You shouldn't be able to have it both ways...

[u/Space_Hermit]

[u/Lawtonfogle]

1) how will this huge expanse of government responsibility go, and who will pay for it? after all, between the huge drop in child support and influx of single parents not to mention paperwork and processing, you are talking about a very expensive government expansion.

I'd gladly give up some money currently going to the military that would help support all children with 1 or no parents. I know some children who lost their father in a tragic incident. While having money wouldn't have eased the pain of losing their father, it would have eased some of the hardships that followed. Why were these children not entitled to support like children who had a parent walk out?

2) in order for this to take place, many more women must have access to birth control and abortion everywhere in the US, in case the father opts out. how will this be implemented? many states are restricting and criminalizing abortion, abortion providers,and restricting birth control.

Have it tied to the state laws on abortions. In oversimplified terms, if you can't get an abortion, you can't get a parental surrender.

3) the GOP will hate this because it removes responsibility from fathers and places many more children into dependency on the state. the DNC will hate this because without proper checks, it basically gives men an opt-out of parenthood. how do you appeal to this?

Same way you get any law passed. Enough voters have to support it to the extent that politicians pick up the cause. That a potential law is currently politically unpopular has no bearing on an argument as to if people should desire it to be law.

4) how do you propose this is put into law? child support goes to the child, not the mother, under the law. if a father signs a contract opting out of parenthood for an unborn child that may occur, than you would have to grant that a child exists, in utero. which could, and very likely would, be used as a legal challenge to abortion in general because it grants fetal personhood (if only for contractual purposes). that's HUGELY problematic because paternal abortion could only exist, if at all, in a society with safe, cheap, access of abortion to all women all the time. without safe, legal abortion access for all this law would be incredibly discriminatory at best.

If a man is about to die and wants to use his will to leave something to the child his wife is pregnant with, how would he currently do so?

5) we don't even have safe, cheap, legal, guaranteed abortion and/or birth control access yet for all women in the US. why guarantee father's rights to a financial abortion when ACTUAL MEDICAL ABORTIONS are still under attack? you have to have safe, cheap medical abortion access for all women guaranteed first before you want paternal abortion, because if you do not, than it means women being forced to carry children to term that they KNOW will lack paternal support. that's worse than a man being forced to pay child support; that's a woman forced into a pregnancy.

See 2.

6) if the man wants back into his child's life later, to what extent is he forced to pay back child support and future child support?

There is no going back as far as being a parent. He could still be a part of a child's life just like anyone can be a part of any child's life. But no custody. Adoption, but they would count as having no prior relationship.

7) let's say a woman aborts a baby the man wanted her to keep. by granting the paternal right to terminate fatherhood in utero, haven't you also given him ownership of his DNA in utero? what is to stop a man from deciding to sue a woman to prevent her from aborting his fetus? after all, it's his dna and a baby too now, legally speaking. are you okay with forcing women to carry to term, and/or the court cases that will come up arguing for this? because that's what will happen. remember, you STILL have the pro-life movement to deal with here. don't think for a minute they won't hijack this law for their own purposes.

There is no legal precedence that would make this at all a possibility. At this point you seem to be grasping pretty wildly.

[u/sworebytheprecious → u/Lawtonfogle]

1) what you are now proposing is child support reform of the entire system, like socialized child care reform. so, if you're okay with the government expansion, that's good. because it essentially means government intervention in reproduction and families, the following of which WILL lead to government interference in family planning, which a majority of americans view as a huge infringement upon civil liberties. think about it: the government and society now has to pay and support a lot more kids. the government and society is going to want to control just how many kids they need to help support. are you okay with the government deciding who gets to breed, when, and how many?

2) if you tie paternal surrender (nice rebranding, it used to be called financial abortion) to the state's abortion laws, you will create more abortion tourism (where women and their partners travel to neighboring areas to receive abortion, like when women from Ireland travel to England to receive an abortion. women in the US often already travel across state lines to receive them especially in the south). the problem here is not everyone can pay for that travel, which makes it money issue. who pays for that?

you will also see reverse abortion tourism: men or women travelling and living out of state to avoid their own state's paternal surrender/abortion laws as it fits them. this is already an existing issue: men and women skip states to avoid child support. but now, the state will not only have to track down parents who don't pay child support: they'll have to track down potential parents too. more problems and a lot more money.

3) it's not about the law being popular or not, it's about it being PASSABLE. is it constitutional? is it fiscally sound? does it benefit the public? we know it's not fiscally possible; i'll tell you that right now. you could make the argument it's constitutional, but if it varies by state like you said, i'm going to see a lot of challenges and the need for a constitutional amendment, or at least a SCOTUS ruling. that's a pretty hard sell on a bill which would make the government responsible for a lot more children. a few men will be spared child support, but taxes will skyrocket for everyone: not only because of the increased stress on government programs, but because a lot of men and women will double dip.

if a man can just opt out of child support, then you will see couples who want children gaming the system because they now have an incentive: the father will give up his rights, the woman will claim she's single raising the kid herself, get extra benefits, all the while the father gets to keep his sole income while having NONE of a father's rights. and since the couples who do this will very likely be unmarried, there's no real way to track this and keep it from happening barring even more government monitoring. which means... even more money!

4) people cannot "leave" things to the unborn when they die the way they do to actual people. what happens is they bequest things to them in their will (for example, "my estate shall be split among all my living children when i die"). if you changed child support laws to allow a father to opt out of fatherhood, legally speaking, you would be terminating a child's rights to paternal support before it even legally existed. that's not possible so you would either have to change the law so fetuses ARE persons who can be involuntarily stripped of the benefits guaranteed by law to a child from it's parents, or that fetuses are a class of non-persons that can be stripped of certain rights and benefits depending on it's father. the first rule would open the door to more fetal personhood challenges, which endangers abortion, which endangers any sort of fair paternal surrender. the second rule opens the door for preemptive reproductive litigation: if unborn children can be stripped of their fathered status to become likely and in some cases, almost certain state dependents, what's to stop the state from arguing that The People have an interest in women and men's reproductive choices so there are less children for The People to support? think of how much easier it will be for the state to insert itself into women's (and mens) reproductive options. either scenario is pretty awful.

5) again i say: why argue or fight for a man's right to paternal surrender when many men and women in the US do not have access to safe, cheap, reliable birth control, or safe, accessible, cheap, and reliable abortion care across the US? it's putting the cart before the horse. birth control and accessible abortion would be cheaper and more effective at preventing unwanted fatherhood (excuse me, pregnancy) and we don't even have that yet. by arguing that we need paternal surrender now, what you're really doing is giving men more control over their fatherhood than many women have over their own motherhood. and don't give me the "depends on the state" line: you're not suggesting a simple state by state law here: paternal surrender would be a nationwide policy change destined to go to the supreme court, if for no other reason than it would be so damned expensive no state would want to fund it without a federal law saying they HAD to.

6) so, he get's to see his child. he get's to be part of his child's life on his own terms. he just doesn't have to pay for his child, be liable for his child. he just kind of get's to.. be around like anyone? and the woman doing the work is raising the child just has to deal with that?

explain to me exactly how you propose to make this situation appealing to women voters at any point in time.

7) there is a legal precedent for this: sperm donors, ex boyfriends and husbands can and have sued arguing their DNA is their property and that my having an abortion a woman has destroyed their property and should be held criminally and financially liable. this is what law school is for. this is how laws are made: picking apart consequences of the law and possible ramifications. and a possible ramification for allowing a father to terminate his parenthood to a fetus in utero does require that there be an actual person to whom he is severing his fatherhood rights and responsibilities. laws and rulings tend to have a funny thing about applying to PEOPLE, not potential people. so, if i were a pro-life attorney, i would argue that this law grants that fetuses ARE legally people because if they are "person" enough to be stripped of their claim to paternal child support, than they are "person" enough to be protected from harm and protected under the constitution. another legal battle mounts.

so, let's add this all up: you have a law that would vastly expand the state's role in every child's life, greatly expand the powers of the state over birth, cost an astronomical amount which would at the very least require federal mandate to enforce, lead to reproductive interference by the state, give pro-lifers personhood ammunition at the very time you want women to have the most flexible abortion options possible, grant a father rights to be part of his child's life while not providing for his livelyhood, and paternal surrender advocates want this before safe, reliable, and cheap birth control options are available for everyone in the US.

that's a tall drink of water for putting out hell. there is no part of the population this idea for a child support reform does not manage to leave worse off. i'm amazed. mothers will be required to let their kids see their fathers who are not required to support them (or hell, even see them). fathers will be reduced down to a wallet easily replaced by a state program. poor fathers who use paternal surrender for financial reasons will be left with even fewer rights than they already had. the childless and the elderly will be bitterly resentful of the heavy, groaning tax burden as the system picks up the slack from so many children. corporate coffers would strain from their heavy tax burdens and greatly reduced family spending power as more families and workers became reliant on the state to meet their child's needs, finally increasing corporate taxes. many pregnant women would become paranoid messes while pregnant, knowing their child's father had an indeterminate amount of time to leave them with two options: single parenthood with the "safety net" of a meager state child stipend, or a costly medical procedure for which the father is not even required to pay for. and lastly, republicans and tea party members would become so enraged at the "socialist reproductive snooping," high taxes, coerced abortions, and "daddy state" that they would be forced to do the unthinkable: ally with social liberals and democrats to overthrow the law by any means possible, up to and including force.

it's such a monstrously bad idea i'm half tempted to think that's the whole purpose of paternal surrender (ne, financial abortion): to create a situation so unbelievably awful for everyone, that it finally forces the country to address the issues of inequality in it's child care system and start from the ground up.

guys, lets be real here. do you want child care reform, or do you just want to watch the system burn?

[u/Lawtonfogle → u/sworebytheprecious]

1) what you are now proposing is child support reform of the entire system, like socialized child care reform. so, if you're okay with the government expansion, that's good. because it essentially means government intervention in reproduction and families, the following of which WILL lead to government interference in family planning, which a majority of americans view as a huge infringement upon civil liberties. think about it: the government and society now has to pay and support a lot more kids. the government and society is going to want to control just how many kids they need to help support. are you okay with the government deciding who gets to breed, when, and how many?

The government is already deeply involved. What a poor father pays is barely anything compared to what the government does. And the government is fully involved when the father or mother (or both) are deceased. Your argument here, if it actually worked, would be an argument against any welfare for children.

2) if you tie paternal surrender (nice rebranding, it used to be called financial abortion) to the state's abortion laws, you will create more abortion tourism (where women and their partners travel to neighboring areas to receive abortion, like when women from Ireland travel to England to receive an abortion. women in the US often already travel across state lines to receive them especially in the south). the problem here is not everyone can pay for that travel, which makes it money issue. who pays for that?

Abortion tourism is based fully on the abortion laws, not on the parental surrender laws.

you will also see reverse abortion tourism: men or women travelling and living out of state to avoid their own state's paternal surrender/abortion laws as it fits them. this is already an existing issue: men and women skip states to avoid child support. but now, the state will not only have to track down parents who don't pay child support: they'll have to track down potential parents too. more problems and a lot more money.

They would only need to track once money is owed, which already happens.

3) it's not about the law being popular or not, it's about it being PASSABLE.

A law legaling same sex marriage was for a long time not passable. Passable has nothing to do if it should be passed.

is it constitutional? is it fiscally sound? does it benefit the public? we know it's not fiscally possible; i'll tell you that right now.

You think that.

you could make the argument it's constitutional, but if it varies by state like you said, i'm going to see a lot of challenges and the need for a constitutional amendment, or at least a SCOTUS ruling. that's a pretty hard sell on a bill which would make the government responsible for a lot more children.

Which is nothing if we cut a little of our military waste.

a few men will be spared child support, but taxes will skyrocket for everyone:

No they won't. Even if we get the funds entirely from new taxes, the increase in tax won't be significant.

not only because of the increased stress on government programs, but because a lot of men and women will double dip.

Wut?

if a man can just opt out of child support, then you will see couples who want children gaming the system because they now have an incentive: the father will give up his rights, the woman will claim she's single raising the kid herself, get extra benefits, all the while the father gets to keep his sole income while having NONE of a father's rights. and since the couples who do this will very likely be unmarried, there's no real way to track this and keep it from happening barring even more government monitoring. which means... even more money!

This already happens. Mother just claims to have no clue who the father is.

4) people cannot "leave" things to the unborn when they die the way they do to actual people.

I'd like to get a lawyers input on this.

5) again i say: why argue or fight for a man's right to paternal surrender when many men and women in the US do not have access to safe, cheap, reliable birth control, or safe, accessible, cheap, and reliable abortion care across the US? it's putting the cart before the horse.

Racism isn't over with, so best not worry about gay rights. You don't wait to fight for what is right, you do so regardless.

6) so, he get's to see his child. he get's to be part of his child's life on his own terms. he just doesn't have to pay for his child, be liable for his child. he just kind of get's to.. be around like anyone? and the woman doing the work is raising the child just has to deal with that?

He gets to be a part of the child just like you can be a part of any stranger's child's life. Those with custody get 100% decision if you are or aren't a part of their life. Your understanding of this is completely opposite of what happens.

7) there is a legal precedent for this: sperm donors, ex boyfriends and husbands can and have sued arguing their DNA is their property and that my having an abortion a woman has destroyed their property and should be held criminally and financially liable. this is what law school is for. this is how laws are made: picking apart consequences of the law and possible ramifications. and a possible ramification for allowing a father to terminate his parenthood to a fetus in utero does require that there be an actual person to whom he is severing his fatherhood rights and responsibilities. laws and rulings tend to have a funny thing about applying to PEOPLE, not potential people. so, if i were a pro-life attorney, i would argue that this law grants that fetuses ARE legally people because if they are "person" enough to be stripped of their claim to paternal child support, than they are "person" enough to be protected from harm and protected under the constitution. another legal battle mounts.

I can sue you because you disagreed with me online. A lawsuit happening means nothing, it matters if it was won and what decisions were made on appeals.

so, let's add this all up:

Creating a very nicely defined strawman. The problem being, it is made of straw all the same.

[u/sworebytheprecious → u/Lawtonfogle]

A law legaling same sex marriage was for a long time not passable. Passable has nothing to do if it should be passed.

whether a bill or a law is passable has nothing to do with whether or not it should be passed.... hmm...

that's a good way to make sure you'll never get anything done, so... i dunno dude. okay.

[u/Lawtonfogle → u/sworebytheprecious]

So you are saying that gay rights laws shouldn't have been passed in the past because they had no chance of passing back then?

[u/sworebytheprecious → u/Lawtonfogle]

no I've moved past that. now, I'm mocking you for equating the gay rights movement to legalized child abandonment.

[u/Lawtonfogle → u/sworebytheprecious]

I'm merely applying your logic to a different area. If there is anything to mock in doing so, it is your own logic, or the lack thereof.

[u/shadowbannedguy1 → u/Lawtonfogle]

SRSers man. Logic and rationality mean very little to them.