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In a perfect world, everybody would be happy. It's not a perfect world. There are guys being forced to pay child support for kids even AFTER DNA evidence proves they are not the biological father. Why? Because they're the ones that can be grabbed.

Well, this is unfair. What's more it can be changed and the system made more fair by universal DNA testing at birth. Are you suggesting we not try to correct inequity and injustice in our society?

The facts of life are that the woman has all the choices. If she chooses to abort, there is not a damn thing the biological father can do to stop her, even if he's legally married to her. Women have agitated for decades for the "right to choose". Well, now they have the choice.

Well, I for one support the choice NOT to abort. I don't see why one would on the one hand say he/she is pro-Life (as I and many are) and then proceed to demonize and punish the people (actually the children of people) the people who don't abort! This makes no logical sense. Also, it boils down to punishing children for being born, which is really really unfair. There has to be a better way.

The case we're talking about is women who choose to have babies, because they know the govt will support them. If the system is changed so that having a baby you're not able to support creates an uncomfortable situation, then women will make damn sure they're not going to get pregnant

These kind of behavior modification plans aimed at only women have never worked. What actually happens is you create a perminent underclass of people, women and their children, which feeds the cycle of poverty and dispair.

If you go to any developing country where there is no social safety net for OOW kids or orphans, you see the most horrible things in the streets. I've been to many of these places and I can say I don't want to walk out my door and be confrtonted with such destitution and crime in my own country.

The bottom line is: I've got three kids of my own to support. I DO NOT want to support the kids of some welfare mom...

The thing is, the kids are not just hers, they have a father too. We cannot just ignore this fact. I don't want to pay for irresponsible behavior of MEN and women either. But I know my tax money is going to support the irresponsible father's lifestyle just as much as the mother's. ... and will support measures to discourage welfare types from having kids at my expense -- by any means necessary.

I won't support ends-justify-the-means measures that violate the human rights of women (like in China) or grossly unfair laws for women (like in Nigeria or other fundementalist Islamic countries). I don't want to live in a country which trashes human rights of one group of people solely based on sex.

I don't want to pay for irresponsible people either. If I have to make a choice between living in a totalitarian state with unequal justice under the law and paying more taxes for welfare I'll choose the latter. But I don't think I have to make that choice. That's why I'll continue to demand equal personal responsibility and equal accountablity of both parents to children created.

You seem to be espousing more welfare. I couldn't disagree more.

Remove the kids from the irresponsible biological parents if they aren't self supporting within two years. There are plenty of folks who would adopt and they should be given irrevocable custody, except for clear mental or physical abuse. Temporarily sterilize the irresponsible indiscriminate breeders (Norplant, et al.) until they are self supporting and can support any kids they create. This type of "family" produces the vast majority of criminals. Cut it off at the source.

While my solution is clearly too radical and intrusive, the idea of further vacuuming my pockets to support irresponsible breeding is also too radical and intrusive. Parasites don't deserve first dibs in the choice category.

These kind of behavior modification plans aimed at only women have never worked. What actually happens is you create a perminent underclass of people, women and their children, which feeds the cycle of poverty and dispair.

If you go to any developing country where there is no social safety net for OOW kids or orphans, you see the most horrible things in the streets. I've been to many of these places and I can say I don't want to walk out my door and be confrtonted with such destitution and crime in my own country.

Funny, you didn't see the kinds of horror you describe in the US prior to the enactment of the AFDC system in the 1960s. What happened then is that girls tended to be careful to not get pregnant, because the consequences of unwed motherhood were unpleasant. They didn't have that many abortions, girls of reasonable intelligence just deferred having sex with any male that came along. Girls waited until somebody came along that seemed to be good husband-material. If one got pregnant anyway, the kid was adopted and raised by a relative

I realize that you have your own ideas of what is fair, proper, and just. But, guess what? They don't work.

Looking at the entire extent of recorded human history, only one thing has reliably worked: women not having sex with a man unless he was good husband-material, getting married, and then putting in the effort to make the marriage work. I realize this does not appeal to you. But any other approach will just wreck the whole society

Welfare only works as long as the number of welfare recipients is small compared to the number of productive taxpayers. Once a threshold is reached, the system breaks down. More and more taxpayers decide "Enough! I don't care anymore about any kids but mine. Either their own families support them, or they die". Then we have a much bigger situation with more hardship, than if we changed the incentive system before everything broke down

Well, this is unfair. What's more it can be changed and the system made more fair by universal DNA testing at birth. Are you suggesting we not try to correct inequity and injustice in our society?

The greatest acts of horror and mass-murder in the last few centuries were committed by people who decided to overturn systems that worked (but were perceived as "unfair" by certain members of the intelligensia) in favor of systems that were more "fair" (but which didn't work)

From the Terror of the French Revolution, to the deliberate famines in the Ukraine, to the Killing Fields of Cambodia, tens of millions of people have been murdered because somebody felt that they stood in the way of "fairness"

No thank you. I'm not interested in being fair. I'm interested in systems that are self-regulating via negative feedback, rather than systems that need a police state watching over each individual to ensure he behaves "fairly"