Hey! Abortion pro(op)ponents! Wrap your head around this!

Let's see if we can't spice up these forums with a debate my wife and I had recently.

As some of you may already know I am about to be a father once more over and to be frank I couldn't be more ecstatic about it. I'm mindful of the physical, emotional and financial cost of adding another child into the mix, but I still am overjoyed at the little person who will (maybe, probably, hopefully) be our third and final child.

I have always found joy in taking a very active role as a father and a husband, so much so that my wife has yet to find another husband that she can point to and say "see so and so does whatever for/with his wife/kids". Apparently for all of her female friends, I am the "so and so" to whom they refer when griping at their respective hubbies (thankfully I'm not friends with any of those guys).

I think this is why my wife was stunned at my response to a topic that came up the other night while we were driving home from a concert.

She made the statement that while Roe v Wade was unconstitutional (she's a strict constitutionalist) she couldn't trust the individual states to protect a woman's reproductive rights and therefor saw it as philosophically wrong, but still being the right thing to do, likening it to Lincoln trampling states' rights without which the US would not likely exist today.

Agreeing I unintentionally segued into a new topic with:

Me: Though it comes down to individual rights and sometimes not all individual's end up with the same rights with or without government intervention and that one of the reasons that this is such a big issue is that we as a society haven't come to a consensus on the issues, a court came to it for us.

She asked me to clarify the bolded part.

Me: Well, take abortion as an example. We both agree that life begins somewhere before birth and that, while vague, Roe v Wade supports 24-28 weeks which we can both agree is reasonable. We both agree that after that point of viability, an infant's right to life trumps the mother's right to do what she wants with her body, unless she has a very real risk of serious injury or death. However in all of this conversation there's one person we've not addressed. There's one individual without a choice.

Her: The father?

Me: Indeed. He has no rights in this situation. While he is not and should not be allowed to have a say in whether or not the mother has an abortion, he is unfairly obligated to whatever choice she makes. She chooses whether or not the child is carried to term and she chooses what if any relationship and obligations he has to the child should she decide to carry to term.

Her: He consented when he had sex with her. He knows that there's a chance that they could have a child and so he's obligated to take care of it.

Me: That's one, albeit the current interpretation. However if that were truly representative of their choice then it wouldn't be an issue. In addition, it's inconsistent with abortion itself. I could switch this up and say, "You know that if you have unprotected sex, you could have a baby, so if you do so then you are obligating yourself to have the child should one be conceived." It's the same argument, to say nothing of the matter of say a broken condom in which case the man obviously didn't give consent to be a father, but still has no choice.

Her: So you think a man shouldn't be obligated to take care of his child?

Me: If he tells her that he doesn't want to be a father a few weeks after she's informed him and she decides to carry to term then, no I don't think he should be obligated. She has the right to do what she will with her body, but he should have the right to determine if he is going to be obligated to take care of her child. At least that's consistent and it's certainly closer to equitable, though she really would have more rights as he (correctly) could not compel her to have a child if the roles were reversed.

Her: I think we're done with this for now.

Thoughts?

Original Post by nomoreexcuses:

that is true

my doctor wouldn't tie my tubes after i had my daughter

because i was 22

and because he said he prefers for a woman to already have 2 kids, not just 1

And I prefer men all go clean shaven, yet despite my personal preference, men still have the choice to grow beards for themselves if they wish. Life's tough like that.

Why does it even matter to him how many kids other people decide to have?

@237- Like those girls that made a pact to get pregnant! In highschool! Apparently one of them took a pregnancy test at the nurse's office in their school and when she found out she was pregnant her response was "SWEET!" I think it's freakin ridiculous!

It's probably a little different now, Coffin. Reproductive rights being what they are, I suspect nomo might have a bit better chance of making her case now.

Original Post by coffincritter:

Original Post by nomoreexcuses:

that is true

my doctor wouldn't tie my tubes after i had my daughter

because i was 22

and because he said he prefers for a woman to already have 2 kids, not just 1

 

And I prefer men all go clean shaven, yet despite my personal preference, men still have the choice to grow beards for themselves if they wish. Life's tough like that.

Why does it even matter to him how many kids other people decide to have?

 That's what I want to know.  Why should the doctor care? Just do the procedure, get your money, and go on your merry way. And hey, if they want to try to reverse it they'll probably go back to the same guy, and he'll get even more money.

for the record, i also prefer men to be clean-shaven

but physicians don't have to provide a service demanded by a patient

if i'd had the wherewithall, i maybe could have shopped around extensively to find a doctor to do it even though i was 22 and only had 1 child

his professional opinion was that i was either likely to change my mind or that preserving my fertility was prudent in light of possible harm to my existing child and therefore he should not tie my tubes for me

but it was really annoying to be treated as if i don't know what i want... or what is best for me...

 

 

Original Post by kathygator:

It's probably a little different now, Coffin. Reproductive rights being what they are, I suspect nomo might have a bit better chance of making her case now.

now that i'm older, i'd like to have my uterus removed

now they'll tie my tubes, but think that taking out my uterus is unnecessary

dudes! i'm not using it!

take my uterus, please!

 

ba dum ching.