Men's Abortion Rights.

[TragicMonkey]

How about you answer my question?

I'm sorry, I thought the answer was so obvious I'd make you feel very stupid if I answered it. Sexual orientation matters because the vast majority of abortions are on unwanted pregnancies and the vast majority of unwanted pregnancies are from women having had sex with men. That's a configuration much more common with straight people than gay ones. I'm sure you can find some bizarre Springeresque situation wherein a gay man has to get an abortion or a lesbian impregnated her straight female lover but those kinds of cases are so rare it's quite silly to imagine they are worth considering in an abortion debate.

 

[Ziggurat]

It seems you might be getting confused between age discrimination and simple age distinction, to use your own word (just checking - there's a fundamental difference, of course )?

I think you are confused about what “discrimination” actually means. If you are 14, you are not allowed to vote or buy alcohol. If you are 24, you are allowed to do both. That is age discrimination. We don’t usually call it that because we accept it, and “discrimination” sounds bad, but the actual meaning of the word is value neutral. Age is different than many other properties such as race or sex, and there are some good reasons to accept certain forms of age discrimination where we would not accept race, sex, or many other forms of discrimination. But we absolutely do discriminate on the basis of age. We would be fools not to in any form.

 

[Arcade22]

If you are a man and disagree with Abortion, can you express what you think gives you the right to dictate how a woman who is unrelated to you, and not in a relationship with you, should have to deal with her own body?

We live in this thing called a "society" and as such what people are allowed to do, including with their own bodies in private, is something that we as members of society may seek to regulate, within the limits of permissible interference in personal autonomy and freedom.

"My body, my choice" is just a trite and ultimately worthless expression because hardly anyone ever applies this consistently and instead arbitrarily draw a line between private drug use, assisted suicide, euthanasia or such potentially objectionable behavior that they happen to disagree with.

 

[Belz...]

I'm sorry, I thought the answer was so obvious I'd make you feel very stupid if I answered it.

Don't worry about it. Feeling stupid happens to everyone.

Sexual orientation matters because the vast majority of abortions are on unwanted pregnancies and the vast majority of unwanted pregnancies are from women having had sex with men. That's a configuration much more common with straight people than gay ones.

Yes but you talked about protection specifically. I'm pretty sure many gay people skip protection all the time, despite the higher risks of STD transmission. Yet I'm sure you wouldn't call gay people as a whole dumb for it.

And that, folks, is the problem with generalisations.

 

[Francesca R]

We live in this thing called a "society" and as such what people are allowed to do, including with their own bodies in private, is something that we as members of society may seek to regulate, within the limits of permissible interference in personal autonomy and freedom.

Correct.

 

[TragicMonkey]

Don't worry about it. Feeling stupid happens to everyone.

Oh, I would never claim to be an expert in that.

Yes but you talked about protection specifically. I'm pretty sure many gay people skip protection all the time, despite the higher risks of STD transmission. Yet I'm sure you wouldn't call gay people as a whole dumb for it.

And that, folks, is the problem with generalisations.

But the topic is abortion, not STDs, hence I didn't address that.

And that, folks, is the problem with underfunded educational systens.

 

[Belz...]

But the topic is abortion, not STDs, hence I didn't address that.

And yet it's part of the same type of thinking: ignoring the risks involved in one's actions.

Here's the short answer: we're all dumb.

And that, folks, is the problem with underfunded educational systens.

It would work better if you hadn't misspelled "system".

 

[TragicMonkey]

And yet it's part of the same type of thinking: ignoring the risks involved in one's actions.

And yet it's still off-topic. If you're actually interested in my opinion of gay safe sex then yes, I actually do think any gay men who have anal sex without using condoms are idiots. Whether they're in a relationship or not.

Here's the short answer: we're all dumb.

If you can't see the difference between gay people having unprotected sex and straight people having unprotected sex when it comes to unwanted pregnancies then perhaps the characterization is not inapt.

It would work better if you hadn't misspelled "system".

Yes, it would. Unfortunately my eyesight is not as good as I could wish so the occasional typo is inevitable. At least my mistakes don't require controversial medical intervention to correct.

 

[Puppycow]

That's any of this have to do with sexual orientation?

I think your mistake here was taking a joke too literally

 

[Belz...]

And yet it's still off-topic.

Well it was off topic when you made the comment. I'm just pointing out why your generalisation is stupid.

If you can't see the difference between gay people having unprotected sex and straight people having unprotected sex when it comes to unwanted pregnancies then perhaps the characterization is not inapt.

Don't play dense. You know that the parallel was risk, not pregnancy.

Yes, it would. Unfortunately my eyesight is not as good as I could wish so the occasional typo is inevitable.

Well, I was ready to blame it on underfunded educational systens.

 

[theprestige]

We live in this thing called a "society" and as such what people are allowed to do, including with their own bodies in private, is something that we as members of society may seek to regulate, within the limits of permissible interference in personal autonomy and freedom.

"My body, my choice" is just a trite and ultimately worthless expression because hardly anyone ever applies this consistently and instead arbitrarily draw a line between private drug use, assisted suicide, euthanasia or such potentially objectionable behavior that they happen to disagree with.

I wonder if PW will return to acknowledge this and the other cromulent replies to his OP.

 

[psionl0]

I was mostly refering to criminals, for whom we remove some rights temporarily or permanently. Including in some cases the right to live.

I'm sure that you didn't intend to equate unborn children with criminals.

 

[Belz...]

I'm sure that you didn't intend to equate unborn children with criminals.

What, that's not what they mean by "child abuse"?

 

[Information Analyst]

Thank you, Professor Obvious. I take it you don't hang out with a lot of feminists, particularly radical feminists. If you did, you'd be familiar with the term of disparagement for the male partner.

No, I'm more discerning in my choice of friends.

 

[Information Analyst]

And wherever you see an MRA, can wife beaters be far behind? Radical feminists may include but are not necessarily, misandrists.

Seems to me that radical feminists and MRAs are the opposite sides of the same ******** coin. They deserve each other.

 

[Arcade22]

We live in this thing called a "society" and as such what people are allowed to do, including with their own bodies in private, is something that we as members of society may seek to regulate, within the limits of permissible interference in personal autonomy and freedom.

"My body, my choice" is just a trite and ultimately worthless expression because hardly anyone ever applies this consistently and instead arbitrarily draw a line between private drug use, assisted suicide, euthanasia or such potentially objectionable behavior that they happen to disagree with.

I should note here that I'm not actually opposed to abortion either on principled or practical grounds, rather the point is that abortion isn't really special compared to just about any other issue where the state seeks to regulate peoples behavior.

People who don't drink alcohol are allowed to vote (directly or indirectly) for laws that regulate the production, distribution and marketing of alcoholic beverages even if this could have dire effects on the well-being of people who do drink alcohol or make a living off it. The same applies to abortion, hence why men are allowed to involve themselves with abortion laws and regulations.

If anything, encouraging men to view abortion and reproductive health in general as a "woman's issue" because it directly affects women the most, and thus men have no legitimate reason to involve themselves in it, is probably counter-productive. It would leaves the public space open to anti-abortion fanatics and reactionaries who have no compulsion about restricting women's personal freedom.

 

[theprestige]

In my question, I specifically said that she did not want to raise it.

I had inferred from the scenario that she did not want it because she couldn't afford it. Thank you for clarifying.

This clarifies a few things, actually. Since we know she can afford it, the question comes down to who should be responsible for it. And the answer to that is obvious: She should be responsible for it.

This is especially true if you're going to argue that fathers shouldn't have sex if they don't want to be responsible for children they didn't want but the mother chose not to abort.

The parents plural ideally, but a lot of women who choose to have abortions do so because they aren't in a stable relationship with the father who would be a good, supporting parent. Maybe she was raped. Who knows? Do you make an exception in cases of rape? If so, does she have to prove that she was raped, or is it enough to simply claim that the fetus was conceived through rape?

Seems to me that if you're going to make exceptions for rape in public policy, then a formal allegation of rape must be lodged and upheld, in order for the exception to apply.

 

[theprestige]

As I pointed out in my previous post, there would be about 900,000 more unwanted babies every year needing homes. Do we bring back orphanages? How do we as a society handle that? These are questions which the pro-life person should be willing to answer, if their position is sincere.

Unwanted is not the same as unaffordable. The vast majority of such children could simply be raised by the people actually responsible for them.

And I'd argue that we already have orphanages. In fact, we already have a two-tiered orphanage system: Welfare and foster homes.

Foster homes are basically a distributed orphanage system. We don't reflexively think of them as orphanages, because we don't call them orphanages, and because they don't match the popular image of the orphanages of old, but that's what they are.

Welfare is a little more abstract, but in a sense we're paying the parent to house and raise the child themselves, instead of sending it away to an institutional dormitory. So maybe not an "orphanage" in the traditional sense, or even in the sense of a foster home, but it fills much the same gap in our social fabric as orphanages used to. Fills it better, perhaps.

So my answer to the mother on my doorstep wouldn't be "find an orphanage". It would be, "cash your state child support checks and do your job".

 

[TragicMonkey]

Unwanted is not the same as unaffordable. The vast majority of such children could simply be raised by the people actually responsible for them.

And I'd argue that we already have orphanages. In fact, we already have a two-tiered orphanage system: Welfare and foster homes.

Foster homes are basically a distributed orphanage system. We don't reflexively think of them as orphanages, because we don't call them orphanages, and because they don't match the popular image of the orphanages of old, but that's what they are.

Welfare is a little more abstract, but in a sense we're paying the parent to house and raise the child themselves, instead of sending it away to an institutional dormitory. So maybe not an "orphanage" in the traditional sense, or even in the sense of a foster home, but it fills much the same gap in our social fabric as orphanages used to. Fills it better, perhaps.

So my answer to the mother on my doorstep wouldn't be "find an orphanage". It would be, "cash your state child support checks and do your job".

Isn't attempting to abandon a baby with a stranger a strong indicator someone is not fit to raise a child? Even if she were well-funded by whatever means I don't think the mother in this scenario should be allowed to keep that child, and if she has any other children their situation bears investigation.

 

[theprestige]

Isn't attempting to abandon a baby with a stranger a strong indicator someone is not fit to raise a child? Even if she were well-funded by whatever means I don't think the mother in this scenario should be allowed to keep that child, and if she has any other children their situation bears investigation.

Sure. We have a whole social safety net, which I support and pay into, for just this contingency.

The entire scenario is contrived to force a gotcha, not to promote discussion. Maybe that's the real reason Puppycow has so much trouble getting good faith engagement, with this strategy.