Crap. I’m having a bad communication day it seems.
I’m perfectly willing to believe the rapist and the consensual blowjobber are horrible, horrible people and probably horrible, horrible parents. Guinastasia is proabaly much closer to the truth than my desperate attempts to see a silver lining. Odds are good those kids are going to need a lot of therapy and I really hope they have some reasonable, ethical adult in their lives. However, we have no proof that the rapist or the consensual blowjobber are good or bad parents. They might be great; they might be a nightmare that will serve for a Law & Order Special Victims Unit ripped from the headlines plot. We don’t know. I just think it’s wrong to assume every unethical person is a bad parent.
I also think that people who conceive children by unethical or violent means don’t deserve to be awarded child support or visitation. Proving this in court, however, is can of worms I can’t sort out. I wish there were easy (or any) answers for these problems.
I should have previewed.
I know a case just like the one Ludovic is describing. It’s a friend of a friend story, so if you hate anecdotal information just skip down to the next post now.
A lawyer friend of mine once defended a man (let’s call him Screwed) on a fraud charge. The charge was that Screwed was supposed to submit to a paternity test. Screwed asked a friend of his to go in his place because he was pretty sure he was the daddy. As it turned out, Screwed had met a woman (let’s call her BadBadWoman) in a bar and talked to her a while, they exchanged phone numbers and Screwed gave her his business card. Met up a few days later and had sex. Month later BadBadWoman shows up with a positive pregnancy test. Turns out BadBadWoman was from some other state (I think it was Minnesota) that automatically gives BadBadWoman 1/3 of Screwed’s income in child support. Ok, Screwed should have kept his pants on. Screwed tries to get out of it, but even when later testimony shows that BadBadWoman deliberately went to California to find a high-paid software engineer (this was back in the boom) to finance her plan, and had even called Screwed’s human resources department pretending to be a mortgage officer to verify his income before their second “date”. He made about $80,000, IIRC and apparently in small town Minnesota it’s quite possible to live on $26,000. I don’t know the end of this story. But I was left with the impression that Screwed had to pay up.
[QUOTE=Ludovic]
It makes no difference ethically for the man. 12 months * 300$ a month * 18 years is $64800, which is a pretty big tab to pay for something that happened to you completely out of the blue.
[/QUOTE=Ludovic]
If a man was taken advantage of by someone like the rapist or the consensual blowjobber, then yes, it is very, very wrong to make him pay. But if he had consensual sex he should know, as most people do, that there are consequences for actions. It’s a pity there are no really good forms of male birth control.
An apology to The Devil’s Grandmother-I misinterpreted your post as some sort of reaction to recent posts of hers. If you are ever in my neck of the woods, the first pitcher of beer is on me.
I’m confused. Man rapes woman, she gets pregnant. Man goes to jail and has no parental rights. Woman chooses to either abort, keep, or give baby up for adoption.
Woman rapes man, gets pregnant. Woman gets to keep baby, and man must pay child support?! (Mainly because he didn’t press charges, I’m guessing.)
The woman rapist (in the hypothetical sense, not any specific case) should be given the options of abortion or involuntary adoption, and the man should be given the options of custody or voluntary adoption if the rapist didn’t choose abortion. Right? What am I missing? I must be missing something because this sounds like a no-brainer to me.
The moment I hit submit two other questions popped into mind. In the man rapes woman scenario, if she keeps the baby, I’m wondering about child support. I’d assume he has to pay – though he’s in jail, he might have previous assets – but does that automatically give him visitation? I would hope not.
In the same respect, a woman raping a man to get pregnant, should she choose to have the baby, and the man decides to keep and raise the baby, the woman should be on the hook for support, with the same visitation priviledges a male rapist would get.
Visitation should not be a right. I think the custodial parent would immediately get a restraining order against the convicted prisoner. Hopefully the support could be paid into a blind bank account.
**Ellis Dee ** suggests “The woman rapist (in the hypothetical sense, not any specific case) should be given the options of abortion or involuntary adoption,…”
I’m not sure I want to start summarily taking children away from convicted prisoners. The female rapist may not have intended to become pregnant.
I’ve heard - probably anecdotally - of women who wanted to get pregnant, but their SO’s insisted on using condoms (because of course a woman can say she is taking the Pill, but what if she ‘forgets’?)…so they stuck a needle through the condom packages, damaging the condoms. When this subject came up on the pregnancy newsgroup, people stomped all over it though, as being unforgiveably selfish, not to mention a huge a breach of faith with their partners. It doesn’t come up often though.
Horribly enough, under our current law system a male rapist probably could sue for visitation or custody of the child resulting from the rape. I can easily imagine someone doing that to further intimidate and harass the victim. I think this is very wrong and bad, but it is possible.
Again, I think the mother would immediately get a restraining order against the rapist. Hopefully, any financial support could be paid into a blind bank account.