:: The Rant Factory ::

:: Monday, August 19, 2002 ::

COMMENTS ARE BROKEN. It's not an insidious plot or anything... I'll have them up tomorrow sometime. Im very sorry, to both of you!


:: Appeared at 7:06 PM [+] ::
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TO ALL OF YOU WHO SAID "LIFE ISN'T FAIR" or some variation on that theme, I have one question: how is that supposed to apply to the discussion? Like I've said before, life isn't fair, but the legal system is supposed to be. You can say "Life isn't fair. Wear a helmet." about any number of things including affirmative action, the 2000 elections, the minimum wage, having your PC hacked because you didn't have a security patch you didn't know you should have, etc. It's kinda pointless, though it does have a nice ring to it.

Oh, and Michael, if you look at what Christina Hoff Sommers writes about feminism vs. what NOW has been saying over the last few years, you'll see that "we" (and by that I guess you mean the patriarchy) didn't drive feminism to the fringe - it got there all on its own.

:: Appeared at 6:50 PM [+] ::
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MERYL REALLY IS DONE WITH THIS ARGUMENT so I won't go through point-by-point and talk about everything in her flame-riddled final response. I do have more to say, though.

To start off, there have been some subtle insinuations that I'm not pro-choice or that I have a hidden adjenda, and I want to make it clear: regardless of the nagging doubts I might have about the "right-ness" (whatever that means) of abortion, I'm very firmly against making it illegal. Very firmly against. It's not the place of government to ban the procedure, it's a decision that should be left up to individuals... which is the essence of choice.

I haven't wanted to be talking about abortion either, but it seems unavoidable. I tried to propose a legal framework (you'll have to scroll down... damned permalinks) in which financial responsibility would be clearly defined and either parent had the possibility of avoiding that responsibility if they chose, with the consequence of also losing any parental rights.

Maybe (maybe? I've taken quite a beating over it) it was dumb to lend my arguments against the relative danger of pregnancy some weight by referencing my own experience. It's pretty irrelevant to the argument how much of a hand I had in the birth of my kids (which is more than you think, and more than it seems some of you are willing to admit is possible, but it's pretty obvious I had a supporting role...), or how involved any man is in his wife's pregnancy. My point was, it's less dangerous than driving the kids to little league and a judge can make you do that 3 times a week. If you could demonstrate that your pregnancy was high-risk (inside the framework I outlined) it would change the balance I was trying to strike, and that would be perfectly legitimate.

By the way, here's the definition for trauma. Medicine would use the first and second definitions. But again, all this is only tangentally relevant. Meryl and I have gone far, far away from the beginning of this discussion (argument? I suppose...).

What I was driving at is more along the lines of what's going on here, with a response here. Win, I have to take issue with your argument, for these reasons:
You say:

Wanting or not wanting to have a child is irrelevant to the analysis. If the child is yours, absent some prior agreement with the other parent to the contrary, you pay. It's a bright line rule. And it applies equally to the mother and the father.

You could argue that a woman loses autonomy over her own body as a consequence of having sex, but there's no slippery slope between that position and the position that parents must pay for their offspring. And that's my point. The positions are entirely separate.

(BTW, thanks to Ampersand for the blockquote trick)

The problem with defaulting to responsibility absent any prior agreement to the contrary is that it's possible to conceal pregnancy until you're past the point of doing anything about it. Once you've had sex, there's no longer anything the man can do to avoid responsibility for accidental or deceptive conception. Prior agreement would have to come before intercourse: is that your suggestion? My original suggestion was based on the idea that both parties have some chance after conception to state their intentions. It creates a strong disincentive for entrapment through conception, because it's not possible. It allows both parties to make informed decisions because it creates an incentive for early disclosure and there's still time to abort if the man wants out. It places the responsibility for keeping an unwanted child where it belongs: on the person who does want it. My problems came from the belief that it should be possible for a man to keep his child even while the woman would rather abort.
Win, I don't think you've put together a good argument because you've basically described what we have now and "I didn't want the child in the first place" doesn't get you out of child support. I think the idea of somehow creating equality after the child is born is wishful thinking... we'd be left with arguing the state of mind of the parties during the time the child was conceived, or something like that, and I'd hate to be the judge in that courtroom. It's better to have all parties state their intentions as early as possible and take it from there, than to wait until there's a child and try to sort out who pays.



:: Appeared at 1:31 PM [+] ::
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IN HER HASTE TO BITE SOMETHING Meryl has left out or glossed over the implications of her rejection of the compelled-delivery argument. I say "compelled delivery" because I think it's a touch inflammatory to say "forced pregnancy". Remember, we’re not talking about forcing a woman to become pregnant, we're talking about preventing a woman from destroying a fetus over the father's objections.

Now, onward. I'll speak to the legal examples first. Meryl says:

You're seriously using as an example a law that chemically castrates child molesters—convicted criminals—as an argument why you should be able to force women (who have broken no law, by the way) to carry to term a child that they don't want? (Said castration can also be reversed; are you going to have a reversal of childbirth?)

I used that law as an example of the judiciary forcing a person to do something to their body. There are others... judges sometimes force gang members to have their tattoos removed as a condition of parole. Unfortunately, I don't have access to a law library (maybe Prof. Reynolds could jump in here?), and I'll freely admit the legal argument is a little thin. The fact is, nobody has been willing to interpret the law like this before (at least, as far as I can tell from Googling).

Incidentally, I wish I knew the incantation for making quoted text appear in a centered block... my html kung foo is pretty weak. Italics will have to suffice...

And quoting a 1941 Oklahoma state Supreme Court opinion? Oh, come on. In 21st century New Jersey, for instance, there is no such decision. I'm willing to bet it's not even binding in Oklahoma. You're reaching.

Like Twinkies, state Supreme Court decisions don't expire. Granted, '41 was a while ago, but as long as there's nothing more recent contradicting it, it would still have as much force as a decision handed down yesterday. There are probably NJ State Supreme Court decisions handed down in the 1800's that are still in force. And are you sure about NJ having no such decision? I'm not either.
That court case was actually a rejection of physical castration on the grounds that you can't permanently remove a man's right to procreate. Since it's still not legal in OK, I assume the decision is still stands.

Next:
Okay, I didn't say that pregnancy is the single most traumatic physical event to happen to a woman because I think it is. Medical practitioners say that. It doesn't matter if you think it's an exaggeration. It's a medical fact. I probably never should have brought up dying in childbirth; it is irrelevant to the discussion, really.

C'mon, Meryl, this is the Internet! "It's a medical fact" would be a lot easier to accept if the text was a link to some medical facts. I've been nice so far, but this is a bit much for me. You're right, you didn't say that because you think it is, you said that because you wanted to echo Diane, or because you heard it somewhere, or because it seems obvious. In fact, a woman's body is pretty well designed for childbirth, and usually (barring epidurals, pitosin, episiotomy, and cesarian) doesn't experience much "trauma" at all. If you're going to toss around "medical practitioners" then we need to start using medical definitions. Besides that, "single most traumatic physical event to happen to a woman" doesn't make any sense. If it's the most traumatic, what else is on the list? Cancer? Diabetes? How about ectopic pregnancy? Maybe disease doesn't fit the definition of 'natural'. What else does, then? I guess you could narrow the scope a lot, but then you're left with menstruation and pregnancy as pretty much the ONLY natural 'traumatic' physical events that happens to either sex. Basically, saying that is hyperbole, not science.
Also, you're wrong that it's irrelevant. Disproving the 'danger angle' reduces the objection to a compelled delivery, which is exactly my intention.

What are we left with? Well, it would fit on a protest sign, and it gets the sort of emotional response Meryl seems to be relying on: My Body. My Decision. Meryl repeats it like a mantra (or a chant at a rally?). Luckily repeating something doesn't make it true, nor does it make it relevant to the discussion:

Saying "you can't make me" is saying, "My body. My decision." The thing about being able to use the uterus card—well, that's where the childbirth action takes place, Tony. When men can grow a uterus, they can then determine what happens inside it. Choice doesn't become universal because childbirth isn't universal.

And again: The relevant factor: My body. My decision.

And some more: Men don't have the same choice women have, because men don't have the baby. My body. My decision.

Let's be clear here; I'm not arguing against abortion. I'm arguing for real choice. To date, the pro-choice argument has been that it's a woman's right to choose, but I have some problems with that line of thinking because it's inconsistent and opportunistic. I don't even like the idea of "women's rights", as opposed to some other kind of rights. In this country, people have rights... aren't we supposed to be gender blind? Women's groups (like some racial and ethnic groups) have been successful in their contention that women should be equal except in some special cases where bias should be tilted in favor of them for ambiguous, sexist (and sometimes contradictory) reasons. Why should a man have an equal claim to an embryo in a test tube, and then lose all rights the moment it's placed in a womb? It's a separate entity before implantation... What is so magic about being inside a uterus that destroys all rights for one of the parents? Furthermore, it's unfair because it denies a basic tenet of our society: for every right, there is an accompanying responsibility.

Meryl says: You absolutely can give the woman that kind of decision-making power and still not place the consequences solely on the woman; that's why we're having this discussion in the first place. Nope, it's not fair, nope, it's not equal, and, well, tough. Life isn't fair, and life isn't equal. My body. My decision. Not yours, not a judge's.

Well, clearly you CAN. But that's irrelevant... we're discussing whether you should. You CAN put people in internment camps because they're Japanese. You CAN admit people to law school because they're black. You CAN deny women the right to vote because they're women. But you SHOULDN'T do any of that stuff. What you're arguing for is dishonest; you're arguing for choice with no consequences, rights with no responsibility. We can't just leave things as they are. IMHO, it's unacceptable because it allows scenarios like the following: Imagine a man, Bob. He's been married 20 years and has been trying with his wife to have a kid the whole time. He's desperate for a child. Finally, his wife gets pregnant. Right now, she could tell Bob to piss off and abort the child and he'd have absolutely no recourse. How is that right? In fact, we could take that further. Imagine Bob is so distraught he leaves his wife. She could change her mind, carry the child to term, and then sue Bob for child support while simultaneously denying him the right to see the child! Life's not fair, but the legal system is supposed to be. Situations like this are a travesty! Even the possibility of situations like this cry out for some equity.

All Rights have responsibilities. If you want the sole decision-making power in all cases, you need to take the sole responsibility in all cases. Your body, your decision? That's incomplete; how about Your Body, Your Decision, Your Problem. If men have no reproductive control and no procreative rights, they should have no responsibilities for the result of procreation, whether it's an abortion or a baby. Personally, I don't want to live in a society where the man's responsibility defaults to non-existence.

If we do things my way, the basic human right to procreate is protected as a fundamental principle. So far, the legal system and the Amendments have moved toward equality for all citizens, and away from a multi-tiered system where your rights are restricted based on your gender or your race. The ideas Meryl is using to support the status quo are dishonest because they're not about choice, fairness, or rights: they're about power at the expense of others. Whether or not you like the repercussions, things as they are represent as bad a double standard as segregation.

Meryl, it's time to put down the megaphone and take an intellectually honest position. Either you're for equality under the Constitution regardless of the consequences, or you're for letting fathers off the hook altogether.

Well?


:: Appeared at 2:47 PM [+] ::
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I KNOW MERYL WANTS THIS TO GO AWAY, but I really can't let her reply to the paternity thing stand as it is.

First off, I'd like to point out that, with 3 kids of my own, I've got "street cred" on this topic. We (my wife and I) went through natural births all three times, and over the course of 6 years have probably put enough study hours into childbirth to get an Associate's Degree in it. I'm sure my wife would agree that anyone who goes through 3 natural births should get a diploma, but that's another topic altogether. Oh, and for those of you who raised an eyebrow at me using the word "we" to describe childbirth: the "we" part is why I've got street cred.

Now, onward. Meryl's got three basic arguments against my idea:

Argument 1: Ah, no. You don't get to make a law that says I have to carry a fetus to term if I don't want to.
Well, why not? We've made laws forcing castration. Also, in Skinner v. Oklahoma (in 1941) the state Supreme Ct. stated that procreation is a basic human right available to women AND men. I don't think it's very fair to say, basically, "my uterus trumps your argument" because, as I said earlier, the fetus is in your body but it's not part of your body. Saying "you can't make me" is basically the same as saying "fathers have no right to a child unless the mother a) doesn't object, or b) needs some money. Why does having a uterus automatically give the woman the power to affirm or deny the physical and emotional connection between a man and his child? Choice has to be universal, and has to apply, for both choices, to either or both parents, regardless of the discomfort or danger. Anything else is a sham, not to mention being vulnerable to anti-choice legislation.

Argument 2: ...childbirth is the single most traumatic natural event that can happen to a woman's body. Even in this modern era, women die in childbirth.
I'm very, very well aware of the physical trauma caused by going through labor and delivery, not to mention all the stuff that happens before. I think it's a bit of an exaggeration to say it's the single most traumatic natural event, though... simple old age is quite a bit worse over the long term (but I know that's not what you meant by "natural"). Anyway, here's what the CDC says about maternal mortality. To summarize, about 7 women die in childbirth for every 100,000 live births. Some categories have much higher numbers (black women and immigrants in particular). The CDC attributes most of this to bad prenatal care and poor health prior to and during pregnancy. There are other factors, though: in particular, the current medical attitude that pregnancy needs to be treated like trauma can actually drive up maternal mortality through snowballing interventions. Things have gotten a bit better since the mid-90's, but not much and not uniformly.
Back to the argument though, which is that it's not right to force a woman to do something dangerous just because a man wants to exercise his basic human right of procreation. Given that a court could force a man to drive his kids to and from school as a condition of a divorce, and given the MUCH MUCH higher probability that he'll be killed in his car on the way to school over the chance that his ex could have died giving birth, I don't think the 'danger angle' is a valid reason to negate a basic human right in favor of avoiding an admittedly very very unpleasant pregnancy, labor, and delivery. When you add in the fact that I'm suggesting the man pay for all prenatal visits and medical expenses (which reduce the danger significantly), compensate the woman for the difficulty of pregnancy, and possibly open himself up to civil action if the woman develops long-term problems as a result, and the fact that my idea is predicated on good foreknowledge being a prerequisite for good decision-making and fair legal action (possibly to avoid being compelled to deliver), I think "sometimes it's dangerous or even fatal" is a poor argument against.

Finally, argument 3:The ultimate reason a woman gets to say whether or not she's going to have that baby is because she's going to have that baby.[her emphasis]
I don't see how that applies. I do think, though, that denying men the same choice women have, then forcing compensation based on shared responsibility, makes a mockery of the whole choice idea. Either men are never, ever responsible for children, or else men get the same legal powers of choice that women get. You can't give the woman the sole decision making power without placing the consequences solely on the woman, and I don' t think we want a society which assumes no paternal rights at all.


:: Appeared at 12:58 PM [+] ::
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SEE THOSE TREES OUTSIDE? They might be moon trees! Here's the list of known Moon Trees. Maybe there's one near you!



:: Appeared at 3:52 PM [+] ::
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UNKNOWN AS I AM, I STILL WANT TO JUMP IN HERE on the topic of paternal involvement. It's something I've given a lot of thought to over the last 6 or 7 years. Diane at Letter From Gotham has chimed in recently, following this dust-up involving Meryl Yourish and Richard Bennett. The whole thing started with this Slate article, which, oddly enough, doesn't say much of anything apart from mentioning that nobody's got the guts to propose forcing a woman to bring a child to term.

I guess it's time for me to step up to the plate.

First off, a few unrelated points:
Meryl, Bennett's right about the numbers for single mothers and standards of living. What he hasn't added (and neither has anyone else, I think) is that the last Census showed single mothers with kids have experienced the largest increase in income of any group from 1993 - 2000. They grew at a 28% rate. Single fathers with kids saw a 20% increase in the same period, and in fact dropped 2.6% from 1999-2000 (whereas income for single mothers grew 4%, also more than any other group).

Diane, I think you're off slightly about marriage and financial responsibility of the father. Your approach of defaulting to zero paternal responsibility (absent a marriage certificate) is just as easy to game for men as the current system is for women. Also, I don't think it's fair to apply the kind of blunt reality you're looking for when there isn't any good system for "picking your poison" beforehand. But I'll get to that in a sec.

Richard, I don't think crafting a law that forces more fathers to be involved is any better than crafting a law forcing fathers to pay for kids they didn't want.

The biggest problem with parental rights is that there's no predetermined framework to deal with. Courts and the legal system assume the generic family, and try to legislate or rule on the problems as they crop up, according to the social requirements of the day. This is all wrong. Here's what I propose:

There are four possible situations when a couple find out that the woman is pregnant. 1) Mother and Father want the child, 2) mother wants it but father doesn't, 3) father wants it but mother doesn't, and 4) neither want it. It should be legally assumed that if either parent doesn't expressly protest (filing at the county clerk's office or something equally serious), they default to wanting the child.

The first and last cases are easiest to deal with.

If 1: Have the child. Great! If you change your mind later, go to court and start arguing about it... BUT it should be important to note in future divorce proceedings that you elected to have the child. It didn't just happen... freedom to choose (in this system) cuts both ways and your choice should be a factor when you try to cut and run.

If 4: Woman has an abortion. There, you're done. It should be said, though, that if you elect to carry the child to term even though you don't want it, you're a 2, not a 4.

If 2: Okay, so the mother wants to keep the child, but the father (for whatever reason) doesn't want to. The father should be legally able to renounce his paternity. This would mean the father has no right to see the child, no say in any affairs at all, and no legal or financial obligations.

It could easily be argued that a woman could get pregnant by accident and be pro-life, thus sorta rendering her unable to be a 4. This is where Diane's "tough luck" philosophy comes into play. With foreknowledge that having sex might result in you being pregnant with a baby you're religiously obligated to have, and that the father can avoid it altogether, might cut down considerably on accidental pregnancy.

If 3: This is where it gets wierd... but that fetus had its genesis in the union of two people, and the fact is that while it's INSIDE the woman's body, it doesn't equal her body. In fact, the woman's body has to constantly produce hormones which suppress the body's natural reaction to a foreign organism... kill it, reject it, get it out. Decrease in this hormone is what triggers labor. It's a woman's body, but the fetus is a seperate thing... it's not like a toe or an ear.

If the father wants this child, the mother should not be able to abort it. Instead, the mother should abdicate her responsibility legally. No child support, no rights of visitation, no contact. The father should have to pay (and I mean PAY) a hefty sum to compensate the woman for what is an extremely unpleasant and possibly dangerous process. Once again, the idea that you ould be compelled to carry to term a baby you don't want might cut down some on accidental pregnancy.

Finally, with a framework like this in place, well known and well written, people can make intelligent decisions with some idea of what the outcome might be. With some predictability and a bit of equal justice, it gets a lot easier to say "you should've thought of that before you got yourself into this."

UPDATE I didn't change the article but there were some typos I wanted to excise. Full disclosure and all that...


:: Appeared at 7:10 PM [+] ::
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I HAD A THOUGHT JUST NOW... I know, it's rare...

I wonder if the Almighty might consider sending Toho a cease-and-desist for illegaly using the "GOD" formative in their mark GODZILLA, thus trading on the goodwill built up by Him.

Sounds to me like He'd have a pretty airtight case...



:: Appeared at 12:50 PM [+] ::
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WOO, IT'S BEEN A WHILE... Here's the latest in a string of braindead domain name disputes: check out Davezilla and the nastygram the Godzilla folks sent him. I think it would have been more threatening if they'd sent Godzilla himself, or maybe Space Godzilla. Also, here's the Politech coverage.

UPDATE! The Mozilla legal team has also sent Davezilla a cease-and-desist... here's a copy of the letter from Mozilla:

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re: DAVEZILLA.COM
Dear Mr. Linabury:

We represent the Mozilla Project ("moz") in intellectual property matters. Moz is the creator of a confusingly similar mark to that of Toho Co., Ltd ("Toho"), who is the owner of all rights in and to the trademark and service mark GODZILLA and the GODZILLA characters. In addition, the name "mozilla" confusingly incorporates the "ZILLA" portion of Toho's "GODZILLA" trademark, and the mozilla character found at http://www.mozilla.org is confusingly similar to the likeness of Toho's GODZILLA character, which are are federally registered trademarks belonging to Toho. Copies of Toho's U.S. Registrations for GODZILLA and the GODZILLA character image are enclosed.

[Omitted long, dull IRC backscroll about the creation of mozilla...]

It has come to our attention that you have incorporated the "ZILLA" portion of our client's "MOZILLA" marks in the name of your "DAVEZILLA.COM" domain name,and that you have included a "reptile-like" character as well as a "monster-like" character, which you refer to as "MOZILLA", on your website accessible through "DAVEZILLA.COM." Please be advised that your use of the MOZILLA mark constitutes an infringement of out trademark infringement of the GODZILLA mark and confuses consumers and the public into believing that your MOZILLA mark originates from moz, which it does not. This detracts from and dilutes the confusion created by the MOZILLA mark. Moreover, our use of the "ZILLA" formative along with imagery associated with MOZILLA is likely to cause the users of your site to believe that the "DAVEZILLA.COM" website is either associated with, authorized by, or sponsored by our client ("moz"), or is infringing upon the GODZILLA mark owned by Toho, when clearly WE are infringing upon Toho, and your use of the "ZILLA" formative is an infringement upon our infringment. Your action demonstrates an attempt by you to trade on the goodwill built up by our client through trading on the goodwill of Toho. As such, we request that you remove the objectionable imagery and reference to MOZILLA from your website to eliminate any likelihood of confusion, possibility of an inaccurate assumption of direct infringement of Toho and GODZILLA, or possibility of capitalizing on the confusion and inaccurate affiliation created by moz's infringement of the GODZILLA mark.

We look forward to receiving your prompt reply, with a statement of your intentions, no later than August 16, 2002. Thank you for your anticipated cooperation.

Very truly yours,

The Mozilla Development Team, irc.mozilla.org #lawsuits
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Oooo, Zilla, you're in a heap o' trouble now!


:: Appeared at 12:09 PM [+] ::
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STAND UP TO THE MAN! Wonder whether people are getting fed up with airport security? Check this out.

Confrontations like that make me think of Ender's Game... If the security guard had been up to snuff, he would have known to look at Tony like a peon, spit out a quiet "Come with me, sir." and drag him off. Of course, it would have been completely without merit and motivated only by the desire not to get pushed around by the people he's supposed to be watching. The fact that he didn't just upholds Tony's point, which is that airport security deserves what it gets paid (or less). As for the Ender's Game parallel, go get a copy if you're looking for something interesting to read on the flight (or in the line, if Mr. Woodlief isn't on your plane).


:: Appeared at 3:31 PM [+] ::
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