(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .



Child Support Insurance: A Solution to the "Financial Abortion" Debate for Pro-Choice & Pro-Life [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-02-06

Some pro-choicers have previously proposed a “financial abortion” or “paper abortion” option for men who don’t want to pay or risk paying child support in the event of an unplanned pregnancy and the woman deciding to keep and raise the child herself:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_abortion

It’s obvious that there is an asymmetry here: For a (cisgender) woman who lives in a place where abortion is legal and who wants to guarantee that she will never be forced to pay child support for 18+ years in the event of an unplanned pregnancy, all she needs to do is to get an abortion (and to take a pregnancy test every month or two in order to make sure that she catches this pregnancy in time). In contrast, for a (cisgender) man to guarantee this outcome, he would either need to abstain from having penis-in-vagina sex with all fertile and potentially fertile cisgender women for the rest of his life (and even that might tragically not be enough: https://supreme.findlaw.com/legal-commentary/when-oral-sex-results-in-a-pregnancy-can-men-ever-escape-paternity-obligations.html ) or get surgically castrated. All other forms of contraception can fail, including condoms, vasectomies, and even bilateral epididymectomies (which AFAIK have never actually failed but can nevertheless fail in theory if a fistula forms between the testicle(s) and the vas deferens, thus restoring one’s fertility). Clearly, that sounds extreme. All other options for men would present at least a little bit of risk, risk that is likely to eventually become actualized for some men somewhere due to the law of truly large numbers:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_truly_large_numbers

If a woman promises abortion and/or adoption in the event of an unplanned pregnancy, then most of the time, her promises are likely to be fulfilled. However, there is never actually any guarantee in regards to this because people, including women, are not robots and are thus capable of changing their minds in regards to this (as well as, more rarely, of lying about their intentions in regards to this in the first place). So, a man whose sterilization or (in the future) Vasalgel injection fails and whose female sexual partner (or partners) changes her mind (or lies) about abortion and/or adoption is likely to find himself is an extraordinarily shitty situation. Cumulatively speaking, over 18+ years, child support adds up to a lot of money. Specifically tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars! While situations of men in such positions might be very rare, I do suspect that they did occur at one point or another. And that’s certainly not very conductive for peace of mind, let alone for the chance that one oneself might eventually end up becoming one of these extraordinarily unlucky men. In turn, this brings me to my proposed solution in regards to this:

Child support insurance. Specifically, insurance that will pay all of one’s child support for 18+ years in the event of a sterilization failure and/or LARC (long-acting reversible contraception) failure. Both men and women (such as those women who consider abortion to be immoral) would be able to purchase this insurance, though I suspect that men would benefit from it more than women would because women, unlike men, already mostly have the unilateral option of abortion to deal with unplanned pregnancies. I would guess that such insurance can work with either premiums (say, on a monthly basis) or with a much larger one-time payment. I would suspect that such insurance shouldn’t be too expensive if the risk of failure for products such as Vasalgel, let alone vasectomies and bilateral epididymectomies, will be extremely tiny. Of course, there might be a risk of insurance fraud (a lot of people do want kids and would be delighted to have someone else pay for them, after all), which is why I’m wondering if it might be prudent to require one to be willing to permanently give up one’s parental rights to any children whom one expects child support insurance to pay for on one’s behalf. In such a scenario, one would end up being not much more than a sperm donor for these children, simply one who conceived through sexual intercourse (like some informal sperm donors actually do, in fact, nowadays) instead of through artificial insemination or in-vitro fertilization. I would suspect that imposing such a condition on acquiring insurance payouts for this should reduce the risk of insurance fraud significantly. The remaining risk of insurance fraud can, of course, be factored into the cost of the insurance itself, like we apparently currently do with other forms of insurance.

People, including pro-choicers, often say that child support is meant for the child and is not meant to be punitive towards non-custodial parents. Yet creating cheap, affordable, and accessible child support insurance would ensure that children get supported just as strongly while ensuring that child support would be much, much less punitive towards non-custodial parents whose LARC and/or sterilization failed. That strikes me as a win-win scenario that both pro-lifers and pro-choicers can get behind, no? Pro-lifers should especially be willing to support such insurance since it could make some women more likely to give birth, especially if these women previously contemplated abortions for financial reasons. That said, though, such insurance does not appear to exist on the insurance marketplace right now (I’ve asked over 100 Lloyd’s specialty insurance brokers about this; not a single one of them actually said Yes in regards to this) and thus if the private insurance marketplace is not going to solve this issue, maybe the government could and should by creating such insurance (specifically child support insurance) itself? Would or could that actually be feasible? It seems like it would be desirable for the government to do since it could reduce child poverty here in the US, at least slightly. Of course, it would also be highly desirable for US state governments to amend their insurance statutes to make it crystal-clear that one indeed has an unlimited insurable interest in one’s own child support obligations in order to ensure that no idiot judge will ever invalidate such an insurance contract on public policy grounds due to their belief that such insurance treats unwanted children like losses and burdens. (Of course, this would only be relevant if such insurance was created by an insurance company; any insurance created by the government would automatically be compatible with public policy unless discriminatory or something like that, one would think.)

One more issue that I would like to mention is minors: AFAIK, minors are not legally allowed to buy insurance here in the US. If so, then maybe an exception could be made for them here. Specifically, I’m not talking about minors directly purchasing such insurance, but rather having the government (either their US state government or the US federal government) purchase such insurance for them on their behalf. Of course, I also very strongly think that victims of statutory rape should not be legally required to pay child support, so that is another aspect of the current (child support) laws which should certainly urgently be changed if one actually has any conscience.

Pro-lifers would oppose a “financial abortion” because it could very possibly make abortion more likely, while some pro-choicers could oppose it because it could leave a lot of children much more destitute. However, my child support insurance proposal—which, by the way, is not an original one—does not have either of these two defects and thus should be astronomically more capable of securing significant amounts of pro-life as well as pro-choice support for it.

Anyway, what do you think? Does this idea actually strike you as feasible, or simply too idealistic and unrealistic? Any thoughts on this idea of mine?

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/2/6/2302018/-Child-Support-Insurance-A-Solution-to-the-Financial-Abortion-Debate-for-Pro-Choice-Pro-Life?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/

You are viewing proxied material from magical.fish. The copyright of proxied material belongs to its original authors. Any comments or complaints in relation to proxied material should be directed to the original authors of the content concerned. Please see the disclaimer for more details.