Should statutary rape victims be forced to pay child support?

Not with respect to the decision to carry an unintended pregnancy to term.

 

If the mother decided to abort the child, than the father has no responsibility at all. There is no law which states that a father must cover the cost of an abortion. It's the mother's choice, and it's her responsibility. The only time a father has any legal responsibility is if the mother chooses to keep the baby. In that case, the father made the choice to have unprotected sex, and their not wanting a kid shouldn't really matter.

 

That doesn't only apply to cases of statutory rape.

Plus you'd be placing the onus on the woman to get an abortion - a decision that may not only affect her but the fetus as well.
Thus it can get a lot more ethically complicated than just "it's her fault because she didn't abort".

 

You are making a bunch of flawed assumptions. First off - an unintended pregnancy can result from protected sex.

Second - you are conflating the decision to carry an unintended pregnancy to term with the decision to have sex. Consent to sex is not consent to a child.

At best one could claim that consent to sex is consent to the possibility of an unintended pregnancy.

Since you can not prove that a child exists at conception - the claim that an unintended pregnancy = a child is fallacy.

The decision to have sex is not consent to the decision to carry an unintended pregnancy to term. (hence the word unintended)

Just because one gets into a car does not mean one is responsible for the financial consequences of someone else's bad driving. "You chose to drive" doesn't cut it.

The decision of the woman to have sex does not carry the possibility of having to be responsible for the financial consequences of the decision of another .. neither should the man. This is called "equal justice" under the law.

If you want to violate this principle - then the woman should be made responsible for the mans unilateral decision with respect to an unintended pregnancy and be force to carry the pregnancy to term if that is what the man decides.

Either we respect the rule of law or we don't. Either one person is responsible for the actions of another .. or they are not. Either there is equal justice under the law or there is not.

I tend to like the rule of law. Don't you ?

 

I do not place the financial consequences of the cost of abortion on the woman. I think they both should be responsible since they both took part in the action which resulted in an unintended pregnancy.

Consent to sex is consent to the possibility of an unintended pregnancy. Obviously, if there was no prior consent between the couple having sex that should a pregnancy result, that pregnancy would be carried to term .. the onus is on the woman to not carry the pregnancy to term unless she is willing to be responsible for the consequences of her decision.

Your argument is ridiculous.

 

Giftedone, I'm not sure that I understand you. You are saying the male should be held financially responsible for the pregnancy?

I don't think you did a good job of explaining why it is ridiculous.
Your logic isn't connecting.

You didn't address several of my points, and basically just repeated your same argument as before.

Your statements also seem to be vague and contradictory.

I'm really not sure exactly what you're trying to say.

 

By definition, statutory rape is a crime because the victim cannot consent legally. So, that victim shouldn't be responsible for it. That said, this isn't a real issue. I doubt if it has happened more than a handful of times.

 

Clearly you do not understand. I have stated clearly what the Rule of Law is - One person is not to be punished for he actions of another.

I have stated clearly that on this basis one person should not responsible for the financial consequences of the decision of another to carry an unintended pregnancy to term. Obviously - in this case the man should not be responsible for financial consequences of the decision of a woman to carry an unintended pregnancy to term.

The man should be responsible for helping out with the costs for an abortion.

I did address your points and it is you who has not addressed my argument - which is why it bears repeating as you obviously do not understand it.

There is nothing vague - or contradictory in my claim. What is "vague" and where is the "contradiction ?

What part of "one person is not to be punished for the actions of another" do you not understand ?

What part of "equal justice" under the law eludes you = the woman has the ability to avoid the financial consequences of an unintended pregnancy where the man does not ?

The law can not change the fact that if a woman gets pregnant - the man does not have the ability to share her physical experience. What the law can do is respect the Rule of Law.

 

That's just a legal conception, not exactly actual reality.
We all know the truth of the matter is that the "victim" consented at least to some extent, even if we judge that they were not fully capable of making an informed decision due to their age.

 

I basically agree with that, but just because it is basically true does not make it absolutely completely true in all circumstances.

And like I already stated, the male did choose to undertake actions that caused the situation. Your argument really isn't one about actions, it's about culpability at the time due to age.

The male did consent. To deny that is to make a semantics argument.

 

The victim in that case is not capable of making an informed decision that is capable of costing him a great deal of money over the next 18 years. The perpetrator (i.e. the of age female) is capable of this decision, and by choosing to have sex with an underaged male, has decided that she will forgo child support. Anyway, I doubt it happens much. It's a nice theoretical issue, but rarely occurs.

 

That's why I stated the amount of child support should be reduced somewhat.

Both the male and female made a decision. Because of the age difference, the female took advantage of the male to some degree, so she should be held more responsible.

 

Men accidentally get women pregnant all the time, and they are on the hook for child support.

To some extent it really doesn't matter so much whether it was an informed decision coming from a competent adult. They made the decision, it's their child.

Just because "it's not fair" to the male doesn't completely abrogate their responsibility for their child.
Someone needs to pay for that child now, and the woman (even if it was more her fault) may likely not have that capability.

 

I covered this - a number of times. The man took part in actions which resulted in an unintended pregnancy.

The question of what to do about this accident is a separate question. Your problem is that you are trying to conflate the two as if they are the same - and they are not.

Your problem is that you desperately want to claim that an unintended pregnancy = a child, but you can not back this claim up. In fact - deep down - you know that I am right and you are wrong. You know that single human cell and a human are two different things and that one is not the other.

You can pine away all you like for the "Potential human" - but that human does not exist in the early stages of pregnancy. You might as well be pining away for all those poor sperm that didn't make it .. after all "every sperm is sacred" is it not? It is not "human life".

 

Statutory Rape is illegal because one of the two are under legal age to have sex, but it is as consensual as any legal consensual sex. I think it reasonable to set a minimum age as the age of responsibility as we do for any other crimes. But if the parties involved are old enough to know better, then by all means they are old enough to accept responsibility for any children they bring into the world due to their choices.

 

Of course it matters. The felon should not be holding the victim responsible.

 

I recognize they are not the same, but they are similar.

 

It seems like you're basically saying it's the woman's fault for not getting an abortion.

But we all know the woman may not discover the pregnancy until the fetus has gone a ways in development a little. And then it's ethically problematic to just blame it on her for aborting.
It's not necessarily the right thing to do to abort at that point.

Under current law, we leave the choice all up to the woman (having to do with her bodily rights, a much more complicated secondary issue), but that does not mean it's the right thing to do, or that the law should place the onus on her to abort.

 

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According to some states 17 is underage, so a 17 year old male, has sex with an 18 year old female, the day before his 18th birthday, and according to you, he shouldn't have any responsility to the child if he gets her pregnant.

 

It's more than just "the results of their actions", it's another human being that is now at stake.

I think the male was at least partially responsible.

 

You're taking this too far. What you stated is not actually true in reality.

That may be what the law says, but that's not the entire reality.

If you rely on the legal definition of consent (not sure that's what you're doing) you're making a semantic argument and a circular legal argument.
The concept of "consent" is a little bit more fluid than that. In fact, for the sake of the argument here I think it would be more useful to use another word. For example, maybe culpability.

 

MALE VICTIMS????Surely you jest!!!

 

A baby? I don't know about you but once it is born it is a baby.

 

Let's not make this into a semantics argument.

If you prefer, use the term "baby", in quotation marks.
We all know it doesn't suddenly come into existence the moment it's born.

 

I can see how you would view that as unfortunate. However, I believe that the male should be at least partially responsible for child support, in most cases.

In an ideal perfect world, he should not have to pay if he was actually raped. But I think it's a terrible idea to create a legal financial incentive for a male to falsely accuse a woman of actual rape, just to get out of paying child support.
So sometimes the best law is not the most ideally fair one.

Someone else (besides just the woman, even though she deserves it) needs to be responsible for paying child support. So that person should be the biological father, who did choose to have sex, even if he was not fully of age to be able to make a fully responsible decision.

I'm okay making the woman pay a little bit more than the man, just to "punish her" and put a little more of the responsibility on her, since she was more culpable.