Brain Fertilizer

Since I'm discussing social issues, I'd like to add that much of the disagreements you might have with me or see among the posters here probably has something to do with viewpoint and worldview.

For instance, I was born in the 60s. My father was a Lutheran minister. I was the youngest of several children (so I learned alot from watching their mistakes). I'm male, so the idea of the immediacy of finding yourself pregnant is foreign to me...but I'm a male, so the idea of being forced to pay child support for 18-20 years without a choice seems very immediate to me.* Furthermore, I am an unexpected/unwanted child myself, and my daughter was unexpected (and not really wanted by my wife), so that affects my views. My wife now agrees having her was good...but the resentment affected our marriage for a few years, and her life has certainly made things more difficult for us. And if the sexual freedom enabled by contraception and abortion and encouraged by Planned Parenthood and feminists had existed 20-30 years earlier, you wouldn't be reading this because I wouldn't be here. So you can't really say I don't have a stake in this issue, can you?

That doesn't nullify the opinion of a woman who had a unwanted pregnancy and was really scared about the difficulties she faced, no. I don't pretend it should. I do think this is a battle for ideas in our society, and I am battling for a moral standard that will build a better, stronger, more mature and responsible society...but one that I recognize will mean a significantly harder life for some people.

And I recognize that if I get what I want, one of the victims of it could be my own daughter. But I'd rather have her face the difficulties from facing the normal consequences of failing to act responsibly than have her face the pain and heartbreak of being fooled by today's "Do what you want because there's always a way to avoid pain and/or the consequences of willing acts" mentality.

*...particularly since I dated a girl who cheated on her husband with another married man to get pregnant so she could avoid Desert Storm...and her husband still pays child support for a child who isn't his. If he had ever realized it and managed to get out of that responsibility, I'm sure she would hit up the natural father for child support, even though he had no idea he had a child with her, and didn't know she was sleeping with him for the specific purpose to get pregnant.