Letters to the Editor
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Sharon629
You say that men and women enjoy equal rights once the baby is outside the mother's body and that the consent of both parents is required for adoption. Both statements are false. You said the same thing last week in response to the Broadsheet piece and they were false then, as I said.
Particularly in regard to adoption, the rights of mothers and fathers are nowhere near equal. Please see my previous post on this matter.
As to married parents, the rights in theory are essentially equal, but in practice, the presumption of maternal custody still applies.
But as to single parents (now 35% of all live births in the US are to single mothers), again there is nothing like equality. In the first place, there is no requirement in any state that a woman tell the father that he has a child. And that makes all the difference because a man's rights are solely determined by whether he has performed his paternal duties. If he hasn't he loses all his parental rights (unless the woman chooses to allow him to exercise them). If he doesn't know he has a child, he is unable to perform those duties. So again, the father's rights are in the mother's hands.
His parental obligations are another thing altogether. They are determined not by nurture but by nature. At any time during the child's life up to the age of 18 (+ the period of the statute of limitations, usually 4 years) he may be held liable for back child support plus future child support whether or not he has ever known anything about his child, ever set eyes on him/her. I know several men who have been hit out of the blue by six-figure arrearages for children they never knew existed. By contrast, women's rights spring solely from their biological connection to the child. Thus, in Illinois a few years ago, a crack-addicted woman gave her child up at birth to foster parents who parented it for 3 years. When they petitioned to adopt the child, the mother asserted her parental rights and won the child back. Fathers have lost their rights for as little as a two-day lapse in asserting their rights.
I could go on and on about the inequalities of family law in this country.
Sharon629, please stop saying things that are flagrantly false. It has the potential to spread disinformation.
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Does it vary by state?
Because I know that in my state the father's consent is required for adoption. If the mother chooses to have the child and wants to put it up for adoption, but the father wants it, he can contest the adoption and get child support from the mother. I don't know how often that happens, but it's on the books.
Yes, he has to contest it - it's not identical to the mother's rights, but that's because he can vanish before the child is born, but the mother cannot, obviously.
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...
While I feel for men who end up becoming father to children they never wanted to have, I cannot agree that when a woman wants a baby and man does not this should absolve him of all his responsibilities. The decision to have an abortion is not the same for both sexes. For men, I am guessing, it is an abstract thing. For a woman it is an emotional (attachment to the baby), physical (it is a surgery) thing that may affect her future fertility. Even a woman who wouldn't want to have a child may not feel like having an abortion once she gets pregnant. A man cannot force her to have an abortion, likewise he cannot coerce her into not having one. It's a huge burden and a substantial decision for the woman. Like someone else said here, if a guy does abhor the idea, there are condoms and spermicides available. Otherwise, unfortunately, even though it sounds unfair, having a baby it is the natural outcome of having sex.
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LSophia
The theory is that the father's consent is required. When the parents are married, a court will usually require a finding of consent by the father before the adoption can occur. That's because marriage records exist, so it's harder for a woman to place the child on the sly.
But when the parents are single, there is nothing a father can do to prevent his child's adoption, for the reasons I outlined.
And once a child is placed, even temporarily, with potential adoptive parents, the chance that a father will lose his rights increases to about 100%. If he finds out that the adoption process has started and tries to assert his rights, he will be out of luck almost invariably. I urge you to read "In re Baby Girl Dockery," 495 SE 2nd, 417 (1998) in which the highly-qualified father went to court 2 days after his daughter's birth to get custody and lost. Courts routinely find that the "best interests of the child" are served by denying the father his parental rights even if the child has been placed for a matter of days.
Again, the fact that this effectively denies another child, with no father to care for it, qualified adoptive parents just doubles the outrage.
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Let me try again
(to "anonymous"): you may have read my whole post, but you missed my first point. the only way you can make this argument is because you think that an abortion is some get-out-of-jail-free, consequence-free "walking away." as opposed to a real and weighty consequence (amongst others) of pregnancy.
i think about my abortion almost everyday. i'm not depressed about it. but it certainly is a defining moment in my life. i have never, ever, in the whole of my life, been MORE in the position of taking responsibility than that day. and it, frankly, sucked.
i also don't buy the argument that roe v wade is about raising children for 18 years. again, that's a separate issue. our society currently believes that parents take care of the children. don't like it? advocate for children subsidies for all families.
roe v wade is about one's OWN control of one's OWN body and NOBODY having the right AT ALL to say what you can do with it.
I submit that Roe was not at all decided on how weighty it is to take care of a child for 18 years. But on the right of privacy and therefore supremacy over one's own body.
only pro-lifers and, apparently, weasely so-called progressive men who are, on this board and blogs all around, expressing real, real anger towards women that can best be described as "almost" misogynistic, believe that abortion is a get-out-of jail card and a means of avoiding children rather than about controlling one's OWN body (NOT ANYBODY ELSE'S).
this is yet another attempt for society to control WOMEN. not an example of men being controlled at all.