But you said you were okay with abortion...

[Scott C.]

Child:
"mommy and daddy fight all the time and can't stand each other, but at least they're married" "and it's all because of me".

Part of being responsible is to not fight all of the time. Learn to get along. Put the other person first. Part of being responsible is not having sex with someone with whom you can't get along with for the rest of your life. This whole scenario is a chain of bad and irresponsible choices and supposed solutions for the consequences of those bad choices.

 

[Scott C.]

Or, in the case of my brother's friend who married at 21 due to an unplanned pregnancy, and now will never have a serious relationship with a man again, "Daddy beat mommy into a coma, but at least they got married because of me!"

Men who are capable of beating a woman into a coma should never have sex with anyone.

 

[Scott C.]

I used to have a mantra that said "try it before you buy it". That one worked out great!

Why does someone need to have sex to determine if they love someone enough for marriage? I have never got that. I can't fathom a scenario where two reasonable people are in love, like each other too, feel a sexual attraction, date long enough to get to know each other, have no sex, get married, have sex, and then decide: "gee he/she is sure lousy at sex...I should have married someone else.

 

[Scott C.]

I was pretty young at the time. At least I didn't get pregnant. I still feel guilty about it. I think that is why I am less harsh on people than others.

We all make mistakes and we should not be harsh on one another. We also should be smart enough to recognize what is a mistake and what is responsible.

 

[Falvlun]

Why does someone need to have sex to determine if they love someone enough for marriage? I have never got that. I can't fathom a scenario where two reasonable people are in love, like each other too, feel a sexual attraction, date long enough to get to know each other, have no sex, get married, have sex, and then decide: "gee he/she is sure lousy at sex...I should have married someone else.

Meh. Sex is an important aspect of a lifelong romantic partnership. It seems unfathomable to me that we are supposed to commit to such a partnership without first finding out whether that component works or not. It would be like commiting to only ever eating chocolate icecream without first finding out whether you even like that flavor.

 

[Scott C.]

Meh. Sex is an important aspect of a lifelong romantic partnership. It seems unfathomable to me that we are supposed to commit to such a partnership without first finding out whether that component works or not. It would be like commiting to only ever eating chocolate icecream without first finding out whether you even like that flavor.

I still don't get it. How can you not enjoy intimacy with someone you love and find attractive, etc.? Unless, of course, you have some sort of sexual disfunction which would occur with anyone.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Men who are capable of beating a woman into a coma should never have sex with anyone.

Well, you tell them that. Let us know how it works out.

Until you can convince them not to have sex any more, these men will continue having sex with people. Sometimes this sex will result in pregnancies, some of them unwanted. As long as this is happening, it will have to be addressed somehow. Simply declaring what you think "should" happen is a cop-out. There will always be things that happen in the world that you don't think should happen. Sometimes, the best response to them will be things that you don't think would happen in a perfect world.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

I still don't get it. How can you not enjoy intimacy with someone you love and find attractive, etc.? Unless, of course, you have some sort of sexual disfunction which would occur with anyone.

I see things a bit differently: the sort of tactics that people sometimes use to suppress their sexual nature until marriage will often have lasting effects that persist into marriage. If a person tells themselves (or is told by others) that sex is dirty, sinful, or a source of shame, that instinctual reaction doesn't necessarily just switch off simply because you have a ring on your finger.

 

[Koldo]

Um, in answer to the Op that you presented:

""

I'll reiterate:

Ana has the final say. Period.

Next?

What about my reply do you not understand or comprehend or feel remains unresolved?

Perhaps you felt yours was an insoluble conundrum of exceeding difficulty to lend fair answer in rapt contemplation. In the end, it's not.

The final say on what specifically?
On what she is going to eat?

 

[Koldo]

I can tell you exactly how the judiciary system would deal with the situation:

I will stop right here.
I do not care how the judiciary system deals with the situation currently.

 

[Koldo]

So you weren't suggesting that the mother be responsible for all child support payments?

Depends on what you mean by this.
I said that she should be responsible for all the payments if she makes past a certain mark of income. And later on, she should pay the father all the money he spent on child support.

"Simply raising the baby"? How is it a "simple" task? Pregnancy in and of itself would be hard enough to go through, but raising a child as a single parent just makes the whole thing tremendously difficult for the mother.

And what is making the mother suffer in such a way going to achieve, anyway? If she's already facing the consequences of her actions — and I mean having to raise the child — then I see no reason whatsoever to try to chastise her even more, especially not in the way you're describing.

I never said raising the baby is a simple task. What i did say is that raising the baby is not compatible with taking responsibility for breaking the promise.

Imagine someone has an accident and loses a limb. This person is, later on, proven to be a murderer. Should he not go to jail because he doesn't have a limb?

 

[Koldo]

You missed the point. The point was that, since the beginning of time (or so it seems), men have been blaming women for the consequences of their-- the men's-- actions. Your argument is no different.

I am not blaming women for anything.

No, the stupidity of the women was to make a stupid promise that she had no guarantee that she could keep; she relied on a form of birth control-- her ability to go through with an abortion-- that ultimately failed.

Similarly, the man's stupidity was to accept such a ridiculous promise, and to have the unrealistic expectation that this form of birth control was fail-proof.

They both made essentially the same error: Both thought that their birth control method would guarantee no children, and both rolled the dice, and both ended up wrong in their assumptions.

I don't know if you are aware of this but there are no guarantees that ANY promise will be kept. So, if it is stupid in this situation to think a promise would be fulfilled, then it must be stupid in all situations to think the same way. Which means all promises are stupid. Which makes the stupidity of Harry and Ana irrelevant.

There is no guarantee that children won't result when two fertile people have sex. Historically, culturally, and biologically women have borne the brunt of the burden of an unexpected pregnancy, both bodily, financially, emotionally, and in the way society treats her. The fact is, that child support is an exceedingly, laughably small burden for the father, in comparison to that experienced by the mother, and is one that only begins to address the issue of balancing the amount of responsibility equally incurred by the decision of both parties to have sex. That's why, Koldo, that your argument is getting such a vehement response. It is so far removed from reality, and is so rooted in the deep-seated misogynistic response of society towards women who get pregnant out of wedlock, that it is so shocking to see it supported in this day and age.

What I find shocking is to see people who should otherwise be looking forwards the fulfillment of justice, to not only defend a stance that perpetuates injustice but also to attempt to degenerate the other's postion by applying labels that can not be reasonably justified.

 

[Koldo]

I hope you realize that this analogy kind of gives away the fact that you understand that the system you propose is about punishing women.

It is about justice.

 

[Koldo]

You have failed to show how it would be, and further, you claimed that it was irrelevant when people brought it up.

I have already explained how.

yeah, I am. We have a rule that punishment should not be cruel or unusual. Or is that another one you would like to chuck out so that men can have consequence free sex?

None of what i proposed is cruel or unusual. So i have no idea what you are talking about.

Except by a written agreement or recording, how else do you suggest they prove it? Perhaps you think your buddy should be able to vouch for you. Oh wait. But you don't believe that he said/ she said will be an issue.

What does this have to do with what i asked?

That still doesn't mean they are allowed to go against something that is already a law, unless you first change that law.

And also, explain exactly how it is just that this one, and only this one, instance of breaking a promise should be so punitively enforced, but every single other instance is ignored by the law.

You better read what i have said before.
You really should.

Oh, well, why should we ever have to look into these things? Koldo says that coercion didn't exist, so it didn't exist. Glad we got that out of the way.

Oh no. Falvlun says it did exist, so, therefore it did exist.
That makes sense.

Then your analogy is incomplete and therefore invalid.

How so?

Well, then good thing that her penalty for her second offense is already covered. Lucky her!

No. It is not. Unlucky her.

You really fail at analogies. Come back when you have two robbers, and one promises not to rat the other one out, but ends up doing it anyway, and the rat now has to serve both robbers' terms.

Also, in general, sentences are reduced by the amount of time already spent in jail pre-sentencing. I think that would be more analogous to what is going on here.

Your opinions about my skills on analogies are of no relevance to me.
Your suggestion has nothing to do with the situation at hand.
Think about it more.

And I think that if you are so bent on the idea of having the women pay more for a broken promise, then you need to find a payment that does not eliminate the man's portion of the responsibility, especially since your argument for requiring the women to pay more rests on the concept that we should all be responsible for our actions.

The man's responsibility only exists because the woman broke her promise.

 

[Koldo]

"Keep it your pants" goes whether she makes a promise or not. It isn't against the law to change your mind, you know, but it is against the law to not take care of any child that you are father to and I don't see that changing.

You can use the excuse "But she promised..." until you're blue in the face- it wouldn't change the fact that you had sex with her and your sperm entered her and fertilized an ovum and a baby resulted in that. And yes, it is an excuse and pretty bad one at that. Harry should have known better-- I mean you didn't say he was stupid- and it was a requirement in my high school to take Biology, where they went over all this kind of stuff.

Ana should have known better.

 

[Koldo]

It certainly does matter. If we imagine for a moment that Harry's selfish whinging about being tricked into making a baby would not be immediately laughed out of court, the obvious question is, did Ana's ridiculous comment about abortion have anything to do with Harry's decision to have sex with her? Seems to me that if Ana can demonstrate that Harry has had sex before with women who didn't promise him abortions, his claim would be found to be completely baseless.

But in this case, she did promise. What would have happened if she didn't, doesn't matter.

 

[Willamena]

It is about justice.

It can't be. You don't care how the judiciary system handles it currently.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

It is about justice.

No, it's not. For starters, in actual justice, the punishment is proportional to the offense. What you're talking about here is some strange version of vengeance.

 

[Koldo]

It can't be. You don't care how the judiciary system handles it currently.

So?

 

[Koldo]

No, it's not. For starters, in actual justice, the punishment is proportional to the offense. What you're talking about here is some strange version of vengeance.

In what world is what i proposed a strange version of vengeance?
Certainly not in our actual world.