No, that's absolutely not true. The ability to have an abortion gives women an explicit reproductive choice that men do not have.
But that's not what I said. I said that both men and women have the right to control their own sex organs.
What you're arguing, if I understand you, is that women have greater control of their reproductive choices; they can have sex without fear of reproductive consequences because they can continue to make choices well after conception, and men can't, and that's not fair.
Ok, so let's say, for the sake of argument, that I agree with you. You and I and the fine
Maxim readers at the National Center for Men wage a campaign against inequality in reproductive rights, we band of brothers, and we win! Yay, so the new world order sets in, and now the standard for determining paternity for the purposes of child support is consent, not biological fatherhood. Great, so now everything is all good. Both men and women have the right to sex without reproductive consequences.
But wait, the women are angry! Men, they say, now have the right to sex without the risk of unwanted pregnancies, but women don't. Can't you see, they tell us, that this is in violation of the principle of equal protection under the law? They demand satisfaction! But there's no way we can make things fair for them, because that risk is just part of having sex. If they're really worried about it, maybe they should get their tubes tied. Oh, wait. Hrmm.
So this demonstrates a few things to me. First, that it's not really true that women have the right to sex without reproductive consequences. Second, that it's probably not a good idea to pluck rights out of thin air and then defend them; it makes more sense to argue for rights in reference to long-standing legal principles. And then the third thing I can't remember. Oh, that it wouldn't actually produce equal outcomes to introduce an opt-out for men, because there isn't really a consequence-free opt-out for women
after she's knocked boots.
The attendant risks are much lower for women, since they have the option of terminating the pregnancy. The situation is not by any means equal.
Sure, if we look at financial risks in isolation, it isn't fair. But if we pull out a bit (har har!) and look at it in the context of all of the attendant risks and our legal system, it still looks like men are getting a good deal to me.
"Public good" is not the same thing as "personal choices." That said, I'd like to see some of the things you mention (e.g. tax deductions) eliminated for that very reason.
I can't even remember what this was about. But it's pretty clear that the public good sometimes supervenes on personal choices.
The government should not attempt to remedy biological inequalities for their own sake. It should attempt to remedy legal inequalities which stem from those biological inequalities. For example, the biological inequality of being in a wheelchair creates a legal inequality in the form of a violation of that person's right to equality of opportunity (which, while not mentioned specifically in the Constitution, is omnipresent in relevant case law). Equal protection demands that that legal inequality needs to be rectified by means such as the ADA.
But did this actually have anything to do with the constitutional right to equal protection? I mean, sure, maybe it was the guiding principle, but if equal protection really demanded the ADA, it seems like it wouldn't have been necessary to pass the ADA.
Anyhway, I don't actually think a legal inequality exists here. At worst, a moral inequality exists, and it's not really one that I think can be remedied by divorcing the responsibilities of fatherhood from the biological fact of fatherhood. Or at least, not without making things unequal in the other direction. We
could shift financial responsibility away from both parents, but as Cain pointed out earlier, that would create a perverse incentive structure and we'd have an 'important government interest' in not doing this.
Sure it does -- it upholds equal protection. I can't stress enough how important that is to our society. You're also edging pretty close to supporting the logic which leads to things like modern-day eminent domain abuses. "For the public good" is not usually sufficient cause to curtail individual freedom.
Well, I think doing precisely nothing upholds equal protection, because the way things are now doesn't actually seem any worse to me than this future world being constructed. Discrimination is warranted in equal protection cases regarding gender when it is related to an important government interest, so it's kind of hard to avoid the public good argument here.
I'm pretty sure Socrates was a pretty special guy...because of how he thought or what he did? Superficially, yes, but his thoughts and actions started when he was a baby, before he even left an imprint in history- was that baby not special? I think he was, and that baby had to come from somewhere, too- was he not special when he was in the womb? No? Tell that to his mom while she's pregnant with him and she'd probably toss a few greek obsenities your way and maybe throw a fist full of olives at you.
Its an extremely radical ideal, and it is something in the heart of almost every person that stood up for change in the face of adversity. It was one of the seeds that birthed this very nation, that birthed many democratic nations all over the world.