I never argued that it was not wrong for the man to not pull out. I am saying that is not rape, even if it is by watered down legal jargon. First of all, the man could immediately pull out and the woman could still conceive a child. What then? Everything’s hunky-dory? But now what if the woman says, “no, stop” and the man stops? Good, right? But then the woman decides to prosecute this “rape” because, I don’t know maybe he didn’t pull out fast enough. (1) Mom admits she consented to sex initially. (2) Dad claims (truthfully or not) that he pulled out the very second Mom said to. Who should be believed? Why should Dad be labeled as a rapist and have rights to his children stripped away because he wasn’t fast enough on the draw to please Mom?
So Mom changing her mind mid-coitus and conceiving a child is supposed to be enough to convince…anybody that the man is definitely never going to be a good father and should never have any rights or access to his child? Why would Mom get to have that say? If Dad pulled out, then he did, but it is going to be her word against his, no? And disagreement over the amount of time a penis may be permitted into a vagina does not speak toward parental ability, and certainly should not dictate parental rights be terminated (on one side and not the other especially).
But you didn’t explain why a man who has initially-consensual sex with a woman could not be a good father or will not be a good father either. I honestly thought the topic of this thread was “should the ‘rapist’ have paternal rights”, not whether they would meet your standards as good father material. So when you said, “no, could not be a good father” I took that to mean that you thought in every “rape” situation, no matter how gray it may be, that the “rapist” should not have paternal rights (custody/visitation being among them).
If you are saying instead that in your opinion he could never be a good father, but should retain paternal rights or that you have no opinion on whether he should have paternal rights, then I apologize for misunderstanding you.
Hmmm, I think in such a scenario ( a “rape”/violation of wishes which occurs AFTER the consensual initiation of sex) it might be argued that the man is not a good LOVER/HUSBAND (but a very grey area…a sudden command of “pull out, don’t come!” is not something that is enforcable, ime;) or which is a reliable indicator of overall personality traits) but I would not automatically conclude he was not FATHER material (since apparently he WAS, his “material” having produced a child.)
I agree that there are grey areas in the issue of rape and that it can occur in marriage, on dates, and in cases of miscommunication or intoxication of one or both parties.
My responses were directed towards an overt attack, which had been recognized as a crime by the legal system. For better or for worse, our legal system is pretty grey on the details of other such forms of rape.
Based on a quick scan of what you just said, I can’t see much of a conflict between our beliefs except that you think that failing to pull out is not rape and I think it is. But even if you don’t want to call it rape, I don’t think that any man who would refuse to pull out can have the personality traits we’d expect of a good father.
The question of whether or not a rapist can be a good father was asked in the OP. I’m not going on a tangent here.
I am not particularly able to predict the social ramifications of laws and government actions. Many proposed laws or actions would cause negative social effects even though, on first glance, they would seem totally logical to me. I try to be very careful when saying that the government should do a particular thing.
If there is a legal distinction between more and less violent forms of rape, I think that anyone who commits rape of the more violent persuasion should never be allowed visitations or custody. But I don’t even know that much about rape, so I don’t want to recommend any idea too strongly.
When I first asked about the parental rights of rapists, I was thinking of a situation like this.
I was wondering about the child’s situation if the mother decided to give it up for adoption, and the father was required to relinquish his rights. I did not think about the rapist wanting visitation or shared custody, but I have no trouble imagining some bastards actually being arrogant enough to want that, not to mention grandparent rights, and a myriad other situations that I am not able to conceive.
I was not so much interested in personal opinions, as on this board I would not expect it to go any other way than it has in this thread, but in the actual legal situation in some states and countries. Can’t find anything about this in Poland, when doing Google searches I mostly found articles about fathers who raped their children losing parental rights.
Personally, I agree that any violent rapist should automatically lose any rights to the child, and think that this should also be the case in most other types of rape, though some posters have presented various complicated situations where a blanket rule would not suffice.
in the words of Oliver Wendell Holmes. bright line law makes for the worst type of laws… or something like that something can or should be decided on a case by case basis then you open up the opportunity for an idiot on the bench to do something idiotic… but thats the chance we have to take…
First I’m pretty sure their are no “grandparents rights” the high court has already knocked that down… and as for the statatory rape laws… i’m ga their are written so badly here that we have had egg on our face in two separate situations…
as for the woman who’s child was removed after her conviction of fraud… she obviously had no family… for the usual option is for a family member to assume custody. ala Dante Culpepper the football player… he was born in jail raised by his grandmother…
interesting back and forth… if the father is a husband and is already a father… with no proof of neglecting his kids then he will be able to assume or fight for some parental position… date or stranger danger?? I hardly see that as a possiblity…
How would anyone even know the rapist was the father, though, if she didn’t put him down on the birth certificate to begin with? And why would she have to?
Cite? I don’t think that’s the case, at least in most places.
Suppose the woman wants a baby but not a marriage, so she gets pregnant after lying to her boyfriend that she’s on the pill. Should she have parental rights over the product of the ill-gotten sperm? I’m not pushing any agenda on this one; just exploring logic.
I’m sorry I haven’t one. I have just always been told that that is the case. I will be happy to hear that is not true (if it’s not) because I have been drunk (a long time ago) and had sex consensually, I would hate to have to believe I was raped or that my then-husband is a bad father because of it.
The only thing printed that I can find to support drunk sex= rape is material along these lines:
Not proper cites I know, but that’s all I have right now.
That’s a tough one I think, because by punishing the Mom for her actions you would also be punishing a child who had no choice in the matter. So even if Mom may not deserve the child, the child still deserves its mother…much like in the grayer areas of rape.
One that I think is similar and is a case I actually heard about so I am sure it went to court (but I have no cites) is when a woman steals the sperm from a condom. In that case I believe that “Dad” (who did not want children and thus was using methods to avoid conception) was found to be biologically the father and thus on the hook for support etc. In my opinion Mom in that case “raped” the Dad by stealing the sperm from a used condom (at least as much as man who doesn’t pull out quick enough would) and she shouldn’t have rights to the ill-gotten baby, and that Dad should not have been obligated to support said child. BUT taking away her rights, and letting him forget about the whole thing would leave a child parentless. A child who had no say in how they came to be, and doesn’t deserve to be an orphan simply because his/her parents are idiots.
It also goes back to who is going support such a child. Even if one doesn’t care whether the child has parents or not, certainly we wouldn’t want all that financial burden to be in the hands of the state.
Both of those examples are again (to get back on topic) excellent examples of why these things should be looked at on a case-by-case basis and not made blanket policies.
I’m going to go against the grain here and say of course he should be allowed parental rights.
This would change if he were abusive toward the child of course, but if he has only been abusive towards the mother it’s terrible to restrict his access to the most precious thing in his life. It’s also highly unfair on the child. This isn’t three thousand years ago; we do not punish the child for the misdeeds of his forefathers.
Oh, and see things the other way around folks: Imagine if the woman rapes the man. You wouldn’t be saying she shouldn’t have any rights, would you?
Newslfash: The rape doesn’t violate the child’s rights.
Ok let’s see this principle in action. Stalin murdered millions of his countrymen. There was, obviously and regrettably, organised rape and suchlike included in that. That doesn’t mean he shouldn’t have be allowed to see his children.
Same thing here… that the child is a result of the rape is 100% irrelevant.
Indeed it is relevant. Someone commits a crime, and because there is a positive result of that crime, they want to benefit from that? Sorry, no. That man gave up his rights to his child the very second I said no and he went ahead and raped me anyways. You’re giving him far, far too much control over me – it would be like being raped all over again, as far as I’m concerned.
And no amount of “think of the CHILDREN!!!” is going to cut it. Said child can always seek out his or her father when he or she is older. Don’t we terminate parental rights all the time – and not always for violations to said children? (Perhaps someone with more experience can answer this.)
If he truly cared about the “most precious thing in his life”, he wouldn’t have raped his or her mother in the first place.
Let me ask you – if I decide to go with adoption instead, should my rapist have a say in that?
No we do not. It is quite an ordeal usually to get a parent’s rights terminated and it almost always involves violations to said children. The big reasons to terminate parental rights usually are:
deliberate no contact for a long period of time and/or a step-parent wanting to adopt; abuse; neglect; non-support or the parent committing a heinous crime that would indicate they were a direct danger to the child- and generic “rape”* does not qualify in most jurisdictions.
A parent can also agree to terminate their rights (often seen in cases of step-parent adoption) which is an easier process, and I think you will find that most cases of parental rights termination fall into the category of “agreement”.
Rape/assault might qualify, rape of a child most certainly would, but statutory rape, date-rape (without violence, as in the example of drunk or refusing to stop previously consensual activity) would not. Violent crimes such as murder sometimes qualify and sometimes don’t to terminate rights, I believe that is up to the individual judges in the case(s). But murder of the other parent almost always would.
I quite missed the edit opportunity for my previous post, but wanted to add a cite.
The answer is still, “No, we do not” but here is some documentation of the grounds under which we could: Grounds for Involuntary Termination of Parental Rights. Some of the grounds may initially read as not violations to the child (like long-term mental illness of the parent) but with a little thought I think you will find that most every reason is indeed for a violation to the child(ren) in some way, and not just a violation against the child’s mother (such as statutory rape would/could be).
Well, that’s a big part of what I was wondering. Can a baby be given up for adoption without the father giving up his rights?
From the googling I did I found out that some adoption agencies won’t handle the case of a child in that situation, as well as sometimes adoptive parents may not want to take the risk of the birthfather showing up a year or two later to contest the adoption.
Of course, a rapist is most unlikely to do any such thing, but I was mostly curious about the child’s situation.
I’d be really happy to hear from a family law expert.
I am not a family law expert (but it is sort of a hobby of mine) and I am sure this varies by the state, but Georgia law (the quickest cite I could find) holds that a mother of an illegitimate child has sole rights to the child unless the father legitimizes it, in other words the father would have to come forward and start the process of being recognized and obtaining any paternal rights. As you say, a rapist would be unlikely to do so.
Being the only legal parent in this scenario (and in Georgia) the mother would be able to place the child for adoption if she chose.Cite
In other states (such as California) an unknown father’s rights can be terminated as “unknown” and then the mother can place the child for adoption. Not really a cite, but the form to do so in PDF is here. And in yet other states the agency or attorney may publish a notice in the legal section of the newspaper seeking the father to come forward, when he doesn’t (and a rapist wouldn’t) paternal rights can be terminated and the adoption can go forward. Here’s some more info on that: http://life.familyeducation.com/adoption/birth-parents/45770.html .
Women are more then baby maturation chambers, that child was given to her, or at the very least left behinds and abandoned in her, and that child is part of her. IMHO Mary should get to chose if this person should be the child’s father.
While I do not necessarily disagree with you in the case of rape, do you feel this way about all pregnancies?
If Mary conceived a child by her husband or boyfriend, should she get to decide if she wants that person to be the father? What about an already born child (not conceived by rape)? Could she change her mind and/or choose against the father being the father?
