Whore TV. Connie Chung’s husband, Maury Povich, has a hugely popular syndicated TV talk show, Maury, which frequently offers unwed mothers the chance to have the man or men they think might be the father of their child given a DNA paternity test. The results are read aloud to both the woman and the tested man/men in the presence of the audience, to loud cheers or hoots of derision. If, as often happens, the accused man is proved innocent, he usually leaps to his feet in triumph and calls his accuser a whore (as, of course, she is, since she doesn’t even know who fathered her child).
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Povich then offers the crestfallen whore the chance to have an/other man or men tested! And then his staff helps locate him or them so they can repeat the exercise for the edification of the audience. Sometimes it happens that the second man or group of men is also exculpated of the ‘guilt’ of fathering her child! This has gone on thru six, seven, eleven men!
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Maury also sometimes follows up what happens once the father is finally found, to see if, six months or more later, the father has accepted paternal responsibilities. Sometimes he has; sometimes he hasn’t.
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The larger question is, “What legal obligation should any man have for a child he did not intend to father when having sex with a woman who sleeps around and who takes no precautions against becoming pregnant?”
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More: “Since a man has no control over a woman’s fertility and no right to safeguard the life of his child, or in the alternative to kill it — decisions that our wicked government has declared to be wholly under the control of the mother — how can he be held responsible in any way for a child he did not intend to father, during sex outside of marriage?” Marriage is a compact that implicitly constitutes acceptance of responsibility for children that arise from that union. But when people refuse to marry, they have no legitimate claim whatsoever upon each other’s money, time, or attention.
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I suspect, however, that the insane legal establishment now in place would gladly try to impose child-support obligations upon the particular male partner of a whore who accidentally fathered a child. Men must demand that the law reflect the true state of biology today, and be consistent in assigning responsibilities and rights. If men have no right to control "a woman’s body” to protect their child, no right to demand the abortion of an unwanted child — but the woman can kill the child any time she might choose, in complete defiance of the father’s wishes — then fathers have NO responsibilities whatsoever toward children they do not undertake to father, as in entering into a voluntary, well-considered marriage.
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Children of whores are not responsible for the harlotry of their mother, of course, and should not suffer unduly. We have welfare and charities for people who need help. And at the best of times different children are born into different circumstances, some to luxury, others to poverty. It is because the distribution of wealth across society is unfair that we need to address economic inequity generally. But that is a large issue, not specific to child support.
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If everyone has economic justice thru redistribution of wealth from where there is too much to where there is not nearly enuf, every child can be raised with economic security, without victimizing any particular person. If, however, we don’t intervene to lift from poverty children born to married people, we must not force men who refuse to marry to shoulder a burden they never intended to accept merely in screwing around.
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Women who feel themselves economically vulnerable if they have a child should not themselves screw around. If they insist on taking chances, in playing Baby Roulette, and lose, that’s tuf. She who gambles risks losing. If you don’t want to lose, don’t gamble.
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Each of us is responsible for his or her knowing acts. No man can know if any given woman is fertile when she has sex. She, however, does know. The responsibility is hers. Let her accept her responsibilities and the consequences of her acts, not try to push those responsibilities off onto someone else.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 1:53 PM