Kindly Póg Mo Thóin

How little sympathy do I have for Travis Henry?

Travis Henry was rattling off his children’s ages, which range from 3 to 11. He paused and took a breath before finishing.

This was no simple task. Henry, 30, a former N.F.L. running back who played for three teams from 2001 to 2007, has nine children — each by a different mother, some born as closely as a few months apart.

Reports of Henry’s prolific procreating, generated by child-support disputes, have highlighted how futile the N.F.L.’s attempts can be at educating its players about making wise choices. The disputes have even eclipsed the attention he received after he was indicted on charges of cocaine trafficking.

“They’ve got my blood; I’ve got to deal with it,” Henry said of fiscal responsibilities to his children. He spoke by telephone from his Denver residence, where he was under house arrest until recently for the drug matter.

Henry had just returned from Atlanta, where a judge showed little sympathy for his predicament during a hearing and declined to lower monthly payments from $3,000 for a 4-year-old son.

Three days after the telephone interview, he was jailed for falling $16,600 behind on support for a youngster in Frostproof, Fla., his hometown.

“I love all my kids,” he said in the interview, but asserted he could not afford the designated amounts, estimated at $170,000 a year by Randy Kessler, his Atlanta lawyer. Kessler said Henry was virtually broke.

$170,000 a year works out to $18,888.88 on average per child.  Obviously, some are getting more, such as the 4-year-old in Atlanta, but it works out to an average of $1574 per month per child.  Which is neither a huge burden for a pro football player with a $20 million contract *nor* a huge amount of money relative to what it costs to clothe, feed, educate, shelter, entertain and transport a child.  His cocaine habit probably cost more per month.

Actually, he got cut loose from the team because of injuries and the cocaine thing.  So he’s only been paid $6.7 million.  Are those tiny violins I hear?

Like many such men, Henry takes no responsibility for his own actions in creating nine children by nine mothers.  He was tricked, y’all!  Trapped!

His eldest child was conceived while Henry was in high school, before he was named Mr. Florida Football and a Parade All-American. The child was unplanned as were all but one of his offspring, he said.

“I’m like, ‘Whoa, I’m going to be a dad,’ ” Henry recalled.

He was wed, at 19, to another of the nine mothers, who was six years older. Henry’s mother, who picked oranges for a living, disapproved.

“She was going crazy over it,” Henry said. He added that he filed for annulment within a year “for her.”

Two relationships while he attended the University of Tennessee produced two more children. Attending the annual N.F.L. rookie symposium as a 2001 draft pick of the Buffalo Bills, Henry watched a skit that dramatized the repercussions of imprudent sexual activity. It might as well have been geared toward him.

Henry laughed through the sketch. “I thought, ‘That ain’t ever going to happen to me,’ ” he said.

But it had, and it was just beginning.

Henry maintained that he was involved long-term with many of the mothers. Some, he said, told him they were using birth control, and he professed surprise at discovering they became pregnant by him.

“I did use protection at first,” he said. “Then they’d be saying they’d be on the pill. I was an idiot to trust them. Second or third time with them, I didn’t use it. Then, boom!”

In four instances, he attested, “I was trapped.” If not for his football cachet and accompanying wealth, “I guarantee you that wouldn’t have happened.”

“My counselor asks me, ‘How can you do the same thing over and over?’ ” he said, unable to provide an answer.

“Knock on wood, or something, I’m blessed not to have AIDS. That never crossed my mind.”

Oy.

If he were younger, I’d wonder if he had abstinence-only sex education.  Then again, he did grow up in Florida, which has been susceptible to rule by religious nuts for a while.   At least his counselor is calling him out on his foolishness.  I’m willing to bet this is the first person, other than the family-court system, to have informed this guy that there are consequences for his actions.  And that some of the consequences* of running around having sex without a condom are things like babies you have to support and AIDS.

At the latest child-support hearing in Atlanta, Henry testified vaguely that sizable cash withdrawals were connected to his criminal matter, not to any conspicuous consumption for himself.

In an interview, Robert Wellon, the lawyer who represents the mother in Atlanta, Jameshia Beacham, characterized Henry as spending “like there was no tomorrow,” thus depriving the children of money.

The Denver Broncos gave Henry a five-year, $25 million contract in 2007. Cut last year by the team, which cited injuries and off-the-field commotion, he received only $6.7 million.

Piling on to the child-support issues, Henry failed an N.F.L. drug test. He successfully appealed, avoiding suspension, but faced another penalty from the league for what he said was missing subsequent test dates. Though Henry insisted his body has three more seasons in it, his quandary all but dooms any chance of his suiting up again.

Henry is seeking to modify child-support obligations. Some mothers and their lawyers will have none of that, saying he has squandered a small fortune on luxuries like cars and jewelry.

“I feel sorry for the guy, trust me,” Wellon said. “On the other hand, when you take those kind of actions, there are consequences. He could have taken care of the money.”. . .

Henry voiced no love for the mothers of some of his children. “Everything was cool,” he said before he signed the rich contract with Denver. “Then they were out for blood.”

What a sense of entitlement this guy has.  It’s not his fault he has nine children, even if he never used a condom.  He was trapped because of the evils of these women!  They just wanted his money!  They’re living high on that princely sum of $1574 per month!

It’s always the woman’s fault, right?

I really wonder how these child-support whiners are able to breathe without assistance.  Do they think that children cost nothing?  Did they not notice the expense when they were still living under the same roof as the child?  Do they expect that the mother has to live in penury in order to justify asking for support on the child’s behalf?  Do they understand that the obligation is for the child, not for the mother?

Who am I kidding? They understand that perfectly well.  They just don’t like it that they have to submit to some woman’s demands.

___________

*Ah, “consequences.”  There’s that word.  It often comes up when some forced-birther demands that all those little sluts be forced to give birth when they don’t want to, because babies are a “consequence” of sex.  What they mean, of course, is that babies are a punishment for having sex, and a visible marker of who’s been doing the nasty so we can shame them.

But Zuzu, isn’t it a double standard to say that babies are a consequence for men and not for women?

No.  Babies are, in fact, a consequence of sex, at least a possible one.  What they are not is punishment.  But there are different points at which men and women can avoid that particular consequence; this is known in tort law as the Last Clear Chance.  The last clear chance that a man has to avoid a baby is before sex.  His best options are to a) not have PIV sex with a woman; b) have a vasectomy; c) use a condom.  That’s pretty much it, and if he fails to do any of those (or if the condom breaks) and he releases his sperm into the woman’s vagina, he loses all control over its destiny.  So if he doesn’t want to lose control of his sperm’s destiny, he should take care to wear a condom.  Henry didn’t, over and over, and then was just gobsmacked that babies appeared.

Women’s last clear chance comes much later than men’s.  She can either a) avoid a pregnancy or b) avoid a birth.  For avoiding pregnancy, she can a) not have PIV sex; b) have a tubal; c) use hormonal birth control; d) use a barrier method; e) use a spermicide.  Any of these, however, can fail for a variety of reasons, and it’s quite possible to wind up pregnant.  But that doesn’t mean that a baby is a foregone conclusion, because birth can be avoided by a) using EC on time; b) having an abortion.

And birth prevention is, of course, the woman’s sole decision, because the pregnancy takes place in her body.  Parking your car in someone’s garage doesn’t give you title to the house; similarly, parking your sperm in a woman’s uterus doesn’t then give you control over what she does with that sperm, or her body.  If you give her your sperm, whether intentionally or not, you don’t get to whine about what she does with it, even if it costs you money.  Because guess what?  It’s costing her money, too.  And physical pain and effort.

So a woman may have lost her last clear chance at avoiding a pregnancy, but she still has a clear chance to prevent a birth.  The forced-birther “sex has consequences” crowd want to pretend that the only real option is to not have sex — because they want to take away not only your right to have an abortion, but your right to prevent pregnancy.