Measure allows parent to seek child support up to a year after giving birth to retroactively cover pregnancy expenses
The Republican-led Kentucky senate voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to grant the right to collect child support for fetuses, advancing a bill that garnered bipartisan support despite nationwide fallout from a controversial Alabama decision also advancing “fetal personhood”.
The measure would allow a parent to seek child support up to a year after giving birth to retroactively cover pregnancy expenses. The legislation – Senate Bill 110 – won senate passage on a 36-2 vote with little discussion to advance to the House. Republicans have supermajorities in both chambers.
You could say the same thing about abortions. If a father wants to be a father, they’ll be a father. If a father has no say in whether or not a woman can abort a baby, they should have a say in whether or not they want to raise it.
They do have a say in whether or not they want to raise it. No one is demanding that they be active and attentive parents. They’re just being told that they need to help financially support the child that they had an active hand in creating.
Until UBI and true test tube births are a thing, pregnancy will always put all of the risk on the birth giver. This is inherently unfair. In order to even out that risk, the non-birthing parent should be required to support the child to a minimum level.
Granted, UBI and universal support would entirely negate the need for this discussion and it’s what we should be working towards in the long run, but we can’t just… not support the kids in the mean time.
No, you can’t.
The father did have a say: using protection during intercourse. Once someone is pregnant, the other party has no say until a child is born. It is inherently a relationship between the carrier and the fetus.
You’re coming at this from an idealized world where everyone gets an equal say and no one can be forced to do anything. Except a mother is forced to carry a pregnancy to term if they want to give birth. And the mother is forced to undergo the physical and financial burdens of this and of raising a child should a father decide not to participate. Access to abortion alleviates a mother’s burden to carry a child once impregnated. You can’t un-impregnate someone so a father doesn’t get a choice in this regard and their responsibility started with not using protection. Whereas child support tries to equalize just the financial burden of an absent father.
In an ideal world, healthcare and child rearing costs would not be an issue. We’d all have plenty of resources from UBI or something and becoming destitute because of child costs wouldn’t be a thing.
But we live in the real world where fascists are trying to make women into baby-machines and people like you don’t want to take the LEAST bit of responsibility for anything. Grow the fuck up already.