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I don't think there are any easy solutions here. What do you think should be done if the mother doesn't want to abort but the father wants to just ditch both the mother and child? What should be done for mothers who put their own career to the side to focus on taking care of the home and children, but they find out their husband has been cheating on them? I don't think there are easy answers for those. Maybe family courts as they are are too biased towards women, but I think there is no good alternative.
I mean, from a tradcon perspective, there's an obvious solution, it just isn't very nice to single moms or cheating dads. From a secular progressive perspective there's also two obvious solutions(the state takes care of everyone, or the US system). You cannot half-ass it.
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Father should be able to elect for a "Legal abortion/surrender" where he surrenders all rights and claims to the child, at any point in the child's developement.
If the mother then decides she can't support the child and elects to abort or put it up for adoption so be it.
This is the only solution that doesn't get into absurdities of women somehow having the inalienable right to abort or surrender their child, yet men somehow being bound from the moment they (or their wife's boyfreind) ejaculates.
Couples looking to adopt currently have to wait years and there is a dearth of adoption candidates. Or social problem is not a surplus of children but a surplus of legal and social regulations destroying the impetus to have children
That doesn't equalize things out though.
Consider that without any legal processes the woman takes most of the physical risks. Whether she chooses to carry the baby to term or have an abortion she will have some form of drug, operation, or birth to go through, then whatever physical changes stem thereof. The man in contrast can walk away. She has skin in the game that will impact her no matter what. He does not.
So if you think the job of laws is to incentivize both parties with skin in the game so as to discourage being irresponsible decision makers, the legal incentives should not match. The woman already has a set of built in incentives. The legal system should not be treating men and women equally, because their situations are not equal. In order to equalize risks men NEED to be penalized more heavily either socially or legally.
I can pump and dump my way across the Midwest leaving a trail of pregnant women behind me. A woman can do the same only every 9 months and only by accepting the physical consequences to herself each time. The social impacts are not equal due to the biological issues not being equal.
If you could do that, you'd be so extraordinarily handsome and charming that those women probably wouldn't mind, at least on a lizard brain level.
The stopgap mechanism you are looking for here is female mate choice.
Mate, its not that difficult. I'm in my 50's with a beer belly and average looking at best. I still get hit on regularly. Add in small towns with not much choice and its not that tricky.
Don't mistake the online stuff for what its actually like in most of America. Being an average reasonably charming guy with maybe one good quirk and confidence is all you need. In the 1 year after my divorce I dated 23 women between 25 and 40 and i wasn't even looking for one night stands. In my case a British accent helps. I've been hot on by waitresses multiple times on ways i never was back home.
You certainly don't need to be extraordinarily handsome and charming. I'm not. Just average and decently charming. Remember we're not trying to land 21yo super models if we're just trying to sleep our way around.
Oh, I had the foreigner-with-a-british-accent-in-the-states experience before. It helps enormously. But that is different from rawdogging your way through the nation like some dollar store Zeus.
And I would hazard the guess that the type of woman who lets a random stranger at a bar nut in them without protection is too busy to frequent bars most of the time, with all the pregnancies and abortions she'd be getting and whatnot.
Sure it's probably trickier to hit and quit right away, but turn up go on 2-5 dates and move on is probably a much easier path.
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But we've already settled on this (certain red states notwithstanding). Women do face all the physical risk, but they also get sole right to decide if they're willing to undertake that risk. The issue is if they should have the right to force someone else to participate in that decision for two decades.
Remember we're looking at incentives. Sure the woman gets to decide if the baby happens or not, but the father still faces no direct repercussions from that.
The fact each woman in my pump and dump scheme gets to decide if they want to go through an abortion or not doesn't impact me directly. Without child support I can merrily do it as much as i like.
For there to be incentive for me not to do that, I must have some extra thing at stake. Me not getting to choose puts me back where I was. There has to be something beyond that. Something that can have a direct negative impact on me.
That used to be perhaps social pressure and the risk of a shotgun wedding or a beating from the womans family whose virtue was "spoiled". Now its child support.
All of those solutions recognise the man has no direct negative incentive to curb his behavior while the woman does (which doesn't mean all women do or will of course and birth control can reduce the risk of said disincentive).
If I sleep with zero women I have no kids, if I knock up 50 women and they all choose abortion I am no worse off than when I started. So that isn't a disincentive. Thats just allowing the women to undergo x to get back to the status quo. If I don't have to risk anything then, my behavior is not disincetivised. And given sex is fun and the urge to procreate, (especially if i don't have to do any work on raising the kids) my incentive is probably to keep doing it. The negative incentive needs to be high on a societal level.
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It's not like every case must have the same solution: no one-size fit all solution and all that. There should be a distinction between: "I love my husband and want his child but he cheated on me" and "I want to pregnancy-trap this man by punching a hole in the condom". If you read the excellent comment from problem_redditor in this thread you will notice that the situation is more deranged than you might expect. I actually was feeling angry by reading it.
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