As stated in the title of this article:
Biological fathers in Utah will now bear half the cost of pregnancy (upworthy.com)
My question is does this just about eliminate the use of sperm donors in Utah, but I’m sure y’all have different angles on this subject.
i bet the mom groups will try to get that amended asap
But whats going to happen is an unwed mother will try to get state support after dad dumps her because he ignored the court-ordered child support and they’ll see if the birth was state-assisted and add it to the public assistance he has to pay back through his taxes… while the county/state will have bench warrants for him to appear in court for violating the said support arrangements until said child is 18/21
The cite I have for this is reading the legal papers for my mother every year and talking to the la county da’s collection office twice a year as a requirement for my mom getting help for us
Infact the federal goverment is taking about about 75 percent of my disibility out of my dads social security/retirement
Isn’t this the way child support works? Were fathers not responsible for the cost of raising their children in Utah before this?
well yes but its all about the state public medical assistance agency getting paid back with a specific financial charge or at least a co-pay
i do see this bringing about a rise in court ordered paternity testing tho
I am just wondering if there is a “sperm donor” exemption written into this new version.
Is the mother also responsible for half the costs and required to pay them back?
probably not … infact the dad probably wont be charged either unless the mom gets public assistance or uses it to have the baby
Here in Ca its common for even married moms to use medical/caid with WIC included until the baby is born and then leave it after the babys about a year old …
That’s also true here in Iowa, where the Medicaid requirements are much more relaxed for pregnant women.
One wonders how this is going to go over in the FLDS communities.
I read the text of the bill and I don’t see any exemption for sperm donors. I’m not a good interpreter of legalese, but there seems to be so many edge cases that haven’t been considered. Does the baby have to be born in Utah for this law to apply? Or just that the father is a current resident of Utah? What if the mom is a resident of Utah but the father is a resident of another state, and she delivers the baby in North Dakota? Do other states have to extradite the father back to Utah? Etc.
My prediction is that deadbeat fathers will keep deadbeatin’ and try to dodge this Office of Recovery Services like they would with any regular collection agency, while responsible fathers would pay their share of the costs, law or no law, so no real change to the status quo.
IANAL but the text you linked to seems to be talking about the responsibilities of “parents”, both the mothers (or mothers-to-be) and biological fathers. I’m pretty sure that sperm donors are legally protected from being considered “parents” of the children their donated sperm is used to conceive. I don’t think they’re included in the category “biological father” here.
I don’t think those who have donated or wish to donate in Utah want to just assume such a thing, considering the right-wing groups behind this new law.
honestly, this bill seems to be just more pre marital sex-shaming by the usual morality police suspects
Hey, I don’t advocate any shaming, but many people would argue that pre martial sex isn’t the best thing for the fighters’ competitiveness. 
rofl my 3 spell check progs didnt catch that one ,
About sperm donors- the article says “Further to this, while a mother is entitled to payments from the biological father, they are not mandated to pursue these payments”. It seems to me that donors* would be exempt in a similar way that they are exempt from child support , whether that is by a some other law that states a sperm donor is not a father for the purpose of this section or through pre-conception agreements signed by the mother and donor
I suppose they can assess the means of each parent if their finances are not legally joined, and then if either of them can afford it they should reimburse the state. But that just discourages parents from forming a stable family to get more public assistance. That’s a road we’ve been down before. If they’re so pro family why don’t they have the state cover the basic costs of all pregnancies. That is something that would be fair and serve the public interest. Biden’s new relief bill includes tax credits which will help every parent once their child is born.
Pretty sure that the vast majority of people who use a donor in Utah don’t use a Utah sperm bank. Most of the big ones are in CA, and it’s the conventional wisdom that it’s better NOT to use a local bank–you don’t want to wonder if the donor is in the community.
And no one has ever successfully sued a formal donor (as opposed to a friend with a turkey baster) for child support. Why would this be different?
There are separate laws in Utah, and most if not all states, that specify that sperm and egg donors who donate for purposes of assisted reproduction are not considered parents of the children conceived using assisted reproduction.
An exception doesn’t have to be written into the new law, because it doesn’t apply in the first place.
Yes, informal sperm donors could be in for trouble, but that’s not a new thing. It’s got nothing to do with homophobia (I’m a lesbian, FWIW) and everything to do with the fact that any man could claim to be an informal sperm donor. There are ways to do it without risking the donor’s finances that way.
Regardless of what the law says, federal due process would require that Utah have personal jurisdiction over the father. I seriously doubt that if you had sex with a woman in North Dakota and she subsequently moved to Utah that such a thing would allow Utah to have personal jurisdiction over you. Probably not even if you had sex with a female from Utah while on a business trip in Denver. There must be some purposeful availment of Utah law or physical presence in Utah for that state to be able to hail you into its courts.