full disclosure: i am pro-life.

1) you can't be for laws mandating child support and be against laws that bar [elective] abortions.

i only talk about elective abortions -- those done to abdicate personal responsibility due to inconveniences a mother might not want to face. the hard cases of abortion done to save the mother's life, or when a pregnancy resulted from rape, or when the child is severely malformed, are not included in this discussion.

when you bring this topic up to feminists, they give the (very weak) response of there being a difference between wanting to control your body and having an obligation as a parent. to truly understand why their bodily rights objection doesn't hold in this regard is to understand what parental obligations are.

here's a snippet from my post at r/prolife discussing this topic (relevant parts in bold):

more importantly, the relationship between the mother and the child should be emphasized, because the law does hold parents under some obligations to their children: they have to provide nutrition, shelter, and security for their children's well-being.

  • degree of dependency: a child, born or unborn, is always dependent on its parents. the degrees of dependency change as a child ages, and these changes are evident in law. the law a) penalizes parents for neglecting their minor children, and b) [in most cases] says children above the age of 18 are no longer under the obligation of the parents.

while you, as a parent, aren't obligated by law to donate a kidney to your ailing child, you are obligated by law to provide the aforementioned: nutrition, shelter, and security. most people's moral intuition would also agree that a parent has a responsibility to provide for their children. the uterus by design provides those to the unborn child. that is the uterus' sole purpose - to protect and nurture the developing child. thus, while the unborn child is still using the mother's body for sustenance, we are not opening up floodgates for forced organ donations - we are only asking for nutrition and shelter.

the person you were debating seems quite frightened about pregnancy and its consequences, however the burdens she fears do not compare to the legally binding one: child support. a nine to ten months pregnancy may be an ordeal, but it is much less expensive (and arguably less traumatizing) than 18+ years of child support demanded by law. so the government does in fact have laws in place to protect the best interests of the child at the expense of the parents.

if i had a soundbite for this objection, it would probably be "you can't be for abortion and be for child support/child neglect laws."

for us to be successful in this debate, we have to approach this discussion with what parental obligations are first, and then move onto what abortion does (abdicating parental responsibility). if the feminists agree that parents have an obligation to provide food and shelter to their children, then they are being inconsistent by supporting abortion. if one method of child support (occupancy in the uterus) is not valid, what makes other forms (e.g., sending checks for 18+ years) valid? who or what makes feminists to be the arbitrators of what a valid form of child support is and isn't?

2) outlawing abortion (except in medical emergencies) is the only way to achieve equality between the two sexes when it comes to "reproductive rights."

in our current laws, there is indeed an inequality -- a huge gap -- when it comes to people having a say in when they want to take on a role of being parents: women have abortion to abdicate parental responsibilities, and men are only forced into parenthood by law. many men's rights activists advocate for "financial abortion" as a solution. however, such a "solution" does not work out for two specific groups: a) the men who want the child, but their partners don't (they abort), and b) the women who want the child, but their partners don't (they offer no support).

by outlawing abortion, every parent, man and woman, is now under the obligation to care for their children (or give them up for adoption), thus removing the inequality of reproductive rights. now of course there's also a very specific group that such a scenario does not work out for: when neither the man nor the woman want the child. more specifically, when neither the man nor woman wants to deal with the pregnancy -- because adoption would "fix" the problem of not wanting to raise the child. a "solution" would be to allow abortion only when both the parents agree to it. however, like "rape exceptions" to abortion laws, such a clause would be very difficult to enforce. a woman could easily lie about who the father of the child is and get consent for the abortion.

financial abortions would not, in my opinion, bring about true equality in this regard. the woman who wants the child, but when her partner doesn't, will surely be aided by taxpayers through government programs. but who's looking out for the interest of the man in the same situation of wanting the child?