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Originally Posted by Gilda
Let's look at the result of giving males this option of deciding once a woman is pregnant that they want to decline fatherhood. This would remove all responsibility at the outset, even before the pregnancy occurs. Men would be free to have as much consequence free sex as they liked, and walk away unburdened by the responsibilities of parenthood. It would remove any incentive for the man to share in the responsibility for contraception or supporting the children they fathered, shifting all of that to the woman.
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While I completely agree with you Gilda, allow me to play devil's advocate for a moment and take a stab at the legality of this. For the average citizen there can be no protected gender inequalities under the law, which I think is a good thing to have.
Granted the existence of abortion, you need only to switch the gender to see that in terms of *legal responsibility* women can have as much consequence free sex as they want. Not that having to undergo an abortion is not a consequence at all, but it is an out that legally absolves you of all responsibility for the child, thus once a pregnancy has begun, you can still choose to reject motherhood.
There is no such choice out for men, once the pregnancy has begun fatherhood is forced on them at the mother's discretion. Thus an inequality based on gender. This would have to resolved by either getting rid of abortion or granting men an abortion-like right to choose to give up all legal rights and responsibilities that come with children.
As an aside the way I feel about this is what some other people have said, If you can't do the time, don't do the crime. Pregnancy is a consequence of sex, if you don't want to deal with pregnancy - don't have sex, this applies to both genders. I don't care that you don't think you should have to, If you decided you wanted to go to a carnival somewhere and shoot your .38 off in every which direction
just because it's fun and you have the right to do what you want to do, that doesn't excuse you from responsibility for the people you end up killing. I fail to see how this is any different.