Choice
A scenario: Tom and Sally have sex. Sally gets pregnant. Assuming they don’t get married, what happens? Sally can abort the fetus or not. If not, she can give the child up for adoption or not. If not, Tom can pay child support or not. How should they decide what to do?
I think it is completely Sally’s decision whether to have an abortion. I don’t think this is obvious though. The potential child she’s carrying would be a shared child. At least after the child is born, they’d have roughly equal rights to it, so perhaps they should have equal rights to the fetus as well. Tom may see an abortion as killing his child. Nevertheless, as wicked_wish put it, she’s effectively carrying a life-threatening parasite, and nobody else has the right to force her to do it for nine months. However, her decision to abort or not may be informed by external circumstances, as I’ll discuss next.
The decision to give the child up for adoption is shared. Neither parent has the exclusive right to raise the child, and neither has the right to prevent or force the other to raise it. I think this is obvious, but I’d be happy to hear any disagreement.
I think the decision to pay child support is entirely up to Tom. If Tom didn’t want a kid, Sally has no right to force one on him. Of course, he should make this decision early, before Sally decides whether to abort, and if he decides not to help support the kid, it is simply no longer his child: he gets no parental rights. A promise to help support the kid should be legally and ethically binding even if he changes his mind later. But if Tom doesn’t want a child, and makes that known early, he is not a deadbeat dad
.
I’m not sure what should happen if Sally doesn’t want to financially support the child, but Tom wants to keep it, and she wants to keep her parental rights. She bore the child for nine months, which should count for something, but a child costs a lot to raise, probably more than the worth of nine months of time, even nine pregnant months. It feels wrong to talk of buying parental rights, but it could be the right way to handle this. You pay $X, you get so much parental rights. The nine months of pregnancy should count as hazardous duty (double/triple normal salary?), but perhaps aren’t anything qualitatively different.
I don’t really know how child support is handled now, so the last two paragraphs may be totally off-base. But I’m sure someone among my readers will have an idea. Comments/flames here.
The problem with a situation wherein the father wants the child but the mother does not is very problematic because of the HUGE amount of connectedness a mother has with an unborn child. It is literally part of her. Unless we somehow came up with a techno-uterus whereby we could remove a fetus from a woman’s womb and allow it to gestate in the techno-uterus, I think a woman should have the last word on all abortion issues (mostly because of the massive and non-reversible nature of the changes involved in a woman giving birth).
Now, if the mother and father can come to an agreement whereby the father wants the child and the mother doesn’t, but is willing to carry the child to term and then give him COMPLETE control of the child upon birth (I think there would most definately involve a legal document that transfers sole rights/obligations to the father). This would be hard to do because the mother may change her mind at birth if the form was signed beforehand, or if she changes her mind down the road and want to be a part of the child’s life.
Also, I think that if a mother wants the child and the father doesn’t (IE he advocates abortion), that there should also be room for an agreement whereby the mother accepts and agrees that she will be the sole parent for the child, and allows the father to sign away all rights/obligations to said child.
Of course, all of my speculation is centered around the parents actually AGREEING upon a situation, and I’m sure that rarely, if ever, actually happens in this kind of case.
I think that what I have to say may actually bring up more questions to ponder rather than answer any, but it’s something I think about.
Comment by seridia — 1/15/2006 @ 5:47 am UTC
seridia: As you said, agreement definitely won’t be reached in all cases, and maybe not even in most. My post was about what one parent could force the other to accept. I think (and agree with you) that a father may not force the mother either to have or not have an abortion. On the other hand, I think a mother may not force a father to pay child support if he says ahead of time that he doesn’t want to. In other words, if the father says up front that he doesn’t want to support this child, he can just walk away. He gives up certain rights in the process, of course, and probably has to sign something legally, but he’s not on the hook for anything. Then the mother has the choice to abort or give the child up for adoption if she cannot support it alone.
Comment by Jeffrey Yasskin — 1/15/2006 @ 8:39 am UTC
Just had to comment on this one
Ok so here is my two cents.
1. With modern medicine, few pregnancies are actually life threatening. In the US, about 1 out of 2500 mothers die in childbirth. If you want to talk about one of those cases, then ok. But what about the 2499 where it isn’t life threatening? Also, in some cases a vaginal delivery is life threatenng but not a planned c-section. How does that change the scales?
2. If Tom didn’t want a kid, and Sally went off the birth control w/o telling him, then I agree with you on the child support. I still think it would be the upright thing to do to be a Dad to the kid, because that would be in the child’s best interest. However, if Tom knew that Sally wasn’t on birthcontrol, or in the heat of the moment couldn’t be bothered with protection, then he is equally responsible and should pony up. Basically I think the circumstances of the conception come in to play on this issue.
3. As a mother, it bothers me that anyone would think to call a baby (or fetus) a parasite. Being pregnant, giving birth, and raising a child are some of the most wonderful, emotionally charged things a woman can do. You can never understand the boundless love a parent has for a child until you become a parent yourself. Maybe that’s why so many adoption laws give the biological parents 30 days to change their minds.
4. How do you think politics in the future (say a couple of generations from now) will change considering that:
a- people who consider children “parasites” aren’t likely to have many
b- right-wing nuts like myself will probably reproduce at above the national average
Comment by heartandcomfort — 1/15/2006 @ 8:42 am UTC
” think the decision to pay child support is entirely up to Tom. If Tom didn’t want a kid, Sally has no right to force one on him. Of course, he should make this decision early, before Sally decides whether to abort, and if he decides not to help support the kid, it is simply no longer his child: he gets no parental rights. A promise to help support the kid should be legally and ethically binding even if he changes his mind later. But if Tom doesn’t want a child, and makes that known early, he is not a deadbeat dad.”
here is the issue with that from a livingin Texas stand point …. if the mother does not disclose who the father is he is not responsible for child support(duh since we don’t “know”who that is). how ever …. in this state she would not be eligible for any support for her or her child ever - which sucks ….the state will compel the mother to name Tom as the father so that he can pay child support and that way they thing thaty won’t have to foot the bill.
i find that this is an idioic way of doing things - per haps the mother does not want the father in her life and that childs life, per haps as you suggest the father never wanted that baby in the 1st place he really should not have be resonsible for the child . ther my 2 cents on the one issue =)
Comment by Phoenix — 1/15/2006 @ 4:29 pm UTC
(to heartandcomfort) in a super techincal sence a baby is a parasite…. and a woman’s body reacts to it as such but - i do agree it is a wonderful experiance and a mother’s love knows no bounds
Comment by Phoenix — 1/15/2006 @ 4:46 pm UTC
heartandcomfort: By 1 and 3, do you mean that the father has the right to prevent the mother from getting an abortion? My first instinct would not be to call a fetus a parasite, and most pregnancies are not life-threatening (although you can’t know that in the first couple months, which are the best time to abort). But I wouldn’t be the one carrying it, so it’s not my call.
I just disagree with 2. If one parent tricked or coerced the other, of course the trick-ee has no obligations. But if they just weren’t careful, then the father should share the costs of only the cheapest reasonable method of “dealing with” the pregnancy. If the mother had no particular objections to abortions before, that’s an abortion. Otherwise, it may be the full cost of the pregnancy and adoption process, but nothing more. The mother doesn’t have the right to force a child on the father any more than he has the right to force one on her. (This is an amendment to my position in the post.)
4: We’ll just have to rely on the rightness of our ideas.
More seriously, it is a problem, and I do plan to have kids. But if you’re the worst kind of “right-wing nut” we get, I’m not too worried.
Comment by Jeffrey Yasskin — 1/15/2006 @ 8:36 pm UTC