey; Simple Simple......What's the fuss??

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Just like women. Did you hear about the woman who took this guy's word he didn't have hiv so they didn't use a condom?

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I refer you to, for example, the line of cases relating to frozen embryos, wherein the courts have balanced the right of the spouse who wants the embyos destroyed (usually the male--the right not to procreate ) versus the right of the spouse who wants to have the embryos implanted to cause a pregnancy (usually the female -- the right to procreate).

The spouse who wants the embryos destroyed usually wins out. The right not to procreate beats the right to procreate.

However once the prgnancy has begun, the right to privacy and the right to control one's person (the right not to have an abortion) wins out.


There is definitely a right to procreate and not to procreate.

Why is it that every article printed in so-called "liberal" websites is actually from the Point of view of the female, like your article? I thought that liberalism was supposed to be about helping the masses fight against the rich and powerful! When did liberalism become the fight of one gender against another and one race against all the other races.

Your kind of liberalism is exactly what the upper class wants.

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I know a girl who wanted to have 4 kids before she turned 24, so she would go from guy to guy to guy looking for someone to give her babies. Luckily for her she moved in circles that had fairly intelligent men in them, so she would have been endowing the kids with good genes, theoretically. However, they were fairly nerdy, geeky guys, many of whom would have been hard-pressed to get a shag in brothel.

So they would get suckered in by her attentions, but luckily they WERE intelligent so would not fall for her act of "But I want a baby! YOU'RE just as bad as all the rest of them..." when they refused to spawn with her. But they _would_ stick around with her, feeling guilty that they would not give her what she REALLY wanted.

Eventually, she found a guy who was dumb enough (despite his PhD) to fall for her act of "I've been trying to get pregnant for aaaages, but it hasn't worked. So I must be barren. So you won't have to use a condom..." So he didn't and she was pregnant about 3.7 seconds later, of course...

See - if a chick told me "I've been trying to get pregnant for ages", I'd be like "Oh, and how many diseases have you picked up along the way...?"

Apparently this girl would have regular health checks, but she's demonstrably mentally disturbed, has been all her life, believe me, so who's to know...?

Guys? If you don't want to get suckered in like the guy in the story - WEAR A CONDOM! If the girl says to you "don't worry about wearing one", how many OTHER MEN might she have said this to? Which disease do you want to catch, apart from fatherhood?

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"What Mr. Dubay fails to realize is that he has -- and, more importantly, had -- the right to avoid procreation. He failed, unfortunately, to exercise that right when he had sex without wearing a condom. Because he did not take steps to prevent the pregnancy, he is fully responsible for it."

I fail to see how this is any different from telling a woman that since she had sex, she is therefore responsible for any pregnancy to come of it, because she consented to sex and pregnancy is a consequence of sex.

What about in cases where birth control simply fails? Condoms do break.

Procreation takes two people, unless you've gone to a sperm donor. A couple has a right to procreate. A man doesn't have a right to use a woman's body to procreate against her will, nor does a woman have a right to use a man's finances to support procreation against his will, as I see it. I believe a man should have the right to relinquish parental rights (and responsibilities) but he should have to do so in time enough for the woman to get a safe abortion. If a woman wants to be a single mom, more power to her, but she should do that on her own. No one should be forced to have children they don't want, for the sake of the children if nothing else. Let's quit with the right-wing lifetime punishment for sex crap.

And everyone use protection. Birth control is your own responsibility, and your health is your own responsibility. There's AIDS out there for God's sake.

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It's irresponsible to deny your own child your care and support.

What should have been done is to charge the woman with some form of fraud if she deliberately lied.

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... between men having procreational rights and having the right to "rape"? That was totally off. Completely illogical. It's like saying that because a person has the right to take a crap, they can do it in someone else's house! You're confusing a women's right NOT to procreate with a man's right TO procreate. A man can exercise a right with a WILLING woman. There are many of them around and, apparently, some of them mislead men into thinking that they can't be impregnated.

This article, sadly, is very unbalanced and disappointing. You appear to be agreeing with a judge who basically finds a man 100% responsible for a pregnancy that his willing female part indicated to him wouldn't happen. She's 0% responsible?

That's not equality, that's just male-bashing.

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Child support isn't about the father's rights, or the mother's rights, it's about the child's right to have food and shelter. American society tends to see this as the parents' responsibility. But a child might be better off with a minimum standard of living provided by taxpayers as a whole, than a difficult to enforce living allowance from a parent who doesn't want them.

But the idea of letting parents off the hook without offering to keep children out of poverty-- which we aren't doing now-- is not only immoral, but against public good, because crime rates and poverty rates would only increase.

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How about this angle; if a man and woman want to have sex but no child, then condoms plus other birth control. Man wants sex and woman no, then keep the pants zipped. If man wants child and not woman, then take baby at birth and mom signs away all parental rights. If mom wants kid but no dad, make it clear and dad signs away parental rights. If mom wants an abortion she gets it hands down. If dad wants an abortion, he can get a court order, ordering mom to have an abortion hands down. No child support ever unless non custodial parent wants to actively participate in child’s life.

Bottom line ladies, if you have sex, be ready for birth control failure up front, use several kinds of birth control at the same time as backup and be aware that you might be on your own without child support for the child down the road. If all things fail, make up your mind to abort early, take abortion as it is, a medical procedure and leave the religion and nurturing stuff out of it. If you take responsibility for your own body then there should be no need for child support later. This goes for married women too with a 50% or better divorce rate in this country.

Just don’t plan on from the start (that hot, sexy first time in bed with the guy) for the guy to be there in your life down the road, married or not and be ready to supply all the support to your child on your own. I know what I’m talking about, I did it all on my own and never asked for or got a dime of support, and I was married at the time of conception and birth. It meant lots of rice and beans, heatless nights with lots of blankets, several minimum wage jobs at once and a patchwork of babysitters with no family support around to help. What kept me going was knowing that having my child was my personal decision and in the future if the marriage didn’t work out and it didn’t, I had a life plan to be independent and not have a false hope of child support. Enough of this helpless mommy stuff. Stand up for you and your body and quit whining.

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From "time immemorial" men have had property rights in their offspring ... and have been held responsible for supporting them.

It's sort of like that "one man one woman" marriage thing .... or the understanding that men "GET sex" but women GIVE it -- or the idea that when women are underrepresented certain jobs, it's "something wrong with women" and when men are underrepresented 'the system is broken.'

It's the 'custom' ... stronger than laws -- not subject to reason -- it is the box outside which it is damned hard to think.

Of course this isn't the only way a society could be organized: but patriarchy is the system we have and it pleases most men, most of the time.

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Hey, folks, this is really similar to a firearms issue. One does have the right to keep and bear aims, however, the actual manner of use allowed for the weapon may necessarily be regulated for safety purposes. Further, the use of the weapon may not infringe upon the rights of others, and the owner is solely responsible for any damages caused by that weapon, simply by his decision to deploy the weapon (and perhaps, simply by choosing to own it, in the case where he has not taken responsibility to secure it properly!). A person who deploys a weapon must ALWAYS assume it is loaded and is responsible for any damage done, regardless of what anyone else may have told him about the condition of the firearm.

So, guys, before making that decision to deploy, please remember that the 2nd ammendment is a right, but it carries with is some very heavy responsibilities! And, it s always useful to remember the basic WMD rule: Trust, but VERIFY!

I would add one comment, however, in this case. The decision here to deploy was a MUTUAL one, and it seems reasonable and fair to me that both parties should share the responsibility for and mitigation of the damages.

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In the tone of Nelson Muntz, the tough kid from the Simpsons: "Hah hah!"

And now, let the School of Reality begin.

When two people engage in sexual intercourse, pregnancy is one potential common result that should not come as a surprise to either party. As long as the activity was consensual, each party is 100% responsible for the result.

Gestation is a process that occurs entirely within the body of the woman. As the process owner, the woman deserves all rights involving decisions of continuation or termination of that process.

If special circumstances exist, such as in Texas, that allow the rights and responsibilities to be apportioned according to the terms of some sort of contractual agreement, then so be it. Where such conditions do not exist, my first two rules should apply.


Men:
Quit whining. If you don't want to be fathers, or to have the responsibilities (financial or otherwise) of fatherhood, exercise the choices available to you or suffer the consequences.

Women:
If you think that the guy with whom you're considering having sex is a right-wing fascist or some sort of misguided (leftist? I think not... misguided is all) whacko who thinks he should have some right to control your body, either to force you to carry a pregnancy to term or to have an abortion, please do not have sex with that man. Men who are not willing to allow women to make their own health and reproductive decisions need to be bred out of existence. Please do not continue allowing them to propagate.

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Men: If you truly do not EVER want to be a parent, get a vasectomy and have tests a few weeks/months later to make sure the surgery was successful... AND use condoms to try to eliminate the risk of STDs or HIV-AIDS. (A man need not tell a woman with whom he has a casual relationship with that he has had a vasectomy, but he can also prove he's not the father if a paternity suit comes his way, too, and the whole issue of child support is taken care of if it's proven that the vasectomy was successful and he can't sire a child.)

Women: If you truly do not want to EVER become a parent, never want to have to face the decision about what to do if you get pregnant (abortion vs adoption vs morning-after pill - if you could find a doctor and pharmacist who don't impose their moral decisions on your rights and face maybe not being given a prescription for birth control pills or morning after pills), have a tubal ligation... AND make sure all other forms of birth control and condoms are used by you and your partner to try to eliminate the risk of STDs or HIV-AIDS.

(1) The risk of a woman getting pregnant is eliminated and neither the man nor the woman have to worry about all the other "what-ifs" that won't happen.

(2) The risk of getting sexually transmitted diseases or HIV-AIDS is greatly reduced (still possible if care is not taken, but greatly reduced in casual sexual encounters).

(3) You can still enjoy your sexuality and fun and games in bed....

Take responsibility for your own body, whether a woman or a man. Eliminate the risk of pregnancy and none of the attendant potential parental issues will ever knock on your door....

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Three times in my life a girlfriend has told me she was on the pill, even showing them to me. Each of those, I learned she wasn't taking them or had quit and declined to tell me in hopes of getting pregnant. I caught it each time, and, as we had agreed we didn't want kids at this point beforehand and each had tried to entrap me, I imediately broke up with them.

A friend wasn't so lucky and paid child support for eighteen years. The woman never understood why he wouldn't just "come home" and "be a family". He missed out on the rest of college and, between legal fees, child support, etc, lived a fairly poor life until his death a few years ago.

So - what's fair here?

Ian

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I've always felt that the logic of RoevWade demanded that men should be able to terminate their obligation to a pregnant women by recommending an abortion. How can we maintain that women have the right to decide that parenthood isn't right for them, but men do not? I'll grant you that women face a bigger challenge - they actually have to deliver the kid, after all - but the same essential logic holds.

I've known women who intentionally got pregnant for a variety of psychological and other reasons - they duped men into getting them pregnant. It's time our legal system recognizes this as the crime it is, and gives men basic freedom and punishes these women as the criminals they are!

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I decided long before I reached the age of majority that children weren't a priority and might never be. I couldn't get a tubal ligation, however, until I was in my late forties, and then only because I had a job with excellent health insurance and needed surgery to remove an ovarian cyst anyway.

I never felt "baby hunger," and I wonder, with an overpopulated world one of only many problems facing a new generation, why women just HAVE to have the kid. I know women who do just use men as sperm donors, even when they marry them.

I don't support making men pay for children they don't want, unless they betray the woman by promising to support the child and then reneging. I realize this is not easy to prove one way or another.

One reason I knew I shouldn't have children was my only recognized reason for wanting one: to see a little copy of me running around. To go back in time and see what I looked like once.

So why do women want children so much they'll seduce and defraud? Is this rational behavior? Are we really at the mercy of raging hormones? That's something we usually blame on men.

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I suppose that to be accurate men and women share one choice in regards to procreation (whether or not to have sex), but only women have that second choice - whether or not to terminate the pregnancy. I suppose you could view that as "unfair," since if a woman decides to continue a pregnancy it can at the very least have some significant financial consequences not just for her, but for the male partner who lacked input in that second decision.

But so what? The most significant result of changing that equation would be shifting the burden of sharing the financial cost from the adult male to the child, who had no input into the process whatsoever. Would that be "fair?" I don't think so. At least most states now acknowledge that the father has some right to share in the parenting of the child, which I'd think would be reasonable compensation for any healthy human being.

So yeah, maybe it's a little unfair but I don't see any reasonable way to change that.

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Look at what they do, not at what they say.

They spend most of their time trying to convince everyone they should be able to opt out of parental responsibility AFTER their partner gets pregnant.

How many men are active in a men's rights group BEFORE they are stuck with 18 years of child support?

They spend little, if any, time petitioning medical researchers for a male birth control pill to PREVENT unwanted fatherhood. In fact, they only began talking about more effective male bc AFTER this hypocrisy was pointed out.

They say they don't want the responsibility of children, but won't wear a condom when given the opportunity to PREVENT unwanted fatherhood.

Considering child support is for 18 years, why would an intelligent man not take every precaution available to him, REGARDLESS of his partner's reproductive status?

Freezing sperm prior to a vasectomy is not even considered as an option for most of these men's rights advocates. A vasectomy can be done in 30 minutes with a day or two of slight discomfort. Most men do not bother to do the two and twelve month checkups, which will catch ALL the oops-it-didn't-takes.

Men! If you sincerely don't want kids, and you refuse to take advantage of the only real birth control option available to you at this time (condoms are only 85% effective), why would you expect any rational person to take your claims seriously?

Sorry, I have little sympathy for illogical hypocrites.

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Arrrgh, dude. That really is a very slippery slope you propose. I only thought about it for a few minutes. I'm sure I could come up with even more heinous suggestions with a little more thought.

Force people to donate organs without their consent.
Force men to pre-freeze sperm and obtain vasectomy.
Force people to donate their body to science.

Force all stupid people to remain childless.
Force intelligent people to have more children.

Forcing someone to give up control over their own body and what is done to it in order to benefit someone else is a terrible idea.

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Women are the ones who decide whether or not to carry a child to term, not men. Women are the ones who choose whether or not to abort, not men. These are womens choices, not mens. Women choose whether or not to have the children, not men. Men should not be held responsible for the reproductive choices of women.

Many people mistakenly assume that the choice to have sex is the same as the choice to have children. That simply isn't true. Maybe back in medieval times when contraception and abortion weren't really options (at least not like today) it may have been possible to argue that the choice to have sex was at least a choice to take a large risk of becoming a parent. Birth control and abortion have severed the tie between sex and childbirth.

Becoming a parent is a *choice*. The way the laws are written the choice to become a parent is entirely the womans. That needs to change. It's true that men choose to have sex with women but, as I've already said, that is not the same thing as choosing to become a parent. The woman is the one who makes that choice when she chooses to bear the child. That's not the mans choice in anyway. He shouldn't be held responsible for it. A man shouldn't be held responsible as a parent unless he chose to become a parent. Laws that hold a man responsible as a father simply because he chose to have sex are holdovers from more primitive times and have no place in the modern world.

All justice is political. This mans case never had a chance because the laws still reflect the sexist notion that men are responsible for supporting women and the children they choose to have. However, this case did draw attention to the Mens movement. With that attention will come more support and more funds. Eventually, the Mens movement will become powerful enough to challenge the incumbent Womens lobby and its wholly owned subsidiary, the family court. When that happens we'll start to see some real equality between men and women as women are held wholly responsible for their own reproductive choices and are not able to use the legal system to rob, rape, and ruin men in an effort to provide undeserved financial support for themselves. Women will finally have to stand on their own, independently, without any men and take responsibility for their own choices and actions. Yes, I am looking forward to that sort of equality. I think, however, many women are not.

Men are tired of being shortchanged on issues of reproductive rights, divorce, child custody, and marriage. I know that there are many feminists who will go out of their way to avoid seeing the legitimacy of mens frustration with the way they are unfairly treated by the law with respect to these issues. To them I can only say, "I don't care about you." That sums it up nicely, because I really don't. These women certainly don't care about men, or what men believe to be fair. What right do they have to expect that men should care about them or their needs? None. I believe, as men, we should stop worrying about these women and let them fend for themselves.

Women have been organizing in pursuit of their own selfish interests for literally decades. It's time that men did the same. It's time that men stood up and made an unashamed effort to lobby for their own interests with respect to law and policy. There are some feminists who believe that the needs of men and women are in some ways mutually incompatible and even ultimately, in some ways, irreconcilable. I agree with this. What follows from this is not that men should simply surrender to the demands of the feminists, but rather that we should organize ourselves and do whatever is necessary to ensure that the laws reflect our interests and our needs. If we, as men, don't take this initiative we can be sure that the feminists will arrange the laws to their benefit at our expense. After all, it's already happened - a fact that many men learn too late.

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