Ozy Frantz is a writer I almost always agree with. But in zir excellent article “11 Ways Men Can Be Better Feminist Allies,” zie writes:
8) Support women’s bodily autonomy. On a political level, of course, one should fight pro-life initiatives, attempts to de-fund Planned Parenthood, forced sterilization efforts, etc. On a personal level, of course, it’s almost more important. If your partner gets pregnant, it’s up to her whether to have an abortion, give the child up for adoption, or raise the kid. Her body, her rules.
Wait a moment. The reason it’s up to the woman alone to decide if she has an abortion is that it’s her body, and as Ozy says, “her body, her rules.” I agree with that.
But adoption doesn’t occur, legally, until after the child has been born. At which point, the child is no longer part of the mother’s body. If the mother isn’t willing to raise the child and the father is, then the child should be raised by its father — and that should be the case even if the mother would prefer that the child be given up for adoption. (And, of course, the mother should pay child support to the father, assuming she’s capable.)
As I understand it, adoption terminates the parental rights of both parents. For that reason, it should be agreed to by both parents.
Or so it seems to me. Is there something I’m missing here?
What if the father just want to raise the child to forcefully tie the woman to him? Hey, she has to pay me child-support! And I’m going to teach this child to hate that bitch! You know what, if I’m unable to care for a child, I’d rather he/she be adopted by another family than raised by a man like that.
I think the truth lies in the middle and the “ideal” based on a loving, respectful relationship is different than the actual experience many women endure.
Unfortunately, the father’s right to disrupt an adoption is not only exercised when the father actually wants to be the primary caregiving parent. It can also be used to force a women to be the primary parent when she doesn’t want to be. A father has a right to oppose the adoption without being required to take on primary parenting responsibilities. I think it possible that the bit you quoted was directed to guys who don’t want their child adopted, and at the same time assume that absent the adoption the mother will be the primary caretaker of the child.
I have heard (no first hand knowledge) that one often runs into fathers that exhibit little interest in their child, or in making the lifestyle choices necessary to raise him or her, through most of the pregnancy, but suddenly claim an interest in raising the child when the mother plans on adoption. Elle recently profiled a mother giving her child up for adoption where this arose.
I think this is why we have family courts and not just cut-and-dry laws. I can imagine a father who should raise his child without the mother; I can also imagine a father expressing interest as a patriarchal controlling move.
Yeah, I love ozy too, but sie tends to go into “Wow! I’m excited about this thing so I’m just going to spray ideas!” mode.
Once there is a born baby, it is no longer “her body”; there’s a separate person outside of the mother’s body.
It is possible that a father *could* take on sole parenting responsibilities just to tie himself to the birth mother and in order to get money out of her and teach the child to hate her.
I’ve heard sexists saying that’s why women have children that the ‘fathers’ don’t want.
It seems to me that if the mother wants to give the kid up and the father wants to keep it, he ought to have some rights to his own kid.
I’m sure we’ve done this before. Sure, it might be nice in theory, but doesn’t any sort of rule which guarantees a father right to contest an adoption oppress the woman? What are you going to do if someone gives up a baby for adoption without naming a father, or wrongly naming a father? Either you let women unilaterally have their babies adopted, or you bring in some sort of punitive law.
james: Special cases are special cases. They don’t invalidate the point.
To those arguing this: at what point in a child’s life does the child’s father actually get any rights or even any say?
If we’re making the general point that we should all try to consider everyone’s pov before making a decision, and that the mother should consider the father’s wishes but is under no obligation, then I’d agree. But if we go beyond that then either adoption is a woman’s sole decision, or it isn’t and we have to take punitive measures against women who try to make it their sole decision.
If he’s had some sort of active and extended caregiving role.
I agree with james.
Allowing the “father” a say in the issue is clearly going to be punitive and oppressive to the woman in the real world.
Do we really need any more of that, just because of some “theory”?
Woman gets pregnant, doesn’t want to rear a child but also doesn’t want an abortion; gives birth; makes a choice to relinquish the baby for adoption; inseminator objects and wants to rear the baby himself. Come on, does this scenario ever happen? I agree that if it does, Ozy is mistaken to say that the woman gets to go ahead with the decision and the man has to endure what she chooses. But friggin’ citation needed.
It was just a little bit of sloppy writing in an otherwise thoughtful essay.
Unree: Yes. That’s exactly the case for a friend of mine.
Also your use of the word “inseminator” is incredibly shitty and dehumanizing.
I’m sure that Ozy is not saying this intentionally. Ta just wrote thoughtlessly, and now ta is taking ta’s lumps.
yeah, i suspect it was just sloppy writing. did you ask ozy?
It depends on the state; some laws give fathers extensive rights and some require emotional and material support during the pregnancy. I do think men shouldn’t be able to disappear on pregnant women, show up in the hospital, and demand the baby be turned over after she’s already drawn up paperwork with the new adoptive parents. Not fair to her, or the new parents. Also, if she had known he was a meddler instead of a disappearer from the get-go, she might have aborted.
Heh. Yep. You guys are right. Sorry. :)
Mythago: I prefer to think of it as a process of evolution. Let the weak ideas die and the strong survive! :P
My understanding was that in the event a child is handed over to the State, the State may make an honest effort to place with next-of-kin before placing with strangers depending on the parents’ desires. While it is generally abandonment and a crime to attempt to surrender a child one is capable of caring for after the child is old enough to develop emotional bonds, it is less frowned-upon with infants.
If the father or grandmother or whoever wants full custody of the infant, and the birth mother wants no parental rights or responsibility at all, that’s an adoption process, I should think/hope. Adoption is surrendering one’s parental rights to somebody else, even if that somebody else is a relative or friend.
Last I checked, two states – Oregon and Utah – have stringent laws that cut off an unmarried father’s parental rights if he is not present/involved during the pregnancy. (Dan Savage talks about “Oregon adoptions” in The Kid and with his and his husband’s experience dealing with their son’s biological father pre-adoption; in Utah, I believe the motivation is to expedite the transfer of unwed mothers’ children to Godly married families.) If the couple is married, paternity is presumed.
Other than that, a father’s rights and responsibilities don’t cease to exist purely because he is not married to the mother. People sometimes find this out the hard way when they try to finalize an adoption without notifying the father, or seek out sperm donors without checking what their state’s laws are about sperm donation. I’ve known an unfortunately non-zero number of lesbians who decided to use a male friend as a donor, then after the baby was born he decided he wanted to be a father after all, and of course legally that’s exactly what he was.
And “inseminator”? FFS. Do you also call unmarried mothers “vessels”?
That seems reasonable to me. I think if he wants to interfere at that point, he should A) have a really good explanation of where he’s been the last nine months and B) in most cases, accept sole responsibility for the child.
If he disappeared knowing she was pregnant, I think he’s already forfeited his say at that point. If he didn’t know, I can see it going either way depending on the situation. (That is, did he not bother to find out, or was there fraud involved?)
I’d elaborate more, but I have to go to work….
Ampersand is right: Once a child is born, it is no longer part of its mother’s body and thus no longer “hers” totally to make decisions about.
*** If we are pro same sex parenting – we are in essence saying: what does genitalia have to do with being a loving, capable parent?!? We need to apply that in these cases as well. You can’t have it both ways guys! ***
Unree – it is happening more and more. This link provides a long LIST of men who fought hard, long and pout of true love for their child: poundpuplegacy.org/fathers_rights_violation_cases
Some have taken their cases to the supreme court of their states. This is not out of vengeance or any negative reason. And it is for the BEST of the child to not to forcibly removed form ANY parent – male or female – who loves their child and wants to be an active, caring, responsible parent.
Mother and father are BOTH parents and that is for the good of the child as it doubles his or her possibilities of care before stranger adoption is considered. Adoption leaves children feeling abandoned and rejected. In all but two states adoption seals away a person’s true and accurate original birth certificate and issues a falsified one listing their adoptive parents as the parents of birth. Adopted children thus grow into adults without access to their ancestry, heredity or up-to-date medical information. It also is documented to leave mothers with lifelong guilt and grief. Far more mothers who have lost children to adoption report it negatively impacting their lives than those who have had abortions. It should thus always be a last option and only turned to when neither parent – or any of their extended family – are willing and able to provide adequate care. It is sad indeed that Oregon and Utah see fit to try to deny fathers’ rights far too easily.
Emily – no one can “force” a mother to be a parent of her child. She can relinquish that right.
James – NO. Fathers exercising their rights does not “oppress” women! Those who push abortion or adoption as the only two choices oppresses women, men and their children!
To be a feminists does not IMO include having to be a man-hater. Feminism should not pit women against men like this but rather work for the rights and and equality for ALL: men, women, and most of all their children. All adults – male and female – must think about and put the best interests of any child they produce above their own needs, wishes and desires. far too many today are creating children or obtaining them through adoption as if they were prizes or a desired commodity. Children grow into adult human being with rights of their own and may not be too thrilled with selfish choices made by their parents at the time of their birth, especially when those choices – including third party conception and surrogacy – deny them access to their true genetic identity and medical history.
The child you birth may be a female whose rights you are trying fight for! her first right is to her any parent who wants her!!
Amanda and Kelly: Then one wonders why everybody is trying to finalize an adoption when one of the two people who needs to sign papers is absent.
As for ‘accept sole responsibility for the child’, you do realize that cuts both ways, right? Dad doesn’t want to pay child support. Dad contacts adoptive parents, and tells Mom that either she writes him out of the kid’s life – permanently – or he’s going to let some other family take the kid away from her.
Adoptive mothers generally can change their minds at the last minute and refuse to go through with the adoption, as well. In some states the mother has a period of time to change her mind after agreeing to the adoption. So no, while I don’t have a lot of sympathy for an uninvolved dad who suddenly gets interested when he finds out it’s a son and not a daughter, say, the idea that last-minute changes of heart are too damn bad is already not part of the law.
Not only that, but we should not ignore the very real possibility that parents aren’t being nice. I’m sure that there are some fathers who deliberately screw with adoptions to get back at the mother. I’m equally sure that there are some mothers who deliberately screw with pregnancy and/or adoption to get back at the father.
Both parents have a putative right to raise the child, which is more important than the rights of adoptive not-yet-parents. Neither parent has the right to unilaterally make those decisions without a court order.
mythago, those are all good points. I agree that it shouldn’t get to the point of the mother and the adoptive parents at the hospital signing paperwork unless the father actually can’t be found. That’s why I made a distinction between disappearing knowing that he’d gotten a woman pregnant and just not being aware. It probably wasn’t worded all that well.
I think there is (or should be) a difference between a mother who would be raising the child giving them up for adoption and a non-custodial father doing it. Those two situations don’t seem to be equal, especially since the only way the mother *can* unilaterally give up the child is if the father is unknown or can’t be located.*
Basically, a guy who has either been informed or who has deliberately ignored all attempts at contact should not be able to show up at the hospital, deny the adoption, and then leave the mother with the child.
*I don’t actually know what’s required, and I’m sure that in some locations it’s not really what amounts to a good faith effort to find him.
@KellyK: A “non-custodial father” is non-custodial if a court, or a law, has divided up the parental rights. You’re talking about a father who isn’t married to the mother. Is the rule that she’s custodial because she’s the one holding the baby? Because otherwise I’m not seeing the purpose of the distinction.
Also, your guy showing up at the hospital is….asserting paternity. Which means that he’s on the hook for the child, legally and financially. He can’t bungee in, stop the adoption and then bungee out without legally being the father.
You are all talking hypothetically and I am an author and researcher with knowledge of the cases cited in my comment above.
The first thing you need to understand is that adoption is a two step process. No adoption takes place until after the original parents have relinquished their parental rights or had them termonated by the state. In the case of a newborn the father needs to sign off his rights in MOST states, unless the mother claims – or in the case of Utah is coached to say that – she does not know who the father is. This gives mothers far more power than men from the jump.
Most of the cases cited, if you would take the time to go to the link and read them, the fathers were lied to or were out of the country on military duty and did not know there was a pregnancy or a child until after the adoption had begun. This is unfair to fathers who want to raise their child, and unfair to a child who is denied a loving, caring capable blood-related parent.
All else is conjecture, unheard of possibilities and what-ifs that have as much bearing on reality as space aliens. Deal with real facts if you want to make intelligent contributions to a conversation. Read the case histories:
gin-and-whiskey: Fathers do not try to stop adoptions to hurt mothers. What would be the point? They would be libeling themselves for child support, duh.
@Mirah Riben: No, sorry, I am not talking hypothetically about lesbian couples who had “nah, I just want to be a sperm donor” turn into “I have my rights as a father” after a child was born; I am talking about real people.
Protip, by the way: coming into a feminist blog and lecturing us about how we don’t have to be man-haters is a fucking idiotic move – particularly since, if you’d paid the slightest attention to what anyone is saying, many of us are opposed to automatically cutting off an unmarried father’s rights.
But that’s sperm donation and NOT adoption, which is what this blog post and all comments are about.
I am not unaware that SOME here are opposed to cutting off a father’s rights. Obviously, as the post is entitled “Adoption is not a Woman’s Sole Decision.”
But some seem to favor limiting fathers’ rights or have no problem with it being so. And some have made outlandish suggestions about some mythical fathers trying to use adoption to hurt the mother or other equally preposterous scenarios.
Mirah Riben @24: The whole point is that these were men who were, in the eyes of the law, fathers. Not sperm donors. It didn’t matter if they had started off agreeing to be sperm donors or accepting money for it – they were able to show up after a baby’s birth and assert their parental rights.
Exactly one person here has said something overly anti-male and gotten roundly criticized for it. The fact that other people may disagree with you on whether, and to what degree, an unmarried father should have parental rights if he asserts them after an initial desire not to do so isn’t “man-hating”, nor does it mean such people believe that fathers shouldn’t have rights at all.
mythago – lecturing straw feminists is so much more fun than actually reading and engaging with a bunch of posts and comments in a substantive way. I would have thought you’d understand that.
You’re right, my word choice with “non-custodial” was sloppy and not particularly sense-making.
Right, but unless a court orders child support, he can bungee out without actually taking care of the kid. Or he could take the kid himself, decide after a month that this parenting thing is too much work, leave the baby at mom’s and skip town. And maybe eventually pay some form of child support if he’s tracked down. Legal fatherhood doesn’t mean he’s taking all or most of the responsibility for the child, just that he’s on the hook for whatever portion of it a court–eventually–requires.
If a father was out of the country, or not informed, or lied to, then yes, absolutely, he should have every right to stop an adoption. And the fact that he did so should be considered heavily if the mother ends up raising the kid and seeks child support.
If a father was informed and chose not to be involved, there has to be a point at which his parental rights get terminated. My understanding, based on what I’ve read about adoption in various places, is that that often happens way too quickly and without enough effort to make sure he’s actually aware because the system seems to be set up to favor adoptive parents.
I don’t know what the criteria actually are for determining that he couldn’t be located. It seems to me that they should be a lot more strict. But there will always be a case or two where the father deliberately decides to be unreachable, and I don’t think it’s fair to a mother who decides to give a baby up for adoption to not be able to do that because the father left town and has ignored repeated attempts to get in touch with him. (Either because he actually does show up at the last minute, or because the adoption can’t proceed until there’s definitive consent from him.)
There has to be a way to set things up so that a father who wants to be a parent isn’t deprived of those rights, while a father who says explicitly or demonstrates by deliberate actions that he wants nothing to do with the mother or kid doesn’t get to jerk her and the adoptive parents around at the last minute.
Having read the cases that Mirah posted, the common thread to me seems to be that Utah in particular seems to be biased toward adoption and against paternal rights.
One person’s “jerk around” is another person’s normal realization. Things change when a baby shows up. Parents of both sexes change their mind. Surrogate mothers sometimes refuse to adopt; planned adoptions are sometimes cancelled.
The reality is that fathers are already screwed from the decision making end. Want a baby? Not your choice; she can abort.
Don’t want a baby? Not your choice; she doesn’t have to abort.
Want to be involved in the pregnancy? Not your choice; there’s no real way to force parental rights until there’s a baby, because you have no rights as per the mother.
Want to avoid involvement? Also not necessarily your choice; you may not have the right to compel her to show you a baby bump, but she probably has the right to compel you to chip in for costs.
That’s just normal life. But caught up in that morass, even fathers in a good faith relationship can be a bit confused. And that’s not even counting the many bad faith instances.
It is difficult to imagine why it would be necessary to FURTHER limit father’s rights to have a say regarding the parenting of their children, during the fairly short time between birth and legal adoption.
Is it theoretically inconvenient for the mother? If so: Oh well. Inconvenience happens when babies show up. For everyone.
And in fact, that’s not usually the case. The court system is set up to provide for different kinds of notice. It may not be the notice that the mother feels like giving, but see above re: convenience.
At some point, the father’s rights will get cut off permanently.
Wait a second.
Which is it? First you complain because fathers DON’T respond to notices. Now you complain if they DO respond to notices. Should fathers lose their rights every time the mother is inconvenienced?
or a court order. Which is possible to get.
Women shouldn’t be *further* inconvenienced in any way. It is men who have the privilege and who are doing the oppression, and it is therefore men who should bear the consequences and brunt of these things.
Let the woman decide what to do in the case of an abortion. It will negate a bit of the man’s overwhelming patriarchal privilege.
@gin-and-whiskey: I find it interesting that you complain that a man’s inability to force or prevent an abortion is “limiting father’s rights”. As a lawyer, you surely understand the right to privacy. (I’m also curious about the ‘probably’. Does a pregnant woman have the right to force the biological father to pay prenatal costs, or not, and if so, under what circumstances?)
@Kelly, a mother can do all those things, too. She can bungee out without taking care of the kid, leave the kid with the father and then disappear because parenting is “too much work”, or vanish until he tracks her down for child support.
It’s pretty SOP in lawsuits to already have procedures for notifying people that they need to show up, and to have ways of proving that somebody is dodging service, or legitimately cannot be located besides best efforts. All of these things can be done in an adoption, to permit termination of the mother and father’s parental rights and not allowing someone to be a spoiler by hiding from the process server. That is different from “if you didn’t show up to 8 of 10 prenatal appointments you’re no longer daddy”.
Kelly K and gin-and-whiskey – very thoughtful replies.
I apologize for my earlier comments that were knee-jerk reactions to a subject that is very close-to-the-bone for me, and sincerely apologize for over generalizing. You are indeed a thoughtful group of women.
Mythago – it is also all quite the antithesis of father’s being deliberately lied to to conceal a pregnancy or birth, mothers being coached to lie to them, and fathers having all kinds of extra hoops to jump through in addition to simply proving paternity via DNA such as Putative Father Registries – now enacted in just about every state, if not every – which in essence say that a man must register every time he has unprotected sex that could possibly produce a child, or later loose his rights to that child. And even then, if he registers in one state and the mother goes – or is taken – to another state to have her child, it may ot count. Or if he is one day late in registering, he looses his rights.
None of this serves the children who should have an inalienable right to be cared for a loving, responsible parent who wants to care for them before being placed with strangers.
The reason our laws are set up this way is because the adoption lobby is very powerful and that is because there is are BILLIONS of dollars in separating families and very little to no funds to help families in crisis.
Public opinion too often side with the desperation of those wanting a child and favor laws that sever parental rights as quickly as possible (the whole gist behind Utah’s laws). But it is the demand that creates and feeds the baby market industry and often encourages corruption, exploitation and even human trafficking for adoption (see works of David Smolin).
As feminists, it is important that we see not just women who WANT babies to adopt, but also women (and men) who are unnecessarily loosing their families because of laws that favor adoption over family preservation. South Australia recently issued an apology for what it called ‘forced’ adoptions back prior to the mid 1970s. The US still engages in many practices that S. Au. apologized for!
See, for instance Elizabeth Samuels article: “Time to Decide? The Laws Governing Mothers’ Consents to the Adoption of Their Newborn Infants”
Also PLEASE READ: “Reverse
Robinhoodism: Pitting Poor Again” by Mirah Riben, et al.
AND: Feminist Lens on Adoption by Katie Leo
Feminism has a history and reputation of being by for and about the needs of the wealthy and a bit out of touch with the needs of lower class women and mothers. The only feminists who have approached adoption from the perspective of the underdog mother loosing her child to meet a demand are Phyllis Chesler and Ricki Solinger. We need more scholarly work and efforts toward legal changes to protect the rights of natural mothers – and fathers from the huge demand for their children, turning them into handmaids.
I have bene fighting this fight for nearly 40 years, it causes some frustration that results in my knee-jerk stemmed from. During that 40 years there has been a decline in adoptions because of social changes, but the demand is still there and the acceptance of same sex marriage adds to the demand by infertile hetero couples. That demand fuels corruption to obtain babies at any cost, both here and overseas. Women are being used as brood stock, they are being lied to and deceived – told their children are being brought to the U$ for an education, etc. Some are having their children stolen at gunpoint. And in one case in which the child was kidnapped from her Guatemalan mother the US adoptive family, the Monahans, were NOT made to return her! Read the book, Finding Fernanda by Erin Segal. Babies are being stolen in China, India, VietNam, Russia and Ethiopia, just to name a few hot spots.
Babies are big business and mothers are fathers collateral damage.
I meant to point out the general legal powerlessness of fathers in the babymaking process,not to suggest that fathers should be able to legally compel either abortion or delivery.
Yes, of course. See above. (I disagree with you regarding some collateral stuff, though. But I won’t go into it here, as not to side track.)
I don’t know but I’ve heard that it can happen. This isn’t my area of the law; I may well be incorrect and it may not be possible during pregnancy. That said, I’m almost 100% positive that financial status is considered in actions for paternity and child support. Since many prenatal medical bills are delayed until after the delivery, it seems that would come into issue (if the mother wants it to) anyway.
I don’t know but I’ve heard that it can happen.
That’s your citation, counsel?
ETA: I’m sure that ‘did he contribute to prenatal expenses?’ would be considered in states where an unmarried father’s prenatal involvement is a factor in determining whether he is legally the father; just as ‘did he hold himself forth as the father?’ would be. That’s waaaay different from “he has no rights and she can make him pay for prenatal appointments! Probably!”
Mythago, other than “this isn’t my area of the law; I may well be incorrect” what is it that you’re expecting me to say? If that one area of my post is wrong, then… it’s wrong.
In defense of G&W, I don’t think the father (or putative father) is legally responsible for pre-natal expenses, but the moral outrage that is showered on a man who doesn’t pay for the abortion is almost as significant as that showered on a man who does not pay child support.
-Jut
Someone really needs to invent some sort of machine which we could type “child support” and “prenatal expenses” into in order to resolve these sorts of controversies.
Men need to step up to the plate and start taking responsibility. Child support and prenatal expenses are just the start, and they are just the baseline.
Men need to finally start doing more, and they need to stop oppressing women.
No, that is not what I said. I didn’t actually say a thing about inconvenience anywhere. I’d also say that having made the really heart-wrenching decision to give up your baby, then finding out at the last minute that you would not be permitted to do so is a little more than an “inconvenience.”
I’m also not necessarily arguing for a specific change in either direction, just pointing out situations that seem unfair.
What I am saying is that if there is a set procedure (and apparently a court order is part of the procedure) and an established response time that passes, it should take something pretty major for the father to be able to stop an adoption *after* that response time has passed (like his having been in a situation where he *couldn’t* respond). From Mirah’s link, it seems to me that some states have crappy notice periods, which should probably change.
I was presuming that if the mother was allowed to unilaterally go ahead with the adoption, then the father had been given the legally required notice and had either consented or given no response.
KellyK – Either I misunderstand you or you are misunderstanding the way things work. If a mother relinquishes her prenatal rights with the intent to have her child placed for adoption, and the father is in the picture and knows of this, and has registered in a Putative Father Registry and has done everything right according to the laws of the state (assuming he even knows what state she and the child are in – a big assumption)… and he is successful (which is rare) in being able to stop said adoption and take his child home with him, how is that a major problem for the mother?
She does not have any responsibility for the child, nor is she subject to any support payments, same as if the child were adopted. Once you relinquish your rights, you relinquish ALL your rights. You are as a legal stranger to the child. It is NOT like being a non-custodial parent. No child support, nothing, nada.
It might on some level upset her if she hated him enough (and perhaps with good cause) to not want him to get what he wanted, but she never has yo see or her child ever again, same as if it were adopted.
One addendum to what I just said: A mother might have wanted an open adoption and may not be able to or not want to do that with the father. Oh well. Too bad. The father and the child both have rights, too. Everything does not revolve around the wishes of the mother. And, as I said, once she relinquished her rights she looses all rights to make any decisions. It’s irrevocable!
Mirah Riben, author, THE STORK MARKET: America’s Multi-Billion Dollar Unregulated Industry
Mirah, my understanding was that if the father didn’t consent to the adoption, the mother remains the legal parent and would be required to pay child support. And that depending on what the father does or doesn’t do, might still be responsible for the child. (This is based on Amp’s initial post, comments from others in this thread, and a whole bunch of conversations on other posts that indicated that one parent can’t unilaterally terminate their parental rights.)
If that’s not the case, then you’re right, it really shouldn’t matter whether the father ends up with the child rather than the adoptive parents. It might not be the outcome she likes, depending on what she thinks of the father, but it is out of her hands.
Incidentally, I don’t particularly appreciate your putting words in my mouth, since I certainly never said that “everything revolves around the mother” and have tried to consider everybody involved through this whole discussion.
This is another confusion of facts.
There is no legal obligation in either case – prenatal care or pregnancy termination. However, if a man is ASKED to pay for either he has some moral ethical responsibility to do so in either case.
The only legal hitch is that part of proving fathers’ rights to prevent an adoption in some states, in addition to registering with a PFR, is supporting the mother – and the baby after birth.
Moral outrage for not paying for an abortion?! Really? Never heard any. Maybe amongst close friends, but surely not societal.
Kelly, what’s wrong with the mother being liable for child support, if the father blocks the adoption? If the mother wants to keep and the father wants to adopt out, it’s hard cheese for him: she keeps and he pays child support. (And I agree with that.)
Why should the converse scenario wet anyone’s cheeks? Once a child is born, we cannot compel parenthood but I see no reason not to compel financial responsibility, without regard for the genitalia possessed by the parties.
This is absolutely incorrect.
In the vast majority of cases mothers make the decsion to relinquish a child for adoption alone. The law demands that they identify the father for the purpose of gaining his consent as well, however the loophole is that all she has to do is say she doesn’t know who the father is. Period.
If the father is known and involved, than his relinquishment of his rights and consent to the adoption is required. But the laws in all states are now rigged with the PFR and many other hoops fathers have to jump through in order to speed up adoptions. The adoption community believes proving paternity via DNA should be sufficient, within a reasonable time limit based on his knowledge of the pregnancy and birth.
The original post states:
SHOULD and SHOULD!!! That’s a far cry from your interpretation. You seem to have misunderstood.
And, I never said that you said “everything revolves around the mother.” I simply said that it doesn’t sometimes when her wishes and the father’s are in conflict. Nothing to do with anything you said or didn’t say.
@gin-and-whiskey: It’s not my area of law, either, but when you assert something as a fact supporting the Unmarried Daddy Blues, I kind of wonder where you got the fact from. If the answer is “I dunno, I made it up because it sounded plausible,” well, then, okay, I guess.
@KellyK: Again, how is the mother “finding out at the last minute”? If she’s going through the adoption process, how does she not know if the laws in her state require him to sign off (or for there to be some showing that he couldn’t be found/didn’t bother to respond when contacted)? Did the adoptive parents – who, presumably, bothered to find out the requirements to adopt the baby – not bother to tell her, or what?
I imagine it’s also pretty heart-wrenching for adopted parents if the mother changes her mind at the last minute. That sucks. I don’t think it’s a reason to say “well, suck it up, bitch, and hand over the baby”, any more than I think a heart-wrenching situation is a reason to tell a willing father to get bent.
Robert queries: “Kelly, what’s wrong with the mother being liable for child support, if the father blocks the adoption?”
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I think if a mother is in the situation of having to give her child up for adoption, she’s probably not in a good situation in life. And you want to heap child support on her?
At some point, society also has to start counteracting men’s privilege. If he has already “won” by getting custody, maybe he should think about having a job as well. He shouldn’t need her last pennies.
I think if a mother is in the situation of having to give her child up for adoption, she’s probably not in a good situation in life. And you want to heap child support on her?
The parents’ life situation is largely irrelevant, unless they are UNABLE to earn a living, or unless their efforts to BECOME able to earn a living (by schooling, usually) mean that they don’t currently earn much of one. In those cases, child support is often deferred or delayed. Supporting one’s born children is a fundamental obligation, not something that is “heaped” upon one.
At some point, society also has to start counteracting men’s privilege. If he has already “won” by getting custody, maybe he should think about having a job as well. He shouldn’t need her last pennies.
The child support system is not the place to ride out feminist or MRA hobbyhorses about who has it worse. It is there to ensure the meeting of the needs of the child. It isn’t the father who “needs” her “last pennies” – it is the child, who is entitled to the support of both of his or her parents. I quite agree that people who need more material resources, and who don’t work for a living, ought to go out and get a job – but that is immaterial to the question of the child. If custodial dad doesn’t get a job, then that might be bad for the child and so let’s judge him on that; noncustodial mom MUST get a job or otherwise provide for the material support of the child she helped bring into the world but is not raising. What custodial dad is doing is immaterial to what mom needs to do.
YAHOO! I think you’ve got it!!!
If she is able to – and some mothers who relinquish do so to continue on with their career, though most are indigent or very low income and may have other kids – then it would seem logical that of course she should pay the father if he is raising the child.
HOWEVER, the legal catch is this: You are talking about a situation in which she has in all likelihood relinquished her parental rights first and then the father stopped the adoption. In that case she has no legal obligation to the child.
In case you did not read it a previous post of mine: Adoption is a two-step process. First there is relinquishment of all parental rights. Then, there is an an adoption. The two are separate legal events. Even if an adoption does not occur, her relinquishment of rights is IRREVOCABLE, with the very rare exception that she can prove duress.
If that’s true (IANAL, and I bow to the expertise of those who are or who have researched the specific question), then it seems completely unfair. If mothers can evade responsibility for their born children by relinquishing parental rights, so should fathers be able.
Personally I don’t either should be so able; I think if you actually adopt the child out, then that’s one thing, but if that adoption doesn’t go through for whatever reason, you should still be on the hook.
Robert – good points. Support is about the child and in divorce, whoever is able pays.
In the case where adoption is at question, a parent who is unable to earn a living will not be granted custody. Period!
Once the mother is involved in the process, and most especially after she has signed relinquishment, which occurs in some states is immediately after delivery, if either she or the father have a change of heart and see their way to clear to care for their own child, it is a very big uphill battle. You’d think it’s like any normal contract that you have 48 hours to rescind. Not so! Every state has different laws regarding the time period allowed to take the relinquishment and the time to rescind (see Samuels article cited above) . Adoption agencies are also tricky and never tell a mother if she does have a day or two to rescind and relinquishing mothers do not have legal counsel, or if they do, it is paid for by the prospective adopters, so they are left in the dark as to their legal rights.
*IF* either parent succeeds in the costly and very uphill battle to overtunr a plan to adopt, THEN on top of everything else, they are made to prove they are FIT parents. It is as if there an assumption that they are not fit because they even CONSIDERED adoption!
The way things work today with babies going immediately to pre-adoptive families before the adoption is finalized, the law always favors leaving the status quo and not rmeoving the child from “the only family she’s ever known”. This has been the battle cry in every contested adoption case in U$ history. So what it boils down to is the natural parent or parents having to prove they are better fit and more stable etc than the prospective adopters who are also fighting for custody and to keep “their” child!
The above applies to “voluntary” surrender or relinquishment. The other scenario is involuntary or state removal and then of course the same applies: parents have to PROVE they are financially and emotionally stable and able to care for their child before a child removed to foster care would be returned to either parent. And if the other parent’s rights have been terminated for abuse or neglect, again, they would NOT be legally responsible for support even if they were millionaires.
Bottom line: Poor parents do not get to keep children when adoption is on the table! Adoption favors the wealthy adopters who are the one footing all the bills for all adoption services and it is a greedy industry.
I very much hope that those interested in this topic will read “Reverse
Robinhoodism: Pitting Poor Again” by Mirah Riben, et al.
I coined the phrase reverse Robinhoodism because in all adoptions – domestic or International – children are being taking from the poor and given tot he rich and the poor have no resources to fight it. Even when their children are literally KIDNAPPED and sold on the Black market, as is the case in the wonderful book, Finding Fernanda, an as in the case of the Monhan family who was ordered to return a child proven to have bene kidnapped from Guatemala and they have NOT!
We only see and hear the JOY of adopting. The receiving end. The desperate to have children side of the equation. The silenced, voiceless marginalized side are the parents whose children are taken and their rights stomped on and they have not the resources to fight!
This is a BIG ISSUE that needs the help of brave and forthright feminists!!
ACLU and NOW are often on the wrong side of adoption legislative issues, for instance they do not support the right sof adults who were adopted as children to equal access to their won original birth certificate just as all other non-adopted citizens take for granted. ACLU and NOW have too many members who are on the adopting side of the equation and they believe the industry LIES that equality for adoptees violates the alleged “right” of privacy of the natural mother and that it will equate to less babies being placed for adoption!
Mother who have relinquished their rights have no rights and the very vast majority never asked for or were given to expect any confidentiality from their child. The vast majority WANT to know their child is alive and well and welcome them when they return. Women that want to keep it a secret ABORT! And, there are sufficient laws to protect anyone in the very rare case of a child harassing them and not taking no for an answer if they are found – which happens with or without the laws allowing it.
I hope some of you will continue to pursue these issues and learn more about adoption and how it effects the rights of marginalized women and adult adoptees. You are cordially invited to follow my blog: FamilyPreservation.
YES they can and do. And most often the father’s rights are simply terminated in his absence without his knowledge or consent, which represents a major problem for those fathers who would have stepped up to the plate had they known! Some are extremely DEVASTATED! Some fight for YEARS yo regain custody.
If an adoption doesn’t go through – which is so unheard of as to be inconsequential to discuss – there are hundreds of other adopters waiting to take over! The relinquishment or termination of rights is still in effect in either case as it is a SEPARATE LEGAL ACTION.
A child is NEVER EVER just handed back to a parent who had already relinquished and was wanting their child to be adopted. NEVER. Does not and cannot happen. They have to fight tooth and nail to reclaim a child once they sign relinquishment papers. Relinquishments are IRREVOCABLE, in some states, before the ink is even dry!
Are we getting this yet? Is there anything I am being unclear about that I could clarify to help you to better understand the TWO-STEP process and that the relinquishment of right sis irrevocable – regardless of whether an adoption takes place or not? A relinquished child could – especially if he is not white and not healthy or older – simply remain in foster care for life and never be adopted. Neither parent is responsible for support. Nor are parents responsible for the support of children taken from them by the state because again, their rights are terminated.
Support involves maintaining some parental rights. Even if you are not the custodial parent in a divorce you still maintain RIGHTS to the child. Not so after relinquishment or termination of those rights. You then are a legal stranger to your child and most often do not know where he or she is or if they are dead or alive or well cared for or not…and your child has no right to know you or obtain his or her medical history. Adoption magically erases the adopted person’s past and makes it “as if” he were born to his adopters. Birth certificates in all but two states are FALSIFIED and simply list the adoptive parents as the parents of birth! The truth is obliterated! The child’s entire genealogy, heredity, roots, lineage, ancestry, heritage – GONE, DESTROYED, sealed away forever in most states… some allow some access at certain specific ages and with caveats and hoops that do not apply to non-adopted people.
For many of us affected by this, adoption sucks!
You’re right. By finding out at the last minute, I mean a situation where the father was given plenty of notice, ignored it, and showed up after that time period had passed.
My point was more that 1) I’m skeptical that someone who deliberately blew off a bunch of attempts at contact is a willing father* and 2) there has to be (and is) a point after which a decision becomes irrevocable.
*If someone who wasn’t informed or wasn’t able to respond, on the other hand, that says nothing at all about their willingness or ability to parent.
Okay, there are things I’d like to respond to, but I have a vacation to leave for. Talk to you all in a week or so
Not to worry. It cannot happen. The laws are staked against putative fathers.
Even those who show up well within the allotted time frame are turned away and not allowed to take responsibility for a child they wholeheartedly want and are capable of caring for. It is very unfair and never favors the father — except in one case that possibly is still going to appealed where the father was Native American and the Native American Adoption act was held up by the courts. Very, very unique and rare while many fathers are fighting to gain custody of children snatched away without their knowledge or consent. Some were on active military duty! Mots were simply lied to every time they attempted to find out the results of their girlfriend’s pregnancy.
“If that’s true (IANAL, and I bow to the expertise of those who are or who have researched the specific question), then it seems completely unfair. If mothers can evade responsibility for their born children by relinquishing parental rights, so should fathers be able. ”
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Ummmm … NO.
Men and women are not equally positioned in society. Men are overflowing with patriarchal privilege and entitlement.
What you are proposing is called “formal equality”, which is absolutely NOT fair to women, because women are not coming from an equal playing field.
Frankly, women have the caretaking duties in families, and they also don’t have the employment opportunities that men have in reality, so they shouldn’t be paying any child support at all, whether the man “won” by getting child custody or not.
I am pretty sure that in many of the cases where the man got child custody one of the reason’s for the man getting custody were that the woman did not do all the caretaking duties in the family. As for the employment opportunities I’ll just note that there is and has been a gender gap in unemployment rates which favours women. In 2009 the difference were 2.7%* while it seems the latest numbers I found from July 2012 shows only a small advantage for women: 8.4% for men v. 8.1% for women**
All which makes your arguement for no child support from non-custodial women based on their caretaking duties and employment opportunities rather unconvincing.
* http://www.newyorkfed.org/research/current_issues/ci16-2.pdf
** http://www.deptofnumbers.com/unemployment/demographics/
“Formal equality” is the principle that our justice system attempts to work under. It may be unfair to the disadvantaged; most things are. Formal equality, however, has the unique distinction among systems of being WORKABLE. We can treat everyone the same under the same rules; we often fail to do so, but there isn’t some fundamental reason for it, just the usual human fuckups that plague all systems. A family law system that took as predicates that women are the childraisers and women can’t compete economically would be an even bigger ball of fuckup than the one we have now is.
Instead, we attempt (or should attempt) to hold people to the same basic standards, while taking individual circumstances into account. A particular woman (or a particular man) might not have to pay much in child support, if that particular person doesn’t or can’t earn much money. A particular man who is doing the childrearing, or a particular woman who isn’t, will (or should) have that circumstance taken into account.
But the idea that “women do the childrearing, therefore this woman who isn’t doing the childrearing doesn’t have to pay child support, because patriarchy” is unworkable, and so self-evidently dumb that I have to skirt the edges of Amp’s preference that posters not get all ad hominem and ask whether you’re a troll. Because I don’t know any real feminists who are dumb enough to say something this dumb.
As for economic competitiveness, there your position isn’t dumb, it’s just wrong. A single woman who isn’t raising kids – and that is what we are talking about – has pretty much the same economic opportunities as a single man who isn’t raising kids, and earns pretty much the same amount when she does the same job. (The much-touted wage gap reflects the different distribution of employment type/frequency/level/seniority, not specific-to-job wage discrimination.) There are some industries where women have a harder time getting a fair shake, and some jobs that are still effectively barred to women; that’s very unfair and ought to be addressed, but doesn’t arise to the level of a restriction that makes it so impossible for a woman to get off her ass and get a job that she should be exempted from the basic obligation to support one’s born children. Child support scales to income. A woman who’s genuinely oppressed and genuinely underpaid is also going to be genuinely cut slack in her child support payment – same as a man would be.
Frankly, has this become an “MRA space”? Because that’s all I’m hearing here.
There is no question that men have privilege in today’s society. If you are really questioning that, then say it outright. Men have privilege, and you want to uphold that.
I’ve had enough for a while.
If Joffrey’s really a feminist and not a strawmanning troll, I’m the lost Hanseatic princess.
Of course men have privilege.
The question is whether that privilege arises to the level of, in compensation, exempting an entire gender from meeting a fundamental, basic obligation to their children.
This isn’t an MRA space by any means; you just have an incredibly weak argument.
Mythago – or should I say, your majesty – it’s that, or s/he’s incredibly young.
Robert sez: “Of course men have privilege.”
——-
But nothing is to be done about it, with a wink and knowing nod to Mythago.
If they have privilege, why not work against that privilege?
In your mind, it is either so miniscule as to constitute nothing, or you just don’t friggin’ care, because you are the recipient of that privilege.
I’m saying: It is substantial the privilege that you have, and if you don’t acknowledge it, and if no one here wants to really acknowledge it, then I’m wondering if this is becoming an MRA site.
Men should be paying alimony and child support. Not women. Men and women are differently situated. Period.
And I realize that men do not want to have their privilege questioned. Neither do you, Robert.
You just want to go on with your patriarchal privilege in this life and have no one notice. Well, I just noticed.
I’m pretty sure that Joffrey is a troll — his/her email address and writing style resemble that of an MRA who has been banned here a couple of times using a couple of different names. And, as Mythago says, Joffrey sounds more like an MRA stereotype of a feminist than a real feminist.
I TOTALLY and wholeheartedly agree that a woman’s body is hers and hers alone and as long as that fetus needs to reside within her body and cannot survive outside it, it is hers and hers to make decsion about ALONE, without any man or state interference!!
The “problem” is one of a slippery slope when the same rules are tried to stretch to into the realm of adoption. Once the child is born, it is a human being with rights of its own (hopefully). It is a human being with two sets of genes. Unless there was an enforceable pre-birth contract* that relinquished all rights of one or both of those genetic contributors, both – in the case of just two – maintain their parental rights to make decisions about the welfare of that infant child. Today, this has become more complicated as there can be more than two, but of course, a gestational surrogate is not a biological contributor and has no rights whatsoever (even though she may well FEEL like a mother to the baby growing inside her chemically, hormonally, biologically and thus emotionally – but that’s another story).
*A note of caution: Creating anonymity of a genetic contributor to human creation is playing Russian Roulette with the life of the child one is brining into the world (presumably) lovingly. IMHO, and that of many in the adoption community, it is selfish and lacking in forethought to do this to a child and I sincerely wish that present all future generations would learn from the past experiences of adoptees and children of DI who are running around DESPERATELY searching to find their roots, heritage, siblings and medical information.
Is it possible for us to change our thinking from man v woman; mother v father; either/or thinking to instead think about the child as a human being with rights to know both of his or her parents???
In divorce, the rights of the child to continued relationship with both of his parents through joint legal custody allowing for visitation unless dangerous or unwanted has become a recognized standard procedure in family law practice is all states that I know of. This is done not to create equality for sometimes dueling parents, but rather for the well-being of the child, who has an inalienable “right” to know and have a relationship with his parents if he so chooses.
Lost in the battle of the sexes I am hearing is that the child’s rights are the ones being not just oppressed, but totally obliterated by the choices made by those who knowingly and intentionally create him or her.
What’s an MRA?
It stands for “Men’s Rights Advocate.”
Although in principle you can stand for men’s rights without being anti-woman, in practice many MRAs are rather misogynistic and anti-feminist.
THANKS! That makes my last two comments all the more relevant!
It is sad when two ideologies become locked into adversarial positions, especially when the lives and welfare of innocent children get caught in the middle.
If both “camps” could only agree that children need ALL their parents (regardless of gender or biological connectedness vs emotional attachment) or procreators (unless one is abusive or unfit). When you begin to shift your thinking and focus to child-centeredness, it helps – sometimes, and hopefully – to calm the battle of who’s rights take precedent over whose. It’s not him against me, me against her, but what is best for “our” child!
And also in practice, many people who stand for men’s rights (as well as women’s rights) disavow any label, because of how poisoned some of the assumptions against those labels are. I don’t consider myself to be MRA, or a feminist. Some would say that automatically makes me a misogynist, or against equality, I disagree.
I’m with Robert on this, amazingly. If the mother can give up her parental responsibilities (if the father blocks an adoption by taking custody himself), and the father cannot (he must pay child support if the mother keeps the baby), I consider this unfair.
I said it before: I got no personal stake in this debate (not parent, and won’t and can’t ever be). I’m just for equality, and I see this situation as blatantly unequal (the lack of 100% effective opt-out for prospective fathers, beyond vasectomy and abstinence).
There is no 100% effective opt-out for prospective mothers. Mothers who are tricked or forced into conceiving are not automatically given the right to opt out. Can we please stop the bullshit sidetrack that pretends women get to do whatever they want and men just gotta sing them ol’ No Abortion Blues?
Mirah Riben: Look, it’s really not helping your credibility to come in here having zero understanding that this is a feminist and pro-feminist site and then scolding “both camps” as if nobody, until you came along and schooled them, ever gave the slightest thought to the welfare of children.
I don’t know if women can abdicate easily; it doesn’t really matter. As long as there is balance between rights and responsibilities and neither parent has a right or set of rights that the other parent doesn’t have (assuming the ability to exercise that right; men are free to abort any children they happen to be carrying, etc.), then it’s copacetic.
The welfare of the children ought to be the primary concern, followed by respect for the rights of the parents.
“Look, it’s really not helping your credibility to come in here having zero understanding that this is a feminist and pro-feminist site and then scolding “both camps” as if nobody, until you came along and schooled them, ever gave the slightest thought to the welfare of children.”
But won’t somebody PLEASE think of THE CHILDREN!
Point taken, but please do not mistake my PASSION for scolding. I apologize if it sounded that way.
I was reading what sounded like a lot of we/they rhetoric in a discussion about adoption. It struck a nerve that the child’s rights are often forgotten in the shuffle both in adoption and in third party conceptions where many of the adults prefer anonymity without knowing or considering the negative long-term effects of their decisions – that are best for them – on the children. I deal with many of those grown children dealing with the aftermaths of such choices. It is agonizing, scary, painful and in some case life threatening as they desperately search for half of their genetic medical history and deal with fears of unknowingly committing incest.
I thus tend to get a bit over zealous. Lives are at stake. It’s pretty dramatic. And not just for the children, but for their children as well.
Back after an absence to say why I used “the inseminator,” which offended two people upthread. If I sound defensive I guess I’ll have to take the flak.
I thought that word was the best choice of a bad lot: I meant no disparagement of anyone. “The father” begs the question–we don’t yet know if this person has any rights to be the parent of the baby. “The man” is vague: which man? what’s he doing here? “The putative father,” used @56, might have been better but back when I was typing it sounded like a derail.
Anyway, not analogous to “the vessel,” which identifies a pregnant woman as someone else’s instrument. An inseminator is one who impregnates another with semen. It has no connotation that I know of about being exploited by the person impregnated.
First I’ll let you know that there were more than two people offended, but I felt at the time no need to add to Ben’s and Mythago’s swift critique of your use of that term.
Since you now state that it offended two people upthread I’ll speak up.
You felt that the correct legal term (putative father) sounded like a derail so you instead chose to use a veterinary term?
Inseminator is a well established term/job title within the veterinary field.
From the Mirriam Webster dictionary:
Inseminator: one that inseminates cattle artificially
So it’s pretty offensive all around when applied to the context of this discussion.
I notice you tried to circumvent the dehumanizing critique by arguing that “the vessel” is worse. They are both offensive for the primary reason that they both are dehumanizing. In that way they both are comparable to eachother and analogous. I didn’t see Mythago claim that they were the same so pointing to another unrelated difference between them does not disprove the they are analogous.
Next time try “putative father”, “biological father”, “the man who claims to be the (biological) father” and so on. There are many non-offensive ways of conveying what you meant. That you chose inseminator and didn’t even consider that it is dehumanizing* baffle and troubles me.
* if I am to take your assertion that you meant no disparagement at face value
Preface: The following are sincere questions asked out of sheer curiosity and to increase my understanding:
If the man merely contributes a sample at a clinic, say, is “sperm donor” acceptable? He is in fact the biological father, as well.
Is “gestational surrogate” an accepted term? What is a woman who donates eggs called? (I personally find sperm and egg sellers more accurate, though less flattering, than donors.)
Also curious if folks here see anything exploitive in commercial surrogacy where women – especially those in India (and Guatemala is likely next) – are leaving their families for 9 months and risking their lives to make money? (Of course men and women willingly leave families behind and risk their lives in many careers, including the military.)
Does it feel to any of you that Margaret Atwood’s book has become a reality, or do you share Oprah Winfrey and Lucy Ling’s view of it as a win-win and an financial “opportunity” for impoverished women? All industrialized nations other than the U$ have made commercial surrogacy illegal because it is seen, like, organ selling, as exploitive of the poor. Do you think women should be allowed to rent their wombs… become paid incubators?
BTW – I feel safe asking here because I have found the discussions here far more civil and respectful than just about any other blog I have read! Very impressive I must say. You are all to be commended for maintaining such a high level of discourse on heated and emotionally charged subjects.
Mirah: Here is my answers based on my morals and my ethics.
In the context of “anonymous” samples at say a fertility clinic I have no problem with the term sperm donor or sperm seller (depending on whether the person get payed beyond travel expenses. Where I live one will only get travel expenses for a sperm donation). I’ll also mention that here the records of whom the sperm donor is will be released upon request to the child when s/he turns 18. After this law was put in effect the number of sperm donor fell and there is not enough to meet the demand.
In the context of a sexual relationship with the sperm delivered to the woman through intercourse, I’d find the term sperm donor/seller not appropriate. If we are talking about what some women are doing; getting a male friend/acquaintance/… to provide sperm which they proceed to artificially inseminate on themselves I guess it would depend on what role they’ve decided together that the man should have. If he’s to remain anonymous (the child and other people won’t know that he’s the biological father) I think the term is ok. If he’s known to be the sperm donor, but will not act (no obligations/no rights) as the father of the child the term is ok for that context (“Harry acted as a sperm donor so we could get our little Hermione” ). If he has obligations/rights or seek those towards the child I think it would be inappropriate to use that term.
I find commercial surrogacy problematic because of the potential exploitation inherent in the typical discrepancy in whealth of the buyer and the seller. It’s not legal in the country I live, but it’s still legal to go abroad (to India or even the US for instance) to hire a surrogate mother there and bring the child(ren) back to seek citizenship for them. Some have ended in a legal limbo with stateless children because they used donated sperm and either a donated egg or the surrogate’s own egg – this leaves no biological relationship and adoption is the only route to take. That is a slow process and since surrogacy is illegal one kind of starts off with the wrong foot and it might very well be denied.
Egg donation is also illegal where I live. I am not so sure what I think about that. I would be ok with that if the compensation were limited to travel expenses and lost income if it involves being unable to work for some time. (I haven’t looked into how invasive and time consuming egg donation is).
I basically with all you have said. However, I am fervently against all anonymous child creation because it leaves the child at risk emotionally and physically. In the U$ I believe all clinics PAY the so-called “donors,” not just travel expenses. Some men have fathered triple digit number so offspring!!
After 8 successful births the remaining donations from a man is destructed. I think this mitigate some the physical risk and the legal right of the child to get the identity of the sperm donor when she turns 18 mitigates some of the emotional risk (the child is free to explore her genetic heritage when of age). I am leaning towards the opinion that the child perhaps should be allowed to get that information at an earlier age, but I suspect that cut-off is selected in no small part to avoid opening the can of worms regarding obligation and rights of the biological/genetic father in such a situation.
“Does it feel to any of you that Margaret Atwood’s book has become a reality”
The women in The Handmaid’s Tale weren’t doing it for money.
Where is that happening?
No the handmaids weren’t paid, they were jUST exploited. Does exploitation with payment make it right? Organ sellers would be paid, but we try to protect people from it by making it illegal.
Mirah: Are you asking me where I live? I am not sure I am comfortable divulging that here, but I can state that it is in Europe.
I asked where they destroy donations after 8 successful births. Thanks. The U$A, if you re not aware is far more lawless, or perhaps I might say less ethical and humane. The only thing that rules her is the greenback dollar. Money talks. Free enterprise. CAPITALISM! If you cna make a buck doing it – just about ANYTHING goes! That’s why we are the only industrialized nation NOT to have outlawed surrogacy. We used to be of the people, by the people and for the people. However, IMHO, we have become, sadly,a nation of big business, by the CEOs, and for the capitalists. The populace is becoming collateral damage.
Back to the subject at hand…and it seems Britain may hold the record!
One Sperm Donor, 150 Offspring, NYTimes
The man who fathered 1,000 children: They’re middle-class, living in Britain – and only a few have any idea about the extraordinary story surrounding their birth
British scientist ‘fathered 600 children’ by donating sperm at his own fertility clinic
1500 conceptions!!
There is extreme danger for these DIS kids to marry one another. “Donations” tend to stay in one area geographically.
I don’t live in Brittain, but will just point out this line from the article about the man who fathered 1,000 children in the period 1945-1970:
Yup, that’s a good thing! Again, so such limits in the U$A.
Assuming those “rules” are actually state-enforced regulations, that is, and not simply guidelines or voluntary ethical rules put out by a professional organization.
@84: No, the handmaids were enslaved. I assume you know that ‘handmaid’, in the Biblical use of the term, does not mean hired help.
Mythago:
Well, it’s not directly regulated by law where I live (not UK), but rather as regulations from the department of health. But then again it’s kind of a chicken and egg question since all spermbanks are owned by the state.
The rule is rather specific: Max 8 children to no more than 6 families and not higher than 2 children in one family. Sperm should be destroyed after these limits are reached or after the donors death.
Regarding the situation in the UK I saw another article stating that it was a rule of law in the UK (it was a non-english article about the same case that Mira linked to). A quick look at Wikipedia reveals that this is a rule enforced by HFEA – a non-departmental public body accountable to the Department of Health.
I flip-flop between considering the belief in self-regulation (as held by many conservatives in the US) as mind-boggling naive or as an expression of “I really don’t give a crap about the outcome”.
I am America – born and raised – and I gave you my opinion of self-regulating. it is because the gvt is indebted to the lobbyists from the corps who supported their campaigns. Capitalism here is way out of control. The final straw here was a ruling known as Citizens United which allows corporations to contribute to political campaigns in unlimited amounts previously reserved for individuals. The US also now has a system of super pacs that take ANONYMOUS political contributions. It all has opened the FLOODGATES for mass corruption, as if it wasn’t bad enough here already! Now corporations rule and the average person is simply at their mercy.
Soooo… there are very few limits in any industry on how much money they make, doing whatever it is they choose to do. It is not just the conservatives who favor less gvt control, we also have Libertarians who do. Only the liberal/progressives want a more socialistic society that put the needs of people first, but we seem to be loosing ground every day.
What’s the rationale for no more than 2 children in one family?
Creating Life, Anonymously
Ruchama:
I don’t know as the regulations doesn’t go into the rationale behind them, they just state the rules. There was a comittee working on the underlying biotech law, perhaps there is some rationale in their reports, but I am not going to spend the time trying to look for it.
I can make a uneducated guess though. The 8 children is a max level that came first and perhaps in an effort to make the sperm and effort help the highest possible number of childless people there was a cap set on the number of children concieved per sperm donor per family. In public hospitals there are waiting lists to get IVF with donor sperm, mostly due to fluctuations in sperm availability. Treatment is free.
There are private hospitals/clinics providing fertility treatment including IVF with donor sperm. They are subject to the same laws and regulation as the public hospitals although they import the sperm (Denmark is a foreign and quite large exporter of sperm). That means that the sperm bank in for instance Denmark has to provide records about the donor for all the sperm they sell to the private clinic here in order for the child to obtain those records when s/he turns 18 and wishes to do so. In contrast to adoption the parents have no legal obligation to tell the child that s/he a result of donor sperm. In private hospitals there is no waiting time (outside those for technical and medical reasons), but it costs money.
In adoption again, the U$A does not put the needs and rights of the children being adopted first. Parents have no obligation to tell the child he or she is adopted, though nowadays the majority are internationally adopted, so they know. In all but two American states, domestic and international adoptions begin with the original birth certificate being forever sealed and a new false certificate being issued listing the adopters as the parents of birth. this was done “back in the day” when social workers advised not telling, fearing children would feel awkward. Now they advise truth, but the laws have not been revised and there is a grassroots movement by adoptees to overturn these antiquated laws and provide them the equal rights to their own birth certificate.
How is this legal obligation enforced for adoption? (A friend of mine found out as an adult that he’d been adopted as an infant. At what point would the government have stepped in?)
Thanks for the possible explanation about the limits per family. I hadn’t thought about it in terms of donor sperm being limited — from that perspective, it makes sense. I was thinking more than, if one family wants to have four children with donor sperm, it makes more sense for it all to be from the same donor than for them to have two different donors who both also have children in other families, just in terms of avoiding inadvertent incest.
Ruchama:
IVF is an expensive and time-consuming treatment with a certain failure rate (appr. 75% depending on the woman’s age). I’d imagine having four children by IVF could be rather harrowing if one isn’t particulary lucky. So there’s that also.
I am not sure how that legal obligation is enforced. The law simply states that the adoptive parents are obligated to tell the child that s/he’s adopted as soon as it is advisable. It goes on to state that when the adoptee turns 18 s/he has the right to query the department for the records about who is his biological parents. If s/he’s is adopted from abroad there isn’t always such a record, but then they’ll get as much details as possible (for instance country of origin, date of adoption, name of orphanage and so on). The regulations stress the importance that the child is told by his adopted parents that s/he’s adopted. I guess it has often turned out detrimental to the relationship between the adopters and the adoptee if the adoptee is told by someone else that s/he is adopted.
Perhaps this is the underlying “threat” when people applying to adopt/adopting are told about the laws and regulations surrounding adoptions.
I don’t know if the government send information to adopted children when they turn 18 that they can look up their biological parents if they would like to do so. I suspect they don’t, but that could be one, albeit somewhat heavy-handed way of enforcing it.
Erratum: In an earlier comment I wrote that IVF treatment were free at public hospitals. That’s not completely true. The treatment itself is “free” – one pays a deductible (appr.200USD), however a lot of medication is needed and that is not free although whatever one spends above 2000-2500USD can be reimbursed. So the public option is about 20% of th e private option.
It’s not a threat, as the law has no way of being enforceable. They are just told it is good parenting and in their child’s best interest to be open and honest, as opposed to the instructions they were given in past generations to keep it a secret. Fear of the child finding out otherwise is one reason. Children who have grown without knowing they are adopted are also at risk of giving false medical history which is far worse than telling a health care provider you have no medical history because you were adopted.
If you are talking about the UK adult adoptees have the option to obtain their original birth certificate when they are adults. true for U$ adoptees only in a small handful of states.
Yeah, that was why I wrote “threat” within scare quotes. As in “You are obligated to tell him as soon as is advisable. You should also be aware that it can be detrimental to both him and his relation to you if he should find it out from third parties before you tell him”.
In the US, the “rules” on sperm usage vary by bank–the one my family members used only allows 8 children per donor, with already successful families allowed to go over the limit for siblings (since you “buy” the sperm anyway, they can’t really stop you once you have it away from the source). They also release donor health info, and donor name upon request of the donor-conceived children when the child is 18 years old. This sperm bank seems to be quite popular, so I guess many families do consider the ethics of what they are doing, but I am sure there are many bad actors in the fertility biz.
Tamen, I would guess that more than 33% of sperm bank users are fertile women trying IUI, given that around 33% of infertile heterosexual couples can’t conceive due to problems with the male, and many same sex couples use donor sperm. I know for sure that not all donor sperm is earmarked for IVF. Maybe things are different in the US.
All the kids I know that were conceived through donor sperm are aware of their genetic history (partially because I know many lesbian couples with kids), but this includes at least two friends with male infertility as the root cause.
Mirah, with due respect, I know that many adoptions are disrupted (I think that is the term currently used) due a biological parent changing their minds. One source says up to 25% in the US. One family I know has one adopted child (through an open adoption–with contact maintained with the birth mother) and went on to have 2 disrupted adoptions before they gave up on raising another child. I suspect this is hugely variable by state, like anything else in the US.
As a non-adopted person, I don’t really know how it feels to be adopted. I’ve never given up a child, so I don’t know how it feels to be a birth parent. I do think open adoption sounds like a great idea for everyone, but I do think that the rights of the birth parents should also be protected. Birth parents who desire no contact deserve to live unmolested (though all children should have the right to their genetic history). There is a huge difference between supplying a medical history and basic background, and having an unwanted stranger show up unexpectedly demanding entry into your life.
The adopted adults I know have seemingly mixed opinions–one made contact with their birth parents, maintains contact, and everyone is reasonably happy, one made contact with their birth parents only to be rejected as an adult and was very sad, and one who doesn’t care who their birth parents are and never looked.