lo Q ---

Socialized child support for single parents of either sex? That DOES sound like a good idea. That would be one way to reach fairness for men while maintaining the status quo for women. The capitalists won't like it, but in a few years when no one has any money, maybe something like that would have a chance.

Smashette ---

Don't you need to go to summer school or something?

Siouxrose---

This is part of your comment where I switched the male and female roles... does this sound like a valid arguement?

"Suppose a man sleeps with a woman he entertains no WISH to share a life with and conception manages to happen? It's a form of bondage for a man to be FORCED to support a child he does not want to have, particularly with a woman with whom there is no rapport."

I guess we're all equal...just females are more equal than males, huh?

MALES SHOULD BE GIVEN NOTICE THAT THEIR CHILD (or at least half the fetus for you God-haters) IS BEING DESTROYED!!!

No, HE didn't wear a condom

PS--Check out Riane Eisler"The Chalice and the Blade"- before patriarchy there was matrilineal partnership, not just another hierarchy with women instead of men exercising power and control.

VIexpatriate,

"THEY had sex. THEY produced offspring."

Sounds like HE fucked up when HE chose to impregnate a woman who disregards HIS feelings. Tough luck.

KATHY DOT says, "Giving that decision to anyone else turns her into a piece of property." THAT is the subtext of what this attempt at law is really aiming at. It's like "No child left behind," these things SOUND moral, but what they represent is sending women's rights back another century or so.
JEDEDIAH: Thank you for the head's up; I also felt your comment was right on.
LIBERAL WITH AN ATTITUDE: I empathize with the situation you shared in the forum, and I can see where if two persons were in a COMMITTED relationship the father's OPINION would be counted, but who ultimately has to carry that child? Suppose a woman sleeps with a man she entertains no WISH to share a life with and conception manages to happen? It's a form of bondage for a woman to be FORCED to carry a child she does not want to have, particularly with a man with whom there is no rapport. I had two children in what turned out to be an unstable marriage and I received child support for about 3 years of a commitment that ran 24 for me! I love my daughters and in some ways was glad to NOT have to defer to a male authority in HOW to raise them, savvy, intelligent, gorgeous, independent creatures. It is difficult for REALLY liberated women to find male partners who do not harbor some sexist notions. In cases where the woman is naturally empowered (yep, this is autobiographical) her Yang may overwhelm the guy's Yin. I have never found this a problem sexually, but I have found it a HUGE issue on social & cultural levels. It's always refreshing to me when I meet a man who I think IS a man, not a large boy or a male... to me the word "man" indicates a guy in possession of himself, who has his own grace and "holds his own center." He is not intimidated by a woman in HER own power. This is a rare thing, but I realize the very concept of gender equality is new to this phase of mankind's evolution. As I shared in a different post, our written history goes back a scant 3000 years and yet fossil remains show some form of human going back half a million. In that gigantic gap of time, OTHER kinds of arrangements have occured between the genders. Margaret Mead's work was considered groundbreaking when she found tribes that openly challenged the presumed notions (based on biological determinism, theories postulated by Freud and those who came after him) taken for "reality" by our so often myopic experts.
PROFESSOR EMERITUS from the level of enlightenment as shown in your answers, I wonder if you got your phD in grilled cheese sandwiches?

Thank goddess I'm gay.

The Rapeublican party and the Pro-Sperm movement show their colors.

"We had sex so I can send the cops after her." This pleases not only the troglodytes of my gender, but also the sugary sadists who war on other women.

As soon as a father has to carry a baby to term he can make these decisions, until then

PREGNANT WOMEN CAN MAKE ALL THE DECISIONS ABOUT THEIR BODY, just as men can now.

Why are Equal Rights so hard for some to understand?

Peace to you and yours.

These initiatives come from fundamentalists who as John Dean has admirably detailed, worship a form of patriarchal authority that sees the FATHER has the supreme ruler of the household. Think how convenient this type of hierarchy is for men who have NO power in society as increasingly wealth attaches to status and potency, and a lack of same, feelings of anger and justifiable frustration. In third world occupied lands men LOVE to have power over women because that's how they deal with their own displaced feelings, their sense of being "occupied." Much of this thinking stems from religion as it's given almost all (apart from Mother Mary in Catholicism) Divine authority and respect to its notion of a God the father. This assymetric religious precept acts on this plane to deny women all sorts of rights. Belief systems that predate the Judeo-Christian patriarchal ethos speak of a time of matriarchal power, a time when men did not fully understand their biological contribution to the birth process. Women, as givers and holders of life were revered. Once men figured it out they wanted to control the birth lineage. In the same way the Indigenous remind us that "the land does not belong to us, we belong to the land," so, too, does life belong to no one! When men try to control women's reproductive power it's their way of laying claim to lineage. It's a form of ownership, yeah, more on this amoral ownership society... like the article yesterday on Americans moving to Canada, each day's news make me think it's time to pack it all up here. The land of the free? Or raging Neanderthals on Viagra?

So if a father rapes his daughter and she doesn't dare admit it, she has to bear the child, even if she's 11 or 12? Way to go.

What Siouxrose said is with this law, men can force women into a livestock status and take away their human rights to a more or less degree. Any degree is to much. What do these people think? Is this the American Taliban or what? Cant we just ship them to Dubai with Halliburton and Michael Jackson? Let them all fight for the little boys there?

But I agree these cavemen have it upside down. It's the woman bearing the baby, the final decision of whether she will or will not must be hers - it's her body, not his. Giving that decision to anyone else turns her into a piece of property.

If this legislation were restricted to married couples it would have a modicum of merit. Since marriage is supposed to be a partnership it would make sense that the partners agree on a course of action for a significant matter like abortion. The way it currently reads it is a hellacious invasion of personal rights.

REPRESENTATIVE. John Adams (R) District 78. Address: 77 S. High St 12th Floor Columbus, OH 43215-6111 Telephone: (614) 466-1507 Fax : (614) 719-3978 ...That was easy!

He looks like a runner....Get the rope!

Ho dude, don't even go there. How about in extreme case of rape, incest and abusive men. So if the father want an abortiopn and not the women, what then?

Holy motherhood is no better than holy fatherhood: both are mystifications & mythologizations of biology. Parents are as much the victims of this mythology as the children they bear, and the children in their turn carry on the same habit of subjection towards progenitors and ancestors.

Equality is impossible where motherhood & fatherhood are anything other than tutorial expedients. We do not belong to our parents, any more than they belong to us; we don't belong to the land, any more than the land belongs to us. Any other path leads to the inevitably reactionary conclusions of socio-biology.

We haven't been able to advance in sexual equality since the early feminist gains because the patriarchy-matriarchy business is simply a product itself of oppressive relations in which human beings become genetic territory, of family, tribe, or nation.

Serendipity69, you think that life begins at conception.

That doesn't make sense.

I know its a difficult subject and lots of people have opinions on it, but there's no way that a cluster of cells, barely visible to the naked eye, deserves the same rights and entitlements as a person.

If you think that a fetus is a person and deserves all the rights of a person, then how can you be pro-choice?

Whose body is it anyway? Oh I am sorry - while they may be MY ovaries, they ARE up for public discussion? Thier use, their function? Someone other than me gets to decide what to do with my very own body?

I'm having reeeeaaaal trouble with this one folks!

Wait - let ME give HIM the ovaries and he can have all of this he wants.

i usually agree with siouxrose.
but as a man having been deeply in love with a woman that became pregnant and had an abortion i understand fully what serendipity69 is saying. a woman can use a child in ownership to freeload but a man has no say if she doesnt want the baby and he does? it doesnt sound right and it sure hurt when it happened. other than that i am pretty much a feminist and pro choice, but this does include the man in the decision making process which only seems fair.

This Bill is horrible, sexist and another attempt to subjogate women in all cirumstances, but it is even worse if it does not give the man 100% responsibility for all costs of pregnancy, including any wage loss, and complete responsiblity for the child once born.

Yeah, let's lock those dangerous, lying, untrustworthy, stupid women in the kitchen and the bedroom. Chain 'em up. Better yet, American women should have to wear full burqas and submit to male religious law.

Oh crap, that won't work. Then the United States would have to invade the United States to free the women from religious oppression.

Oh, well, I guess the Ohio Talibanate is the best we can do to keep the women in their place.

You gotta love the culture of life- turning fetuses into the grateful dead.

ignorant trolls should not reproduce

there are 2 parties w/interests in a pregnancy, but whose interests carry more weight? the state, on many levels, also has an interest in this issue. nobody can deny that. but the bottom line is NO PERSON'S OR INSTITUTION'S INTEREST OUTWEIGHS THAT OF THE WOMAN'S. if you disagree w/that statement, then you are already patriarchal. patriarchy by definition says a woman's sexuality & body are subject to forces beyond her own choice.

this is a complicated issue, and fascistic types like the ohio rethugs appeal to the basest sentimentality ("you want to help babies, don't you?") to manipulate people (they don't really give a crap about babies anyway).

it is a complicated issue. and it is precisely for that reason that women must make the decision for themselves, w/o coercion. patriarchy says women can't do that.

siouxrose, good comments!

Ah, yes- the media seeking hounds of Hell try to pass yet another law they know will never survive Constitutional examination. The GOP in Ohio is still in charge of the legislature, due solely to gerrymandering: a majority of voters voted Democratic last election, here. Even the right-wing Columbus Dispatch noted the essential unfairness in the result. Another Ohio tidbit- the 2004 results for President can not be reviewed because many county Boards of Elections DESTROYED THE BALLOTS (illegally, of course- Ken Blackwell's parting 'gift' to Democracy)! Yep, folks- no issue here, because we can't count the ballots.

Professor Emeritus Pete B,

Nobody is going to read your posts because they are too long (and idiotic). No women want to sleep with you so stop worrying so much about this topic.
You are super paranoid. Get a shrink or get some fresh air.

~Smashette

This bill is offering to give more power to a man's sperm than a woman's right to govern her own body.

Shameful.

vlexpatriate,

Stop talking to yourself and go take a walk. You are looking rather pasty.

Heres the last word no this subject, babies should be protected so they can grow up to kill or be killed ,that will make the merchents of death proud.

Fathers can have any say they want when they decide to carry and give birth to the babies.

There is nothing wrong with Rep Adams that another thiry IQ points wouldn't correct.

nice alias dork

who?

In a way I agree with this peice of legislation. Men have no say what so ever in a life changing descion. Woman can use men as sperm donors and then make them pay for 25 years while they deny the father so many of his rights as a father. Its bad for men and its bad for children. There must be more balnce in this matter than just "a womans right to choose".

And if you don't like the fact that females carry babies instead of males...take that up with God. That wasn't decided in the 1700s by some rich, white guy. That was God's decision. Stop blaming it on us.

EQUAL REPRODUCTION RIGHTS! IT'S HER BODY, BUT THE FETUS BELONGS TO TWO PEOPLE!

perhaps every woman who wants an abortion in Ohio should list these misogynist legislators as 'possible fathers'...

Siouxrose and Kathyodat have it right--If the Ohio boys are so cocerned about a man's right, let's see them also add an ammendment to the bill that any man who elects to have a woman carry his child to term and birth is also required to provide 100% support for that child and its mother through the child's reaching of majority age.

Then just maybe some of these sperm donor lovers who sow wild oats once too often and don't have the crop failiure they anticipate might begin to realize the devastation they inpose emotionally, physically, and fiscally on another once it is visited upon them.

What has always pissed me off most about the anti-abortion crowd is how much they love that fetus till it's born and then they could care less about the care of mother and child.

Just remember guys, all you contributed was one little cell to your child's development while momma gave her all to contribute the rest. In many if not most cases she will continue being the main food source for this child through nursing for at least the first year of life (until those pesky little teeth start coming in!)

And if all I contributed was one little cell, then why do I have to pay anything?? It's because I'm half responsible. The woman is the other half of responsibility. The decision to terminate the pregnancy should be THEIR decision.

Why does it have to be like that? How about an amendment that says the man has to pay for 50% through maturity and the woman has to pay the other 50% through maturity? Why do you try to make everything so one-sided?

And if a man cares deeply about his genetic lineage, that does not mean that he is misogynist! Does your advocacy of abortion make you a baby-hater, or a man-hater, or a Christian-hater...NO. And no one is accusing you of that. You should show the same courtesy.

thanks for the chivalrous help, POET.
NOBODY SPECIAL, one problem with your "argument" is that it's all about economics... the money is a part of the equation of parenting. There are a few men who no doubt would stay home and be there for the children, but that's RARE. WOMEN carry the babies and FEEL the connection much more than MOST men. There are exceptions, of course. This is about love and commitment, too. What is the point to force a woman to have a child she may never love, a child she may resent for altering her life against her will. NO MAN ever faces that! He may have to pay child support, but there are MILLIONS who avoid that responsibility, too. MUCH of this whole debate is about men wanting to control women, their bodies, their sexuality and the birth lineage. Next life, come in as a woman, walk the walk, and then we'll discuss.

Siouxrose,

If you really think that's RARE... it just seems to me like you've been meeting the guys you deserve. You don't even pretend to know true statistics.

And even if there are a disproportionate number of fathers like that (and I DO think you're exaggerating), it'd only be because women with your views have done such a good job of removing men from the equation. Gotta draw the line at some point, my children will be that line. I'm not a misogynist. I love women. I care about my offspring more. And if I do (even if a million other people don't care), then I deserve a say.

The millions of men who don't provide anything for children (as you say), would undoubtably not stand in a woman's way to get an abortion. It's the good guys that you've worked out of the equation.

NOBODY SPECIAL: read some feminist lit, pal... the number 1 reason women go to emergency rooms in America is due to domestic violence (apart from heart disease). A U.N study cited that close to 50 % of women worldwide would know violence from a male during the course of their lifetimes. Do you have any idea of the high statistics of rape in this land of the free? Just because you think you're a caring guy does not mean you are a good example of what goes on in America. Did you know that one of the assholes (he really is that) that Bush wanted to head the department of health, making decisions for female reproductive choices--this was published in The Nation as the data went on record as part of a divorce settlement--used to sodomize his wife when she took sleep medication? Nice guy. How many of these right wing pro-family fanatics that want to use legislation to control women's bodies have MALE lovers on the side? The whole thing is a charade. Author John Bradshaw who wrote the best selling book HOMECOMING said that about 90% of US families are dysfunction. You have a storybook idea of a happy nuclear family where husband and wife get along. Divorce statistics suggest otherwise. Substance abuse suggests otherwise. Obesity, too. These are coping devices for the countless lives of quiet desperation. My experience is far from unique... I travel a good deal and have a lot of friends. Truly loving relationships based on mutual respect and caring are RARE, or short lasting. ANY who can say they have had a bond that has gotten better over time probably has amazingly great love karma, but it probably took lots of lifetimes to get there... that's ONE thing I am working on, but YOUR prescription is a recipe for Neanderthal hierarchies, and you know what, we already played that movie on this planet... it's over pal. The same "pro life" types who are so vocal about family values are the ones who blithely walk right on by as our nation decimates OTHERS' families in a foreign land. Either we love life, and respect all people or we stop playing moral guardian in search of the legal ways and means to control others' bodies.

I cant help pointing out to kathyodat that her comment "the land does not belong to us, we belong to the land," so, too, does life belong to no one!" contradicts her position. A fetus' life
also is not to be "owned". (Its heart starts beating at 22 days.)

Kathleen

Siouxrose,

You made alot of good points on the many failings of our country. None of them have to do with the issue of shared reproductive rights, however. Obesity? Rape? Domestic Violence? What does that have to do with a man that wants to take care of what will (after 22 days or after 9 months, doesn't matter) be his child. No one is saying a woman has to give up her rights, just that she has to share a right that determines a shared obligation.

It's not that I have an unrealistic view of America, I know it's dysfunctional. That doesn't mean I can't hope for something better.

And fight for it

If "fathers" want a 'say' they should have said something in the beginning, such as "I'm a responsible human being and I will be using a condom to make sure that you do not have to make the decision of whether or not to have an abortion.

Several years ago a group of men where I work were tossing around their rather self righteous opinions on abortion, deliberately trying to get me to comment. I told them that men have the power to put just about every abortion clinic out of business within the next 4 months. Raised eye brows and shocked expressions, "How?" they asked. I replied, "Keep you fly zipped. Just say no to that pushy woman who wants unprotected sex. Tell her you will not be a party to bringing an unwanted fetus into being." "Hey!," one of them said, "It takes two to tango." I told him, "Then you be the one to stop dancing." I've never seen a lunch room clear out so fast and no one has ever asked my opinion of abortion since. I am highly in favor of a woman being able to make the choice over her own body. I am also TREMENDOUSLY in favor of men taking responsibility for their own sperm. The only place where fathers should have a say is in whether or not they want to be a father, then take responsibility for the consequences by supporting the woman's decision.

How about the woman saying, I'm responsible to, so I'll be on the pill.

Pregnancy requires two people. It is both their responsibility. Don't put the entire onus on the man (and believe it or not, some pregnancies happen in spite of proper condom use). It takes two to tango.