tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post2248523077789363643..comments2024-03-12T22:31:46.500-04:00Comments on What Would Phoebe Do?: When (cis) men can get pregnant, we'll talkPhoebe Maltz Bovyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17996039330841139883noreply@blogger.comBlogger38125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-27487845690372481162013-06-17T10:42:35.316-04:002013-06-17T10:42:35.316-04:00choiceone, I agree with most of what you say, exce...choiceone, I agree with most of what you say, except:<br />1) breastfeeding is not an adequate reason to give a woman custody. It's only beneficial till around six months of age. And what if she can't or doesn't want to breastfeed?<br />2) A man should be asked to consent to paternity or not well before a birth certificate exists--ideally before pregnancy. But this again gets into the problem I mentioned, that so few people really discuss these things beforehand, and so few make fully conscious and thought-out decisions. Hence why women still need abortion even though they have access to birth control. But I can't see what the male equivalent would be.caryatisnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-86647824869155310152013-06-17T09:41:52.974-04:002013-06-17T09:41:52.974-04:00My rationale works rather like a good old abortion...My rationale works rather like a good old abortion rights argument, but with additions. <br /><br />If the woman wants to continue the pregnancy but give the child up for adoption, the man has the right to keep the child. If she wants to keep the child, he has the right to visitation. She has custody because breastfeeding is in the interest of the child's health. He has the right to custody if she is found to be an unfit mother. <br /><br /><br />The man should not be compelled to pay child support unless the woman lets him off the hook or have his name on the birth certificate. He should have the right to opt out, and that would, in fact, be an equivalent of the right to choose abortion.<br /><br />Why should the man not have a right to force the woman to continue the pregnancy? For the same reason that the government does not have that right. If you don't like the polite Supreme Court decision, go read Judith Jarvis Thompson or Eileen McDonagh. <br /><br />Even if the zygote~fetus were declared a person in law, it simply has no legal right to use the woman's body for life support because no person (not even your born kids) has the right to do that without your consen. <br /><br />And consent to sex really isn't consent to pregnancy. Consent to sex is consent to a specific penetration for a limited duration by a specific person, not to that person's kids, different types of penetration, and a 9-month period.<br /><br />The pro-choice argument will always win legally.choiceonehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13880806503220006006noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-14570207267839882732013-06-14T22:31:11.916-04:002013-06-14T22:31:11.916-04:00Phoebe: I never told you that you were too young t...Phoebe: I never told you that you were too young to understand anything. The only time I brought up age was to remark that I changed my mind on abortion after I was older than you are now. I suppose I can see how you could take that as an age argument, but obviously there are plenty of people my age who either A) changed their minds the other way or B) still have the same opinion they have always had. (Indeed, that latter category is surely the most numerous.) Changing my mind didn't have anything to do with what age I was; I just mentioned what age I was so you didn't think I changed my mind when I was 18 or something. An 18 year old changing his mind wouldn't necessarily refute your argument that "these are, alas, impossible to win for all involved" since presumably you would already freely grant that very young people are an obvious exception.<br /><br />My own meta-ethical positions predicts that people will sometimes have irresolvable moral conflicts so I sympathize with your position that this could be one of them. But arguments from analogy, thought experiments, and appeals to more basic intuitions can have a very long reach. For example, I think a lot of people do buy the argument Chris linked to above, but my analogy (along with a distinction between duties of beneficience and non-maleficience) knocks it flat. I don't expect that to change very many people's minds since they probably have other arguments for their position as well and are simply using that as a convenient argument, but I at least would expect them to realize the flaw in that particular argument.Andrew Stevenshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13453328821252013152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-37561372348158703452013-06-14T12:37:33.788-04:002013-06-14T12:37:33.788-04:00I'm sympathetic to the men's-rights argume...I'm sympathetic to the men's-rights argument here. The problem is that so few men or women are ever completely upfront about whether they want a child, especially with casual sex. So it's a little disingenuous for a man who never even talked about potential pregnancy with a woman to claim he did not consent to being a father. But it's not fair for a woman to have a child without bothering to inform its father of her intent. <br /><br />I mean, the solution would be for everyone to adopt my ultra-cautious middle-class values and use effective birth control and have conversations about their intent. Not a realistic solution, though.<br /><br />I do think it might actually be better for low-income women if there was no assumption that a child's father must automatically pay child support. Could this encourage women to be more selective about who they reproduce with? Maybe men who explicitly say they would be willing to fill a parental role would be better fathers and better, longer-lasting partners than men who become fathers solely because their girlfriends happened to get pregnant.caryatisnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-5881397280994358262013-06-14T12:17:54.448-04:002013-06-14T12:17:54.448-04:00Ideally, shouldn't men ask women about birth c...Ideally, shouldn't men ask women about birth control before having sex? Seems like the sensible thing to do, yet I don't think I've had that conversation with any man after the first.caryatisnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-7062402954081650662013-06-14T10:47:06.154-04:002013-06-14T10:47:06.154-04:00Andrew,
The way the age card works is, if you get...Andrew,<br /><br />The way the age card works is, if you get to tell me I'm too young to understand A, then I get to tell you you're too old to remember B. (Actually, I have no idea how old you are, and am inclined to assume personal experience here is far too subjective to be of much use - certainly personal in terms of the level you've now brought this to - and that age is irrelevant to our opinions here.)<br /><br />More substantively, I wouldn't be so quick to assume higher socioeconomic status means fewer casual encounters. If anything, I think the issue is, among the rich/relatively rich/fancy-college-going, there's a mutual sense on the part of young men and women alike that things must be strictly casual. And there's less likely to be a situation where a 19-year-old woman thinks this guy is The One and she should have his kid. And what the men in this situation think their level of commitment is might not match up with things they've said in the heat of the moment.<br /><br />But this was funny to me, in the comments to that op-ed, the notion that upper-class/UMC people have very few sex partners. I'd thought the stereotype was that there's this hook-up culture that now extends beyond college. I had no idea this parallel stereotype of that class as altogether chaste existed. The reality's probably somewhere in between, with plenty of individuals at both extremes. And of course, not all sexual encounters are going to involve an act that could lead to pregnancy.Phoebe Maltz Bovyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17996039330841139883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-34829604149426000592013-06-14T10:34:12.126-04:002013-06-14T10:34:12.126-04:00Phoebe: I remember well the young and reckless sta...Phoebe: I remember well the young and reckless stage of my life. In 90% of my sexual encounters which could have resulted in pregnancy, I had no commitment to the woman whatsoever. It's not that I don't recall feeling serious and committed in certain specific relationships which, in retrospect, were doomed, but that I think you are underrating how many casual sexual encounters occur, particularly in those social groups where pregnancy occurs most often.Andrew Stevenshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13453328821252013152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-8090097800358723672013-06-14T09:30:09.851-04:002013-06-14T09:30:09.851-04:00Andrew,
What I'm trying to convey - and here ...Andrew,<br /><br />What I'm trying to convey - and here I, in turn, might play the age card, as the young-and-reckless stage of life probably does seem more recent to me, if, as you say, I'm younger than you are - is that there are relationships that feel very serious when you're 16, 19, etc., but that by adult standards are clearly doomed to fail. <br /><br />All,<br /><br />I think we need to look at the default scenario as indeed an unintentional pregnancy. Not as trickery - which, remember, can come from either party - but as an unintended (if not entirely unpredictable) outcome. <br /><br />In that case, no man can <i>ever, ever</i> know what <i>he</i> would do if this were happening in his uterus. (Again, the pregnant transmen exception.) Nor, for that matter, can women who've never been pregnant unintentionally know that because they are pro-choice, they <i>would</i> have an abortion - or, conversely, that because they think abortion is wrong, they wouldn't have one under certain circumstances. Not because men lack empathy, or because women change their mind all the time. Because the profundity of things this important happening <i>inside your own body</i>, of all of this <i>being you</i>, is just that great. Point being, no man can really say what he would do if this weren't just a kid, but a pregnancy. <br /><br />And for Petey, re: gender equality, there's the fact that a) that utopia has yet to arrive, and b) the great question of who's to make sure this woman isn't living in the gutter when pregnancy and having a young baby make her incapable of working for however long. A really robust socialism could be your answer - if it straight-up didn't matter if there was a second parent helping with the bills. But we're talking about the country we live in.Phoebe Maltz Bovyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17996039330841139883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-3794983917548686132013-06-14T08:27:14.455-04:002013-06-14T08:27:14.455-04:00"But back to burden-shifting, it makes it so ...<i>"But back to burden-shifting, it makes it so that men are more attentive to the possible unintended outcomes of sex. This, in turn, helps women, because it means men are more likely to use contraception, and not to refuse to wear a condom because what does it matter, any resulting kid isn't they're responsibility, right? It makes contraception a conversation a man and a woman need to have, as opposed to something only the woman must think about."</i><br /><br />That conversation indeed is needed to be had.<br /><br />And let's stipulate that all civilized folks agree that what a women does with her body is strictly her own business.<br /><br />But once the woman makes that decision, how does it completely trump a man's ability to have any choice in the financial ramifications?<br /><br />There is something called the marriage contract, which gives a man the <b>choice</b> to participate financially in any offspring.<br /><br />But absent that contract, or any kind of theoretical sub-marriage 'reproductive contract', the choice of financial responsibility is simply taken away from the man without any consent.<br /><br />Unplanned pregnancy outside of marriage from the man's POV can occur through accident, negligence on the part of either partner, or indeed, deception on the part of either partner. At that point, <b>all</b> choice in terms of financial ramifications is vested in the woman, with <b>zero</b> choice vested in the man.<br /><br />That seems kinda screwed up to me. Again, I'm all for a woman to have full choice over her body, but the full "burden-shifting" in terms of financial ramifications you advocate is problematic on many levels in a world where gender equality is valued.<br /><br />Solutions to the problem are not obvious. But giving women sole discretionary power over the financial ramifications for their unmarried partners over a pregnancy conceived under any possible conditions (including non-consensual on the part of the man) seems poorly thought out to me. And if one gets deeper into the implications behind the impulse, it seems antagonistic to the broader gender equality project.Peteynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-66859133186948244482013-06-13T23:58:20.300-04:002013-06-13T23:58:20.300-04:00This is your best argument against, in my opinion....<i> This is your best argument against, in my opinion. A strong pragmatic argument. </i><br /><br />Agreed. My main objection was to "no one forces a man to have the kind of sex with a woman that can lead to the conception of a child", which like Andrew I think of as an old and (unlike Andrew?) wrong pro-life argument. I'm still not convinced, but I think it's a more sensible argument.<br /><br />And since I'm gay and none of this really affects me at all, this seems like as good a place as any to bow out.Chrisnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-12950262605752801312013-06-13T23:40:33.886-04:002013-06-13T23:40:33.886-04:00I said "never once," but she did actuall...I said "never once," but she did actually mention it in a parenthetical aside. Sorry for the hyperbole. I do totally disagree that was the <i>tone</i> of the article.Andrew Stevenshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13453328821252013152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-56685846149017636642013-06-13T23:39:38.520-04:002013-06-13T23:39:38.520-04:00Anyway, I think where this discussion went wrong f...<i>Anyway, I think where this discussion went wrong from the get-go - that is, from the op-ed - is that there was this odd presumption that these are typically cases of women tricking one-night-stands into impregnating them, and then gold-digging these men's often paltry incomes.</i><br /><br />Absolutely disagree with you here. She never once talked about women tricking men. She was talking about the reality of illegitimate children which is two young kids, not at all as likely as you think to be committed to each other, having recreational sex and the woman ends up pregnant. As she also pointed out, most of the "gold-digging" isn't being done by the <i>women</i>, but by the <i>government</i> trying to get reimbursed for the welfare payments it has made to the child (or trying to stop the child being eligible for welfare payments).Andrew Stevenshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13453328821252013152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-55015880312896317502013-06-13T23:35:49.909-04:002013-06-13T23:35:49.909-04:00Phoebe: Happy to leave it there. Didn't mean ...Phoebe: Happy to leave it there. Didn't mean to derail. (However, on the contrary, I was pro-choice until I was older than you are now. And then I read Don Marquis's Futures Like Ours argument and was compelled to accept the logic of his position.)<br /><br />My original point was, if we accept Chris's (and your?) pro-choice view, it seems to me that entails the arguments made in that article. However, I was principally making a Devil's Advocate argument and I'm happy to leave it to a true believer.<br /><br /><i>But back to burden-shifting, it makes it so that men are more attentive to the possible unintended outcomes of sex. This, in turn, helps women, because it means men are more likely to use contraception, and not to refuse to wear a condom because what does it matter, any resulting kid isn't they're responsibility, right? It makes contraception a conversation a man and a woman need to have, as opposed to something only the woman must think about.</i><br /><br />This is your best argument against, in my opinion. A strong pragmatic argument.Andrew Stevenshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13453328821252013152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-18797364275301328412013-06-13T23:34:22.736-04:002013-06-13T23:34:22.736-04:00Chris,
I think we need to yank this conversation ...Chris,<br /><br />I think we need to yank this conversation back to the real-life situations this is about. Yes, there are women who trick men into impregnating them, and yes, that's despicable. Yes, there are men, too, who do sneaky things with contraception, thereby impregnating women who are just dandy with protected recreational sex, but who would not have/would rather avoid having an abortion. <br /><br />But what do we think is typical? More likely, I suspect, a young man and woman are oh so very in love, OMG going to be together forever, even if it's just been a month. Vague promises are made, but no legal commitments. The man bails before the baby is born. The woman has already gotten it into her head that she's going to be a <i>mom</i>, and she's going to have the child of a man she once felt strongly for and might still. But kids are expensive, and mean time off work. In some earlier incarnation of our society - as I think one of the NYT commenters points out (not that I've gotten to all those comments!) - a shotgun might force the man to stay put. The law doesn't do nearly as much, but does force the man to do a bare minimum. In principle, this channels some money to a child, keeping said child out of poverty.<br /><br />Anyway, I think where this discussion went wrong from the get-go - that is, from the op-ed - is that there was this odd presumption that these are typically cases of women tricking one-night-stands into impregnating them, and then gold-digging these men's often paltry incomes. Phoebe Maltz Bovyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17996039330841139883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-77190851178137677662013-06-13T23:30:24.977-04:002013-06-13T23:30:24.977-04:00Oops. Meant to add "for financial reasons&quo...Oops. Meant to add "for financial reasons" to "People make decisions about parenthood all the time."Chrisnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-64329783679634055022013-06-13T23:19:36.180-04:002013-06-13T23:19:36.180-04:00Phoebe, I guess I find that a very strange argumen...Phoebe, I guess I find that a very strange argument on two levels. I don't really see what the harm is if someone has an abortion "they don't want" if they're financially constrained. People make decisions about parenthood all the time. Once you're committed (as we both seemingly are) to the view that abortion is morally permissible, I don't really see why having an abortion based on financial decisions is any tragedy at all. <br /><br />And I don't see how a woman having to bear the child is a risk. She's choosing the child and after all, she could have just not had sex just like the man. Wasn't the objection to the NYTimes article in the first place? <br /><br />Andrew, fair enough, I think that argument is clearly wrong, but it's an aside to what we're talking about here, so I don't want to get distracted here.Chrisnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-38994448112885258262013-06-13T23:19:34.037-04:002013-06-13T23:19:34.037-04:00Andrew,
You've diverted a related question in...Andrew,<br /><br />You've diverted a related question into a regular ol' abortion debate, and these are, alas, impossible to win for all involved. Either you think a fetus can be murdered or you do not. Either you think it's a big deal that the fetus happens to reside in a woman (impacting her hormonally, physically, etc.), or you think it's a relatively minor inconvenience to that woman - kind of like a backpack. (On this front, consider here the 'pro-life' women who get abortions when it's <i>their</i> womb a fetus has taken up residence in.) Personally, I see a <i>huge</i>, incalculable distinction between a potential baby that's inside a woman's uterus and a baby that is not inside anyone's body. But hey, that's just me (and apparently some other people as well.) You don't (and apparently some others agree with you). I won't convince you, and you won't convince me. I respect your opinion, and that's where I'll have to leave this.Phoebe Maltz Bovyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17996039330841139883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-53644064413394917192013-06-13T23:05:46.268-04:002013-06-13T23:05:46.268-04:00Chris,
It reduces the risk that a woman will be f...Chris,<br /><br />It reduces the risk that a woman will be forced to take on the full financial burden of raising a kid. Which is important both because of what women earn relative to men, and because a woman who's just had a baby might be incapacitated for a while/might well need to look after said baby. <br /><br />And yes, it might well lead a woman to have an abortion she didn't want to have if she realized she had no way to support the child. Yes, I get that in theory, those who believe abortion is murder would never ever have one. In practice, it seems not to work that way.<br /><br />But back to burden-shifting, it makes it so that men are more attentive to the possible unintended outcomes of sex. This, in turn, helps women, because it means men are more likely to use contraception, and not to refuse to wear a condom because what does it matter, any resulting kid isn't they're responsibility, right? It makes contraception a conversation a man and a woman need to have, as opposed to something only the woman must think about.Phoebe Maltz Bovyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17996039330841139883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-19724993377886503672013-06-13T23:03:50.916-04:002013-06-13T23:03:50.916-04:00Phoebe: I agree that this is a rights-balancing si...Phoebe: I agree that this is a rights-balancing situation. I'm not saying the woman doesn't have <i>any</i> rights, but a very grave harm is being done to the fetus when it is aborted. The fetus is being deprived of all possible future experiences. This is why it's wrong to kill Andrew or Phoebe. Because doing so is to deprive us of our futures. Killing the fetus is the worst possible thing that can happen to it. In the vast majority of cases, the harm done to the woman (and the man who may have to take responsibility for a child he did not want) through violation of their autonomy is small by comparison. However, certainly there are situations where the fetus's right not to be deprived of its future can be counterbalanced. But, <i>prima facie</i>, killing a fetus is seriously wrong.<br /><br />Chris: The answer to your "craziness" argument is that this is logically equivalent to saying, "People die of diseases and accidents all the time. Therefore, people don't have rights." Imagine we lived in a pandemic situation where the Black Death was sweeping through the area and we know that 80% of us will die in the next nine months. Do none of us have any rights? It would be all right to just come in and slaughter us all?<br /><br />Note, though, that my pro-life argument is not a "sanctity of human life" view (which does lead to obvious contradictions) and certainly has nothing whatsoever to do with theology (I'm an atheist and am entirely uninterested in the question of whether fetuses "go to Heaven" since I don't think there is any such place). It also has nothing to do with "personhood" which I regard as a philosophical fiction. In my view, fetuses, infants, Andrew, Phoebe, and Chris are all just biological organisms.Andrew Stevenshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13453328821252013152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-46479862195195575182013-06-13T22:59:40.359-04:002013-06-13T22:59:40.359-04:00But the law can do its part to shift some of the r...<i> But the law can do its part to shift some of the risk from women to men. </i><br /><br />How has it shifted risk in this case? It has <i>created</i> risk, relative to what it would be if the man could avoid paternity. The risk of someone being responsible for a child they do not want. I guess I don't necessarily see why equality of risk is preferable to reduction of risk and of harm.<br /><br />I'm also confused by this: "nor does she need to worry herself with the possibility that some other entity - the man she slept with, the state - will force her not to bear a possible child". But as far as I can tell, the author in the NYTimes piece has no interest in forcing anyone <i>not</i> to bear a child, and I don't really see why you keep bringing that up. If the man declined paternity, she's absolutely as free to have the child or not as she was before. True, she'd be on the hook financially for more I suppose. But that's the exact same risk we're talking about men having here.Chrisnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-77963405964914613242013-06-13T22:48:24.837-04:002013-06-13T22:48:24.837-04:00Chris,
Here's how I see it: it is, was, and a...Chris,<br /><br />Here's how I see it: it is, was, and always will be more of a risk for women to be sexually-active than for men to be the same. Far more is at stake, due to biology as well as culture. Pregnancy, STDs, and rape - these are not symmetrical risks. But the law can do its part to shift some of the risk from women to men. And the way that works, in this case, is that a woman does not need to think of every sexual encounter as potentially leading to a child she does not want (in theory - assuming she has access to abortion), nor does she need to worry herself with the possibility that some other entity - the man she slept with, the state - will force her <i>not</i> to bear a possible child. Given that all of this is happening <i>in her body</i>, it's not so wildly unfair that she'd get to make these determinations.<br /><br />Now, is it unfair that a man who sleeps with women will have no say in what comes of a possibly-conceived fetus? (In terms of "no one forces a man to have the kind of sex with a woman that can lead to the conception of a child," it does also need to be said - as I've said elsewhere here - that a man who thinks any fetus he's co-created must stay put is in a similar bind.) There are different ways to look at this. One is that it's unfair, but a lesser evil. Another is that it forces men... not to avoid being promiscuous, but to at least communicate enough with casual partners so as to kinda-sorta know who they're dealing with.<br /><br />What could potentially make the op-ed writer happy and solve the dilemma is if there were some provision for cases where a woman really does lie about contraception as vs., contraception can fail. But this would be tough to prove. <br /><br />Andrew,<br /><br />Of what consequence do you think it is that this human being (as you see it), the fetus, resides in the woman, the (potential) mother? That's the easy answer to "Why should she have this unilateral right?" Because it's happening in/to her body, and not anyone else's.Phoebe Maltz Bovyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17996039330841139883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-20354164219592307772013-06-13T22:37:09.657-04:002013-06-13T22:37:09.657-04:00I don't actually - as my earlier parenthetical...<i>I don't actually - as my earlier parenthetical remarks indicated - think it's a given that this issue doesn't arise under a framework where everyone agrees a fetus is a person with rights. That same framework might well also place all the responsibility for an unplanned pregnancy - and the almost inevitably resulting child - on the woman.</i><br /><br />If a fetus has rights, the moral logic is compelling - a creature with rights already exists and the parents share responsibility for the child. However, it might be all right for one parent or the other to "adopt out" their rights and responsibilities to somebody else, if they could find someone to assume it. To their parents, for example, or to anyone else who wished to assume those responsibilities. But nobody would have the right to simply abandon the child (that would be murder), so both parents would have a moral duty to the child.Andrew Stevenshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13453328821252013152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-3345369665243860152013-06-13T22:33:50.372-04:002013-06-13T22:33:50.372-04:00Let me be a little more clear. We have a fetus. ...Let me be a little more clear. We have a fetus. At least at the point that the fetus can be easily aborted, this fetus has no rights. The woman who is harboring the fetus <i>chooses</i>, by not aborting it, to create a being who has rights. Why should she have this unilateral right? Why should this decision have any bearing on anybody else? There is no requirement, not a legal one and, in the pro-choice view, not a moral one either, for her to bring the child to term or raise the child if she does so. She is doing so entirely for her own reasons. So, as long as the child is in the womb, why shouldn't the father have the right to legally abort it? (By which I mean simply sever his paternal rights and responsibilities, not actually killing it.) By what logic should we be compelling him to bring the child to term against his will? Why should he support a child he did not want, did not ask for, and would prefer had been aborted? Isn't that nearly the entire pro-choice argument for why <i>women</i> should be allowed to have abortions? In other words, why shouldn't men, just as women, be allowed to abort their children? Again, nobody is arguing that the woman should be <i>forced</i> to abort against her will. Just that if she chooses not to abort, that's entirely her decision and entirely her responsibility.<br /><br />Let me flip it around a bit. Let us imagine a young couple where the woman got pregnant. She doesn't mind <i>having</i> the child, but doesn't want to raise it. He both wants to have and raise the child. Would it be all right for the two of them to make an agreement that she will bring the child to term, but then she would be allowed to sever all personal responsibility for the child? I.e. he couldn't ask her for child support or anything like that. Would <i>that</i> be all right? If not, why not? If so, how is that different from a mother choosing to have a child which the father does not wish to raise?<br /><br />This is why I asked what your meta-ethical position was. Because I'm just not following an argument like: "If men have not default consented to co-parent, what do we then do if a man wants nothing more than to co-parent the just-conceived fetus now residing in a woman who wants nothing to do with him or it? He also hasn't consented to an abortion. Which does get tricky. If men who favor consequence-free sex have these rights, presumably so too do men who think every last one of their sperm is sacred."<br /><br />But, no, the pro-choice side argues (and always has argued): it <i>doesn't</i> matter that the man thinks the fetus has rights, because he is wrong and the fetus <i>has no rights</i>. This is the whole justification for why abortion isn't wrong. I've never heard anybody before argue "a fetus has rights if the woman harboring it says it does and doesn't if she says it doesn't." I don't even know what to make of such a position. I guess it's some sort of extreme version of ethical subjectivism, but I honestly can't tell.Andrew Stevenshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13453328821252013152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-46567555918106546202013-06-13T22:07:21.036-04:002013-06-13T22:07:21.036-04:00Meggie,
Solidarity in interest, and bafflement, a...Meggie,<br /><br />Solidarity in interest, and bafflement, always welcome.<br /><br />Further to Andrew,<br /><br />I don't actually - as my earlier parenthetical remarks indicated - think it's a given that this issue doesn't arise under a framework where everyone agrees a fetus is a person with rights. That same framework might well also place all the responsibility for an unplanned pregnancy - and the almost inevitably resulting child - on the woman. Phoebe Maltz Bovyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17996039330841139883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-13958231863794314082013-06-13T22:04:23.999-04:002013-06-13T22:04:23.999-04:00(Long time reader and very occasional commenter). ...(Long time reader and very occasional commenter). Phoebe, I guess I'm confused why you're confused. You said <i>no one forces a man to have the kind of sex with a woman that can lead to the conception of a child</i>. Andrew, quite correctly, points out that this precise argument is made routinely by pro-life advocates. <br /><br />Now, you think that because a woman is the one who has to carry the baby to term, she should have the right to terminate the pregnancy. (I agree she should have the right, and also agree that no man should be able to force her either to carry a pregnancy to term.) But it doesn't necessarily follow that the man shouldn't have the right to avoid parental responsibilities. As far as I can tell, the argument that he shouldn't be able to is "he could avoid sex." Which goes right back to where we started...<br /><br />Of course being pregnant when one doesn't want to be is a harm. But so is being on the hook for a child you don't want. Bodily autonomy is important, but violating it is hardly the only possible harm. (The crass economist in me would calculate the price of surrogate pregnancies as the "cost" to compare the magnitude of the harms, although I don't really believe that.) <br /> <br />(Disclaimer(?) I'm as pro-choice as they come, largely because I think the pro-life position leads to self-evidently <a href="http://reason.com/archives/2004/12/22/is-heaven-populated-chiefly-by" rel="nofollow">crazy</a> positions.)Chrisnoreply@blogger.com