Renegade

I don't think most man perceive that when they get married to a "stay-at-home" wife what they are agreeing to is to support her for life, regardless of the state of the marriage. I believe that they are committing to support her for the term of the marriage. How is it his commitment should outlive the marriage and her's shouldn't (I assume at least part of her commitment is to look after his household). Nothing like a prenup to clear up this kind of ambiguity, eh? Even if she is mid-career, her career may be detrimentally impacted by the joint decision to have kids. I think this is a case-by-case issue. Some careers are impacted, others aren't. I can see that a woman who has had a career impact would have a legitimate claim on alimony.

and, they have reasonable custody and access arrangements. Alimony should only be relevant to the extent the woman has made a career sacrifice. If she had no skills or career prior, there was no sacrifice and hence no alimony should be payable. What do you think if she "invested" in him. eg, she helped put him through medical school. Let's assume no children for the moment. Should she be entitled to a share of his earnings post split?

geoffrey, I think you're finally concluding that there is no hard and fast line at which the zygote/fetus/baby suddenly has rights. A baby has rights, a zygote has none, and a fetus may have rights depending upon its stage of development. This whole issue is about conflicting rights. geoffrey, do you concede that the mother has rights of self-determination for her body or do you dispute this too? In my view, in the first trimester of pregnancy there is no question that the zygote/blastocyst /fetus is not a human yet and any rights it may have are far superceded by the woman's right to choose what happens with her body. Sometime in the third trimester of pregnancy, there is no question that the fetus has developed into a baby. Once it is a baby it unquestionably has a right to existance, and at this point its rights supercede the woman's right to terminate the pregnancy. The transformation takes place sometime in the second trimester, but the I don't know that we can ever pinpoint an exact transition time. We should therefore ONLY allow abortions where it is clear that the fetus has not yet developed into a human. In my view that limits it to first-trimester abortions only. Further, I think if a woman carries a pregnancy beyond the first trimester, she is comitting to an IMPLIED commitment and consent to carry the pregnancy to term. That means she is commiting to be responsbile to host the pregnancy. If she violates that commitmetn by smoking, alcohol abuse or other such act, she should be liable to be charged with endangerment, and potentially lose custody of the child.

So I take it that you don't agree that life begins at conception? Why exactly do you consider egg division a suitable ciriteria to determine that life begins at that point? Growth. Otherwise its just a cell. geoffrey, it appears facts don't support your position. see below: Background InformationSo, it seems that the cell devides and starts growing before it ever implants on the uterine lining. So now you have to think up a new reason why this is not consistent with abortion, or you will have to revise your support of the morning-after pill as a contraceptive.

Yes, but once attached to the uteral wall, it is still just a cell or group of cells. I don't see a conceputal difference in your argument that its ok to abort a single cell zygote but not if it is multiple cells.

So I take it that you don't agree that life begins at conception? Why exactly do you consider egg division a suitable ciriteria to determine that life begins at that point?

A common occurrence is that we infect each other. Most times this is simply an inconvenience (eg colds), but in some case the infected person may suffer significant impact including pain and suffering, income loss, medical bills, etc. Consider the following: 1. If a person suspects he/she has an infectious disease (eg SARS) and he goes into confined public areas (eg a plane) and spreads that disease, is he liable? Should he be charged? 2. If a prostitute, knows she has a STD, but continues to have unprotected sex with her customers without disclosing her condition, is she liable? Should she be charged? 3. If I am a contractor who gets paid by the hour, and a coworker comes in with chickenpox and infects me, and I lose several days of income. Should I be able to recover the lost income from him?

Which part is untrue? You know Drea, your attitude is extreme admirable and you used weflare and EI as they were intended (ie as temporary measures, on your way to self-reliance). You also set a great example for your children. It would seem that whether a subsidy or benefit is a Hand-Up or a Hand-Out depends more upon what the recipient actions are, and what they do with the benefit. Some welfare and EI reciepients may just squander the benefits or use them for dettimental purchases. In this case what they are getting is a hand-out. Others may truly use them to work their way to self-reliance, and in this case they are infact getting a hand-up. The tragedy in our system is there are no checks and balances to distinguish one attitude from the other and only give "hand-ups" and not "hand-outs"

You're correct, I don't think my taxes should fund what in essence are charitable programs. In my view, charitable programs should be funded out of voluntary contributions. The fact that you have heard the argument before, does not rebut it, and would indicate that many others feel the same way.

Slavik, maybe you would care to explain why Asian and Jewish households, despite being the subject of discrimmination for decades, have the highest educational and income levels compared even to native born white households. All of this without AA.

Drea, your post seems to imply that you feel that the taxes you now pay more than compensate for the welfare and subsidies you recieved from the government at one time. This may or may not be true. Your taxes today have to pay for medicare, your children's education, government administration, debt interest, etc.. It has been estimated that the government spending is about $15,000 per person. So, assuming you are also responsible for 50% of your son's expenditures, the amount of government expenditure on you and your son is about $22,500 ($15000 + $7500). In effect you would need to be paying over $22500 in taxes and anything above that you can legimitately claim is offsetting the amount you recieved in previous subsidies. linkYou also seem to feel that what low-income people need is a "hand UP" not a "hand OUT". That is great rethoric, but what is really the difference? Should we expect that they will pay back subsidies which are given as a "hand UP" instead of a no obligation "hand OUT" (Kind of like we expect students to pay back student loans). Or maybe it is an investement we make for which we should expect a return at some point down the road. If it is an investment, it is not a very good one. Most people won't achieve the level of success you seem to, and end up contributing to the public purse to the extent it would offset the initial investment.

So you're ok to "abortion the baby" if it's a decision made by "2parents"?

The irony geoffrey is that we ("we" being the taxpayer) are going to pay much much more for a birth than an abortion. Even the medical cost of an abortion are far less than childbirth, leaving aside the other social costs such as welfare, education, childcare etc which the taxpayer will subsidize or pay for.

geoffrey, since by your statement above you seem to advocate the responsible use of contraceptive measures, including the morning-after pill. Can you describe what conceptually distinguishes the morning-after pill which makes it permissable and an abortion not?

If you want to get an idea of how much the child support the non-custodial spouse pays (assuming a sole-custody situation) see here: The Survey of Child Support Awards See Figures 10 - Figures 13. Of course it varies by income, but the median monthly payment ranges from a low of $118 for one child, to a high of $3444 for 3 children.

Drea, By your own account you only pursued the father for child support when the welfare authorities forced you to do so. In addition, you only pursued for the minimium amount. You did however, apply for welfare as a low income single mother. Why is it you felt that it was fair that the taxpayer should be forced to pay the financial obligation of a supporting a child, when that obligation (at least partly) belonged with the biological father? Perhaps if the father was forced to contribute according to his responsibilites, he would be less prone to knock-up future girlfriends.

It is an interesting point. There are many people who are passionately against giving the women the choice of what they will do with their body. Many of those focus their energy on condemming the women who make a choice for abortion, picketing clinics, lobbying for legislation, and attacking medical practioners. Would it be delightlfully more constructive if they focused their energy and financial resources in making the choice for the woman to have the child easier? For instance shouldn't they do the following: 1. Offer to adopt the child. 2. Offer to pay for all the expenses related to giving birth and raising the child (eg maternity expenses, loss of income, child rearing costs) 3. Offer contraceptives and education to women so they are less likely to get pregnant and forced with the choice of an abortion. Now I know that some in the pro-life movement DO this, but as far as I have seen it has been a rare occurance. The bulk of the focus has been confrontational.

Slavik, I understand what you are saying, however what got society into this mess to begin with was a emphasis of race over merit. Society should have learnt something and learnt that race or gender should absolutely not be a factor in determining advancement, it should strictly be based upon merit. Yes, it will take some time before previously discrimminated groups achieve the representation which is reflective of their merit. AA tries to artifically induce this with disasterous results. AA is intended to address a problem of racial and gender discrimmination, but yet it itself is an example of racial and gender discrimmination. (Kind of like trying to teach a kid not to be violent by hitting him). AA lowers the bar for certain races/genders to try and advance those minorites to equal representation. Well what effect does that have? For those selected for advancement, they now have self-doubt about the reasons for their advancement and may be left with the feeling it is because of their minority status rather than merit. For those passed over who are not part of a minority, it breeds resentment and racial backlash and the feeling of being discrimminated. So has AA actually solved anything? As a further point, AA, tries to bring minorities to representative levels. How do we determine what those levels are? If women are 50% of the population, does that mean they shoudl be 50% of the executives of the company? If so why? Women make different career choices then men. For many family is a priority over work. As such they may be under represented in executive ranks becaue of personal choices they have made, not necessarily because of discrimmination. Should AA still force a 50% representation despite the fact that there are other reasons other than discrimmination which result in over or under representation of certain groups? One other point is that AA seems to be a one way street. AA seeks to equalize minoritiy representation in desireable areas, but ignores undesireable ones. For example the prison population is overwhelmingly male. Should we implement an AA program and lower the bar and impose harsher punishments on women so that we have equal representation for both genders in the prison population?

Unless you can point out where in the law it states a man is obligated to pay 100 per cent of all chld care expenses, I'm calling b.s. on this one. The law doesn't base the support payments upon the actual cost of child care or the cost of raising the child. The child-support payments are based soley upon the income of the non-custodial parent. Even the income of the non-custodial parent is not considerd in determining the support payment. So that means in cases of a man (assuming he is the non-custodial parent) having low income, he will pay less than the true child-rearing cost. In the case of a high-income man, he will pay considerably more than the normal child-rearing cost.

yes she does. The law only specifies that the non-costodial parent has to pay. I wonder if women are less likely to pay then men? Maybe men are less likely to file for child support if that's the case? questions....questions...questions... Well I don't know the average amount the non-custodial parent pays if they are male vs female or the % of paying vs non-paying non-custodial spouses by gender. I suspect that men pay more than women simply because the child support formula calculates the amount based upon the income of the non-custodial parent. Since in general men get paid more than women, they will also in general pay more than women. It split of single parent households by gender is a follows: http://www.singlefathers.org/

Continued from: Abortion, Choice, Responsibility Yes all true. But your argument against abortion was that it prevented a baby from "having a chance to live". So if you destroy a fetus, and prevent it from becoming a baby, how is that conceputally different? BTW, if you want to continue this discussion, I will happily do so in another thread. I am not willing to hijack Jerry's topic any further than has already been done. centraception prevents a fetus from starting, so when you use contraception then you don't start creating a a fetus which then later turns into a baby So if I understand your position correctly, you don't think its a crime to prevent life from occuring, however you do think it's a crime once life has occured to prevent it from developing. Perhaps you can address the issues you avoided addressing in the previous thread: 1. Do you think that a woman has any rights of control of her own body? Does she have to submit her body and womb and risk her life unwillingly to host a life she doesn't want to bear? 2. Is a fetus a person and does it have the same rights? Is a zygote a person and does it have the same rights? If so, how do you define a person and what makes a fetus or zygote a person? 3. If your answer to 1 above was that a woman has rights to control her body, do you see that right to choose an abortion involves a conflict of rights? 4. Since you have stated that people should have to live with the consequences of their sex acts, does that also mean that you believe that if someone gets AIDS as a result of sex, they should not be treated and allowed to die as their "punishment"?

Yes all true. But your argument against abortion was that it prevented a baby from "having a chance to live". So if you destroy a fetus, and prevent it from becoming a baby, how is that conceputally different? BTW, if you want to continue this discussion, I will happily do so in another thread. I am not willing to hijack Jerry's topic any further than has already been done.

Did you even read and understand the first post by Jerry? If all you did was read the title, it would explain a lot.

So? And not all people who have sex get pregnant or get afflicted with STDs. What's the difference? Is your point that you don't know what caused the cancer so it ok to treat them?

Because I can read. My comment wasn't directed to your opinions. Of course you are entitled to your own opinions regardless of who you agree with. My comment was directed to the fact that you posted an off-topic inflamatory post. The topic being discussed was whether men should have a say in the decision. The topic was NOT whether abortions were moral or not. So is contraception wrong too because you are preventing someone from having a chance to live? Should vasectomies and hysterectomies be illegal as well as they deprive a potential life from being born? Of course you have to accept the responsibilites of sex, but you have some measure of control on the outcome. By your view, adoptions should also be prohibited because the parents should have to live with the consequences of their actions. Go wild with it then.