AIBU to be shocked by these American views on women's bodily autonomy?

[WhatTheHellJustHappened]

If you have time, please read this thread.

boards.askmen.com/showthread.php?130715-Then-End-of-a-relationship-before-and-after-an-Abortion&p=1311666#post1311666

The OP is a boy who regrets not supporting his girlfriend through her abortion.

The thread turns into an abortion debate around page two. There is one female poster making very valid agreements about a woman's right to make choices about her own body and is being flamed by the others.

One male poster actually says "So fucking what if it's her body?"
The worst part is that the women themselves are not speaking in support of a woman's right to choose:(

There are repeated references to how depressed men feel when their SO aborts, but nobody stops to think about how women feel when they are forced to give birth and endure 37-42 weeks of pregnancy. I completely sympathise with men who may feel helpless in such a scenario but I can't really support the idea of a man being able to prevent a woman from terminating a pregnancy.

I'm all for couples making decisions together, but surely the final decision about an abortion should lie with the woman?

I would be equally sympathetic towards a woman in your second scenario.

I would be sympathetic towards the woman in the first situation but probably not quite as much as i would be towards woman 2 and the man who wants the baby.

I think a basic desire to have the baby you've created is a little more likely than a Neanderthal desire to control women!

manicinsomniac

Have you ever been pregnant? How was it? Easy, ok, hard?

I think it's evident to me that you're pro life. Nothing wrong with that, but it just makes it hard for you to understand that it may be equally traumatic to be forced into motherhood as it is to be forced out of it.

If you think that men wanting to dictate whether women should abort or not doesn't stem from a desire to control women, then you need to take off the Rose tinted glasses.

I do, actually, support a man's right to reject fatherhood and walk away from an unplanned pregnancy, but it should be a matter of signing away all his parental rights forever - or at least, he would only be allowed to resume any kind of contact with the child (should it be born alive and survive) if he pays a substantial sum of money (though this should take his income into account).

Because unplanned pregnancies occur through no malice or selfishness on either side. Contraceptives fail. People sometimes take what seems to them a reasonable risk (after all, not every incidence of PIV results in a conception; the majority don't). Sure, avoiding PIV is a sure way of avoiding an unexpected pregnancy, but people do like PIV and it's not massively unreasonable to engage in it when you don't intend for a conception to occur, and having enjoyed a session of PIV you shouldn't be expected to accept unwanted parenthood as a kind of 'Serves you right for having PIV sex, you filthy lustful beast' whether you're male or female.

Yes, twice. The first time was hard-ish as I was 19, got pregnant the first time I'd ever had sex and was away at university. There were no problems with the pregnancy at all, just dealing with it had never been on my radar iyswim. The second time was ok. Not as bad as I thought it would be. I got pregnant after being raped. But I didn't really have any complications, physical or emotional. The only problem was other people wanting me to abort.

So yes, based on my decisions, I suppose I am pro choice. FOR MYSELF. I don't care what other people do. Well actually, I do care, I care a lot but I accept the right of each individual to do what they feel is best for themselves.

But that doesn't stop me feeling for others that get hurt as a result of that individual's choice.

rose tinted glasses? Maybe but I don't think so. I'm not denying that there are some men who would love to see a woman forced to submit to their power by losing control over their body (well, rapists for a start!) But your average man? Personally, I don't think so. I think most men (and most women!) are decent human beings who hurt when a life they want is lost.

yes sgb, I agree with that.

macroinsomniac

I'm terribly sorry to hear you were raped. I'm quite surprised to read that you didn't have any emotional complications after getting pregnant from a rape.
You seem to have dealt with it surprisingly well....

Judging by what I know, I'd still insist you are actually pro life.

Nevertheless, I hope you and your children are happy.

Thanks, we are. My lack of reaction/trauma makes sense in my circumstances but they are long and irrelevant to the thread. To give the bare bones I knew the guy, it was non violent and I was already fucked up.

Can you be pro life (in the official sense) if you support the right of each woman to choose whether or not to keep her baby? Yes, I think it's wrong. But I know it's only my opinion. Pro life and Pro choice are US terms and actually quite politically loaded aren't they? They go beyond personal opinion. Afaik, all pro lifers believe that abortion should be illegal.

I do think men should have a say in a pregnancy, if they don't want to be fathers than they should be able to sign all rights away.

i support a women choice to have an abortion

Those who want men to have a say if a woman wants an abortion and the man does not want her to

At what age do you think the baby should be passed over? Immediately after birth, should the woman have any say in the timescale?

Would the woman have to pay support to the child?

What if the woman suffers injuries from the pregnancy / birth, does the man have to compensate her? The state? What if she dies?

What about the maternal grandparents - do they have any access, or not?

What about her loss of earnings / loss of job (pregnancy comes with these risks as well).

How are you going to deal with all these things?

No problem with men signing all rights away, the state would simply have to step in instead.

I don't think many women or children care whether the money is from the state or the ex, and given that many men don't pay anything, taking them out of the equation altogether would improve the situation for a lot of women.

It would also remove the financial leverage that a lot of abusive men continue to hold over their exes.

Win/win, really.

I don't think fathers groups would like this plan very much though.

I think Fathers Groups would love this plan. Why would n't they? No-one would be saying that they HAD to sign away any rights, just that they were being given a choice. Of course, if they wanted to be involved with the child then they would have to make a lifetime commitment and the woman would have to do the same, to allow them to have reasonable access to that child. Win, win.

I think some taxpayers might also take issue with "the state would simply have to step in".

The state step in at the moment to try to prevent children living in poverty.

What is your solution destroyedluggage.

I think fathers groups want more men to be involved with their children, not less. And the idea of men signing all their rights away with no ability to change their minds later would be something they would find abhorrant. They would argue that men (especially young ones) might think in the short term and realise later on eg when they had another family that they had made a mistake.

I don't think they'd like it at all.

However I don't speak for fathers groups just guessing what they might say.

i think they probably prefer the current situation where all men have a right to a relationship with their children but many/most get away with paying nothing or a nominal amount (£5 per week seems to be a figure I see a lot).

Yes, the state steps in, but not before relentlessly chasing absent parents for child support payments. Why do you think that happens? To uphold some moral principle, or to alleviate the burden on the public purse?

If all those parents currently paying child support could opt out, where do you suppose the money should come from, to make up the shortfall? Would you be happy to pay more tax so that more women could have children alone? If you think it is unfair to pursue a father who wants nothing to do with the child he didn't want, what makes it fair to shift that responsibility to the general public?

I agree, in principle, that men should be able to opt out. In practice though, that would only be feasible if the woman alone (or maybe with her family's support) is affluent enough to bring up the child without outside help.

I would rather see the state step in than have a woman forced to choose abortion because of financial status. This is similar another thread a few weeks ago where people said you shouldn't have a child if you can't afford one. Well ok, you might not be able to afford one right away but financial circumstances change and if the state can help in the interim then great. If the child is aborted and then the woman's financial state changes she can't exactly bring the baby back can she.

destroyed luggage have you read my posts?

eg

"Child support is a social and welfare issue though.

It is not in the interest of society to say that men do not have to support any offspring.

From the child's POV (the person the money is for) they don't care where it comes from as long as they are clothed housed fed etc.

Someone has to pay for the children (it is unethical not to) and whether that is the govt or the parents makes no odds to the child. Do you see what I mean? It's only the fathers that are asked to do it as that is what our society has decided is the model to follow to attempt to keep children out of poverty.

In point of fact I think that in the UK men can get away without paying for their offspring if they wish fairly easily (having seen threads with stats about CSA etc)."

I hate it when people can't be arsed to read threads, especially on topics like this one.

Incidentally I am not arguing for men not to pay any child support. I haven't thought about it. The situation for men is not at the forefront of my mind in a conversation where people are seriously suggesting removing women's bodily autonomy, to be honest.

There is also a logical failure on this thread.

To the people who think that if the man decides he wants the baby the women should be forced to carry it, birth it and then presumably hand it over.

Do you similarly think that if the man doesn't want the baby the woman should be forced to have an abortion?

I don't think saying that he can have no contact really cuts the mustard there. If you don't want a child you don't want a child, knowing it is out there somewhere is not the same as not having one.

So that's another one for people to think about.

Of course the child doesn't care where the money is coming from. It's people who foot the bill that care.

The discussion was about opting out of parenthood. You said (and I agreed) it was a good idea to allow men to opt out of this responsibility.

Where we disagree is where you then say it's really not a problem because the state would just have to step in. I say it IS a problem, because the state doesn't have a bottomless pot of money. If you allow fathers not to pay then somebody else would have to. Who do you think it should be? Of course it makes no odds to the child, but that's not the point.

destroyedluggage are you now pretending that you have been reading my posts?

I have not given any great thought about men and whether they pay or not. I was thinking out loud about some posts that SGB and others had written. The fact is that at the moment many/most fathers don't pay (or pay a nominal amount) so I doubt there would be that much of a difference.

My interest in this thread is as a woman who is horrified at the prospect of forced abortion / forced childbearing.

Whether a man has to pay £5 a week or not is rather a non issue next to the prospect of women who have been raped being forced to give birth and hand the child over to the rapist wouldn't you say.

Possibly not.

It takes all sorts and all of that.

"The discussion was about opting out of parenthood. You said (and I agreed) it was a good idea to allow men to opt out of this responsibility."

I cannot find this exchange on the thread.

I am not at all convinced that allowing men to opt out of their responsibilities to children that they father is a good thing, at all.

At the moment that is more or less teh situation and single mothers are vilified and are at great risk of poverty and they lose their jobs etc while the men waltz off and carry on as usual.

I do not think that is a desirable situation at all please do not claim that I have opinions that I do not.

I agree with every single word solidgoldbrass has written.

My interest in this thread is as a woman who is horrified at the prospect of forced abortion / forced childbearing.

My interest in this thread is similar. To me, abortion is the right to opt out of parenthood. SGB has said it very succinctly above.

I have not given any great thought about men and whether they pay or not.

I have, because it follows from the above that if women have the right to opt out of parenthood then men should have the same right. I don't think it's currently as easy as you seem to think, and I explained why it isn't and never will be.