I had always assumed that if a man had gotten a woman pregnant, then if that pregnancy is carried to term, both partners should be financially responsible for the child regardless whether the man had wanted to have the child or not. The mindset being “they got them pregnant, so you have to face the consequences’”.
I was talking with some people online, and they asserted that if the man did not want to have the child, then they should be able to apply to be resolved of any financial responsibility towards caring for it. I was at first against this proposal, but I feel like I now understand it better. Our current legislation was created at a time where abortion was tantamount to murder, and since it was illegal, an obligation of financial responsibility was the only way to ensure that women weren’t stranded with children they couldn’t afford to raise. But now that we live in a world where abortion is legal (for now), and where abortion procedures are safer than carrying the child to term, there doesn’t seem to be a good argument for men still needing to be financially responsible for unwanted children. Men probably would still need to assist in paying for the procedure, but outside of that, I think they had a point. Please explain to me if there is anything I’m failing to consider here.
I also want to apologize for the binary language I used in writing this. I tried at first to write this in a more inclusive way, but I struggled wrapping my head around it. If anyone can educate me in how to write in a way that doesn’t disclude non-binary comrades, I would appreciate it.
The OP didn’t say anything about "what if we lived in a world where society would financially and physically help in situations where there is a pregnancy and one of the parents doesn’t want to be involved.
I don’t see the “personal responsibility” argument for this situation being “two people involved in a pregnancy working together to figure out what to do as best as they can”.
I’m thinking it would be either, “both parents would be legally required to pay costs associated with the child until its 18 years old, even if they didn’t raise the child or weren’t able to financially contribute in a meaningful way” or " whichever ‘bio parent’ didn’t want the child, is still required to be financially responsible regardless of the situation or desire of the ‘bio parents’".
From my life, my dad didn’t want to be a dad when he got my mom pregnant (something very bad happened during his first marriage that produced a kid and he was not ready to do this again). So, he left before I was born. He came back into town sometime after I was born needing a place to stay and managed to get my mom to let him move in with us. Sometime after that they got married… for… some reason. This forced them to be involved in all the financial entanglements of being married, when neither really wanted to be married, until my mom got a decent enough job when I was in my early teens to pay for a divorce. There was stress and tension and financial issues that they tried to keep to themselves but I was a sensitive enough kid that I picked up on the tension anyways.
So… my opinion is that they would have both been happier if they’d gone their separate ways after having worked out details about how much financial and parental responsibility my dad (who isn’t great at saving money and wasn’t interesting in being a dad again) was going to have.
This whole gordian knot can be sliced immediately by just having universal child support system like “Child Support for All.”
All this other talk is honestly besides the point. No need to talk about who supports who and all that stuff.
But… we don’t have that in the USA.
So, talking about hypothetical universal welfare systems isn’t useful when talking about realities that are happening every day and figuring out how to handle things in an ethical way.
Sure, but why is this rhetoric all good when it comes to things like “defund the police” or “tax the 1%” or “medicare for all” but then people turn into big time austerity Biden libs when I suggest universal child support? It strikes me that there’s something deeper going on.
