[defen]

> What is "evil" about not wanting to see a child that you presumably didn't want to begin with?

The child doesn't get a choice about being brought into the world, so your desire or intent to produce a child is irrelevant. If you don't want to father a child, don't do anything that could reasonably lead to producing a child. If you father one anyway, that's on you. To deliberately alienate yourself from your child in that way, especially when you have the wealth and resources he does, is evil in my opinion.

[d1zzy]

> The child doesn't get a choice about being brought into the world, so your desire or intent to produce a child is irrelevant. If you don't want to father a child, don't do anything that could reasonably lead to producing a child. If you father one anyway, that's on you.

That's on a man no more than it's on a women if she gets pregnant and the previous agreement was that the guy had to use condoms and he didn't. Otherwise what you're saying is "if you don't want to get STDs or have kids never have sex". Luckily that's not how the law works.

[rayiner]

People routinely get pregnant despite using hormonal birth control. (Condoms are even less effective.) The purpose of sex is having kids, and unsurprisingly humans are very good at conception. If you don’t want to have kids, don’t have sex.

[hackinthebochs]

>If you don’t want to have kids, don’t have sex.

How do you square this with your claim in a sister comment of "by virtue of their right to control their own bodies can abort a baby before it is born"

[yifanl]

Someone may not want to have a kid and also object to having an abortion for any number of personal and/or religious reasons.

[hackinthebochs]

Factually there's no contradiction. But in terms of principles, there seems to be a tension.

[hackinthebochs]

And yet, we generally accept that women have the right to an abortion regardless of their willfully chosen actions prior. How do you square the two positions? Note that I'm not arguing that the man has a right to absolve himself of financial responsibility.

[rayiner]

There is nothing that needs to be squared. People are responsible for the predictable consequences of their actions. We hold women and men equally accountable when their having sex produces a child.

The fact that women, by virtue of their right to control their own bodies, can abort a baby before it is born, doesn’t change the analysis for either. Both are still responsible for a baby that is born. The fact that the woman has additional options to avoid the consequence doesn’t absolve the man of responsibility (both to provide financial support and to be a father). Women may have many reasons for not aborting a baby. (Maybe they even believe it’s morally wrong!) But if you take action that predictably may result in an outcome, you don’t get off the hook because someone else had the power to avert the outcome at a later stage and chose not to. Both people are responsible.

[hackinthebochs]

>The fact that the woman has additional options to avoid the consequence doesn’t absolve the man of responsibility

I disagree. Having more options does in fact alter the level of responsibility.

[defen]

An abortion doesn't result in a person so it's not really comparable. My understanding is that the vast majority of surgical or medical abortions occur due to either 1) grave risk to the mother's life 2) serious genetic defects or malformities in the fetus or 3) well before viability (during a time when spontaneous abortions are also common)

[hackinthebochs]

Basing a principle of rights or duties based on contingencies (live birth or not) seems dubious. If the mother has a right to decide against the burden of a child, the father should as well (all things being equal). Granted, all things aren't equal, but the financial obligation seems sufficient to fulfill a duty to the living child. Besides, why should we force contact when the father doesn't want it? I don't see that as benefiting the child.

[rayiner]

> If the mother has a right to decide against the burden of a child, the father should as well (all things being equal).

This is your false premise. Nothing about fairness requires the law to give someone additional rights to offset someone else’s intrinsic advantages. Neither men nor women have a “legal right to decide against the burden of a child.” If either has a child, they’re on the hook for it. The law doesn’t need to give men an additional legal right to “make up” for the fact that women can terminate a pregnancy by exercising their natural right to control their own pregnancies.

[hackinthebochs]

I'm talking about what should be the case, i.e. what is a moral right or duty. Legal concerns just add extra complication that are tangential to my claims.

[rayiner]

I am not talking about what the law is, but rather what fairness requires the law to be. Fairness doesn’t necessarily require giving one sex more legal rights (allowing men to disavow parental obligations) to make up for a biological limitation (inability to terminate a pregnancy).

[ocdtrekkie]

> The people in Google’s legal department were very close and in 2004, at my birthday party at the W in San Francisco, David reserved a suite to host an “after party.” It was there, that night he told me how he wanted more children. I urged to him to have one with his wife but he demurred and said that would never happen because he was estranged from her, which admittedly I already knew — he was the only married one in attendance without his spouse.

The kid was, in fact, David's idea from the get-go. He lamented at a party to a then-just-coworker about how badly he wanted more children. Of course, whether or not that was just his move to try to get a woman into an affair with him or not, we have no way of knowing.