to risk asking for thoughts on this?

[Givesyouhell]

I am very nervous asking this on here - I was mulling this over and really couldn't quite work out where I stood on it so thought I'd throw it out there...

If a woman gets pregnant (let's assume protection fails) and she doesn't want or feel ready for kids she can choose to have an abortion. The man is rightly expected to understand and support this. End of story.

If a woman gets pregnant accidently (assuming protection fails) the man would often be thought a bastard for saying he did not want the pregnancy to continue or for then denying the existence of the child if it were born. He would also be expected to provide for the child that he did not want/feel ready for.

I'm not asking this question from the 'woman's body is her own' position, more the long term life changes that a child brings.

This isn't a situation relevant to me, just something that came up in discussion. It seems pretty unfair to the man to me, in that he has no choices at all in something that will change his life and finances for decades and maybe his own view of himself if he steps away.

Please don't flame me for posting, I'm posting to get other people's views and to see if I need to revaluate mine!

Bertiebotts

I would like men, if they choose to walk away from a pregnancy, to sign some kind of un-adoption, relinquishing them from responsibility, but also relinquishing any rights they have to contact, until the child is 18 and can decide for themselves. That would seem like the fairest thing to me.

Fair, of course, except to the taxpayer who will often be left holding the baby in every sense except one. If you don't mind that, and you're willing if necessary to see benefits set at a level which will allow a decent upbringing if and while the mother can't work, I can see the attractions of that.

Of course the let-the-child-choose-at-18 is only meaningful if the man can register his address somewhere centrally so that the child can find him!

An interesting variation, and I'm not saying it happens often: what about the woman who says, untruthfully, that she is unable to conceive?

Thank goodness for men like your DH Officer Honestly, how can anyone think it is fairer that someone should be able to just walk away from a child created with their WIFE without paying anything towards it? Because obviously raising children isn't time consuming and costly at all and everyone knows that kids survive on grass and fresh air...

vanhalen

I agree with a pp about being happy to have been pregnant. It was a priveledge.
But it has risks. And men do not face those.

"An interesting variation, and I'm not saying it happens often: what about the woman who says, untruthfully, that she is unable to conceive?"

People are ultimately responsible for their own fertility. A man who does not want a child should wear a condom. It's a bit of a shame that there isn't more choice of contraception available to men, but that is, I suspect, because men much prefer women to take the necessary hormones.

Unborn children dont have rights though until the stage of viability.

The system isn't enitrely fair in terms of giving women and men the same choices. But at the moment it would be biologically imposible to give them the same choices.

Economically, the situation we currently have is that parents carry the majority of the burden of raising children, but the economic return goes to the country at large. Even for parents who are together the cost of raising children falls disprortionately on women, in families that are split this is even more the case as the costs of mintenance tend to signficantly lower than half the cost of raising a child. In effect our current situation is a massive transfer of wealth away from mothers to the rest of society. Your implied suggestion, that men should be able to disown a fotus before it becomes a child, would skew this even further.

If we could get away from the current disproportionate burden placed on women, I think there would be a case for looking at the choices that men and women have. But until contraception is 100% for both sexes and there are artificial wombs men and women won't have identical choices for the ongoing repercussions.

Hakluyt Yes, you are right. Thank you.

In fact, should there be somewhere where fathers can (if they choose) register their addresses so that their children can - at 18 - trace them (if they choose)?

I can see that for some mothers it would be hurtful if they did - but the right of the now-adult should trump that, so should that right not be made effective?

I hope this does not count as a hijack, but I would be interested to know what anyone thinks about this.

OP both the man and woman had consensual sex and therefor are equally responsible for the baby. However obviously the baby is inside the woman - so she must feel comfortable with keeping the baby or terminating. Doing either against the mothers wishes would lead to real psychological issues in the mother.

I totally understand the biology and that the woman is the one taking the health risks and trauma of pregnancy and birth. But I still struggle with the idea that she only has the power to decide if the pregnancy should go ahead or not. If she doesn't want to be pregnant then she could op not to have sex in the first place and eliminate the risk. Just like we so often say the man can do.

Maybe that makes me anti-abortion. Though I don't think I am.

Maybe I just think that these decisions should be made before entering a sexual relationship and not once the horse has bolted.

Personally I would struggle to abort a child much wanted by my partner even if I didn't want to be a mother. But that is a very, very personal thing and I say that at the end of a very easy pregnancy that has had very little effect on my life. So maybe I am under estimating the real risks that many women take during pregnancy.

I do think its unfair that it's down to women to give birth and have periods though

Who do you think should decide then Butterpuff? The man? The State? Drawing straws?

It's biology. It's as unfair as it is that water is wet and fire is hot!
It is what it is.

"Personally I would struggle to abort a child much wanted by my partner even if I didn't want to be a mother. But that is a very, very personal thing and I say that at the end of a very easy pregnancy that has had very little effect on my life. So maybe I am under estimating the real risks that many women take during pregnancy."

That's your personal choice- nobody is going to force you to have an qbortion if you don't want to. That's rather the point. I would not have an abortion either. That's my choice for me. What other women do should be their free choice. I think the health risk is a red herring. Women should not have to carry and give birth to babies they do not want to carry and give birth to Equally, they should be free to carry and give birth to the babies they do want to carry and give birth to. Men obvipusly have opinions and feelings and have a right to express them. But they do not have a right to impose their feelings and views on women.

You can't trust someone who says they are unable to conceive . not calling them liars- but the proportion of people who can truly claim it is impossible is TINY and usually involve having had a hysterectomy etc.

I know, when I was younger, hearing of many unplanned pregnancies from people who truly believed, they couldn't get pregnant. The reality is, a medical professional just can't know, much of the time, for certain, that you can't.
Often these people had been told they had low sperm Counts, or had pcos or undiagnosed period problems and had made the conclusion themselves this meant they couldn't get pregnant. In reality most of the time it just meant it was less likely.
Men and women need to educate themselves a little more on this .

I understand that, conversely, the chances of getting pregnant from
Unprotected sex are low. I'm pregnant and well recall the depressing stats that you only have a 20% chance each month even if shagging through your fertile period. So I acknowledge that people are generally taking the "risk"- that doesn't absolve them of responsibility.

Thank you Elton. I suppose the likelihood of a woman claiming to have had a hysterectomy when she hasn't is somewhere between nil and zero, so you are right, and that was a red herring.

Oh and Elton!

I'll put my hand up too. I have serious scaring from being cut in labour, pelvic floor damage from forceps and the psychological damage of a difficult and dangerous birth - of a much wanted child. Oh and my breasts will never be the same again and I have very decorative stretch marks.

I cannot imagine how traumatic that would be if I was going through a pregnancy I didn't want.

It's not particularly 'fair' but there isn't a fair solution - there just isn't - because biology isn't fair.

Choices about putting your body through a pregnancy and then taking care of a child for the rest of your life are different for women. If you look at the statistics for men who walk away compared to women there's a vast difference. I think at least in part that's down to the fact that women carry the baby for months, full of hormones designed over our entire evolution to make us want to look after and protect our children and then of course there are the societal pressures on top. So suggesting that a woman going through pregnancy and birth and then giving up the baby to its father is the same as a man choosing to walk away from a pregnancy is ridiculous.

An abortion might have more psychological damage to the man than the woman depending on the couple but it's still not comparable to the alternative of forcing a woman through pregnancy.

Some men do have to fight for the right to see their children - how many women have the option to force men to see them? If a man walks away from his child there is nothing you can do to make him share care so they already have the option to avoid much of the responsibility.

The fact that they may have to take some financial responsibility (if they aren't good at simply avoiding it) is something men are well aware of when they have sex. Again, maybe that's not fair but is it any fairer if they have no responsibility or the state picks up the tab?

I would honestly love to hear an idea that is fairer to everyone but at the moment I think we have to make do with the least worst options.

Hedgehogs I didn't say I had the answers. Ultimately I think it will always be down to the woman making the final decision when their is a conflict. That's the best option out of a bunch of poor choices.

In an ideal world contraception would never fail.

In the next best situation each party would be able to understand their emotions well enough to know what decision they would make in the situation of contraception fail, would know they would not change their mind and would be able to communicate that to the other party. Then each has the same opportunity to opt in or out knowing the risks and results before they engage in sex. Of course that is never going to happen. It's too big an emotional situation to understand your feelings in advance.

vanhalen
Butchered with first delievery. ongoing problems.

I think Caronaim above has the only practical, if unpopular, answer - when teens listen to music on Spotify, or watch videos on Youtube, there is a strong message to go out and have sex but it is MASSIVELY ignored that sex results in babies - 20% of pregnancies in the US are unplanned, and about 16.6% here in the UK.

Everybody has a say in whether or not an pregnancy happens - right before they have sex. But that's difficult to keep straight in your mind when everything around teenagers, from pornography to Nicki Minaj normalises going out and having casual sex.

On top of this, it's difficult to balance things like responsibly teaching teens to use contraception and to teach girls to expect to have pleasure during sex, rather than just giving it (I'm thinking of a recent study about anal sex here in particular - see below) with "and if you don't want to get pregnant, don't have sex at all, btw".

There's a lot of criticism of religion and the concept (usually associated with religious attitudes) of "just say no" but a (non-religious, if you want) "just say no" approach - right up into adulthood even - is, realistically, the only way to 100% guarantee that you don't have a child. More important for men, I think, because male contraception is so much less reliable.

Maybe that's it - contraception is always pitched at women, but it needs to be massively reinforced with MEN that condoms are NOT always used properly and that they don't have ANY CHOICES after a pregnancy occurs.

www.guttmacher.org/pubs/FB-Unintended-Pregnancy-US.html

www.wellcome.ac.uk/News/Media-office/Press-releases/2013/Press-releases/WTP054814.htm

www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/08/14/when-it-comes-to-sex-teaching-consent-isnt-enough/

There is inherent unfairness on both sides - of course it must be difficult for a man that the decision of whether or not to continue a pregnancy is out of his hands, and may not be his desired outcome.

It is also unfair that a woman will be stuck with physical as well as psychological consequences of an accidental pregnancy, regardless of which decision she makes.

I don't think that there's anything wrong with the man expressing his opinion and preference of choice - but it should never be done with an attempt to coerce. There should be an acknowledgement that the final decision can only be her's. Unfortunately, the impact of any choice is likely to be significantly greater for the woman than the man, so yes, her opinion carries more weight.

There will always be some chance of pregnancy when having sex; no contraception is foolproof. Surely most people understand this? Using protection shouldn't absolve you of responsibility should the woman decide to keep the baby. Sadly, a lot of men do not end up contributing as much towards the child's welfare as the woman, some nothing at all. That is really unfair, in my opinion.

I think it's also worth mentioning that an abortion is not always an option, say if the pregnancy isn't detected until later on. Is it still 'unfair' then if the man ends up having to pay for a child he didn't want? More so than for the woman?

There isn't really a solution to this problem - biology can be considered unfair for both sexes in different ways. I would argue that it is more unfairly stacked against women on the whole, but perhaps I am biased because I am a woman.

I'm pretty shocked that anyone thinks it would be a good or 'brave' idea to make abortion reliant on the consent of both partners - what a bloody terrible step backwards that would be.