This might be true if Bruce ‘gave’ the semen to Clarice, but he didn’t. He gave it to Adam. Clarice had no right to it.
It isn’t a rape of Bruce in the traditional sense of the word but if he gets hit up for child support, he is a victim.
Well, I’m not sure exactly what sort of obligation you’re talking about there, but if you don’t want to be obligated to the guy, you do have the option to refuse the cab ride. At what point was the guy in the hypothetical offered that option? Never? Then how is it his obligation, exactly?
Really. So, let’s say you have two women. Brenda is fourteen, and is pregnant because she was raped by her stepfather. Linda is twenty-four, and is pregnant because the condom broke when she and her boyfriend were having sex. You think it’s legitimate to tell Brenda she has to carry her child to term, because otherwise it might make Linda feel bad?
I think that’s genuinely nauseating. As in, I’m queasy right now for having written it.
Ok, so if you were run over by a drunk and rushed to the hospital, you’d feel no obligation to pay that bill?
No. Not at all. I’m saying neither has to carry their child to term because both have the right to bodily autonomy, no matter their moral character or age or anything else. That right isn’t rooted in their culpability. Are you comfortable telling Linda “You have to carry that baby, because you spread your legs, you slut!!”?
No. For two reasons. Firstly, because I have pretty good health insurance, which I got specifically so I don’t need to pay my medical bills. Secondly, because if I didn’t have health insurance, I would be incapable of paying my medical bills. I don’t think someone should be reduced to poverty simply because they suffered an accident, and the fact that that happens every day in this country is a massive injustice in and of itself, above and beyond the one proposed in the OP.
No, I’m not comfortable telling her that. But I’m also not the one suggesting that there are some circumstances where it’s better that a woman not be able to get an abortion. I think that all women should have control over the reproductive choices, because not having that is a gross insult to their rights as a human being. Failing that, it’s better if at least some women have control over their reproductive choices. Insisting that it has to be all, or nothing at all, is the argument of the zealot. It’s certainly one that’s entirely devoid of anything I can recognize as compassion.
Well, the system we have is that they bill you and you sue the person that hit you. Whether that’s a moral or legal obligation is pretty nuanced; I’d agree that you shouldn’t be reduced to poverty but I’d also argue that it’s no more just that the hospital be stuck with the bill than you being stuck with it. Someone is out a fortune, and unless it’s the drunk, there is no real solution as things are currently constructed. The same with an “involuntary” pregnancy.
I didn’t suggest that there are some circumstances where a woman shouldn’t be able to get an abortion. I said that I think arguments based on whether or not the woman was “at fault” for the pregnancy seemed irrelevant to me. I am sorry if I did not make that clear. I mean, if someone put a gun to my head and said “Abortions for no one, or only for rape and incest victims”, I’d go for the later but not BECAUSE they were rape and incest victims–but because they are people, and have the right to control their body.
Sure, the health care system, as it works now, is fucked. But you’re using one fucked up system in this country to justify another fucked up system. It’s like saying, “Sure, all this anti-Mexican discrimination sucks, but we can’t do anything about it, because there’s all this anti-black discrimination in the country.” There are a lot of injustices in the world, but if we can’t fix one of them before we fix all of them, we’re never going to fix any of them.
I also think your insistence on letting this be worked out in civil courts doesn’t make much sense. In this scenario, we already have two courts cases: one for criminal charges, if there’s any statute that covers “theft of sperm,” and then family court, to determine financial obligations to the child. What’s gained by adding a third court to the proceedings, where the victim can recover costs determined by the family court? Why not just have the circumstances of the conception be considered in the family court hearing? Who is helped by, as you’ve suggested, having one court take money out of the father’s pocketbook, then starting legal proceedings all over to put the money back in?
I am not suggesting we don’t fix it. I am suggesting we fix it through the civil courts.
For one thing, I think it’s worth keeping the legal personhood of the child separate from that of the mother. They aren’t the same person, for all that they may be in the same household. I think it’s worth it to have it be clear that it’s not that the father doesn’t have to pay child support, it’s that the mother has a huge judgment against her. I think it needs to be crystal clear that the mom is paying the damages she caused. And considering how fucking rare this is, I don’t think inefficiency really matters. Civil courts aren’t getting bogged down in sperm-stealing cases.
Furthermore, family court is pretty strictly limited to the perspective of the best interest of the child. It’s not even clear that they have the authority to decide whether or not someone counts as a “real” father, or the role of the circumstances of conception. They aren’t trying to be fair to everyone: they are trying to be fair to the child. There’s no case law for torts in family court. It’s not what they do. However, we have literally 700 years of case law on torts right across the street in civil court. Civil court is where people know about fraud, about damages, about liability.
To put it simply, this is a case of fraud. It needs to be dealt with like any other fraud. I think the child in question and society as a whole are better off if the crime is treated for what it really is, rather than family court just telling the father “Dude, not your fault, just pretend it never happened”.
Why? What happens if that distinction is not perfectly clear?
One, it suggests that the mother hasn’t harmed the father, that it is a sort of “no harm, no foul” situation where the whole thing is a wash. Two, it suggests that the child is less deserving of or entitled to support because of the sins of the mother. Three, it suggests that in other cases, child support exists as a form of punishment. Four, it muddies the nature of the non-financial relationship between father and son, and, should the father wish to pursue that relationship, it suggests that he is not a “real” father. Five, allowing “intent” to be an element of fatherhood opens such a tremendous can of worms that I don’t think it’s in anyone’s interest to start that debate.
I don’t see how. You were victimized when the drunk crashed into your living room. The hospital was not involved in the crash. It was involved in* the remediation of your injuries in exchange for cash. * That’s a funny notion of victimization.
No, the hospital hasn’t victimized you.
OTOH, if someone somehow manages to steal a few of your swimmers without your knowledge, and goes off to Australia and has your biological offspring without your ever knowing about it the entire rest of your life, what injury has been done to you? I’d say none - certainly no perceptible injury has been done to you.
So the *action by which the injury takes place *is the court’s action assigning responsibility for child support to you.
Analogy fails.
I am not arguing that. See below.
That sounds like “if it’s your sperm that helped make this child, you have a debt to the child.” Well, that’s not true, as we’ve been discussing. A child doesn’t have the right to support from two parents, just because one person contributes an egg and the other a sperm. It happens all the time that a woman chooses to have a child on her own, by adoption, by artificial insemination, by sex with a partner where there is a clear understanding that he’s not interested in being a father, but that she’s interested in being a mother and is not going to hold him to any parental obligation.
If a woman makes a decision on her own to have a child, in a manner that involves neither sex nor some artificial method involving the consent of the sperm donor to fatherhood, then that child should have one and only one legal parent. I’m not particular about when the sperm donor gives consent, but consent there must be, either to sex or, absent that, consent to fatherhood or the possibility of it in some other manner.
Child support isn’t owed to the mom, but to the child. The child is the “hospital”, not the mom. Just because some parents fail to pursue their kids’ rights doesn’t mean those rights don’t exist. In the same way, the mom can’t just decide a child doesn’t have the right to access their father, or the father the right to access their child. The legal relationship of the father and child are independent of the mom, and the mom doesn’t have the power or void or alter that relationship.
There are two exceptions to this: adoption and anonymous sperm donation. We pretty heavily formalize those procedures to make it crystal clear that the legal concept of parenthood is being changed. But if you want to make “volition” a condition of parenthood, where does that end?
In any case where a mother begets her child by getting sperm involuntarily (rape, stealing it from a cup at a party, etc), the mother should be found incompetent in raising children and the father should relatively easily gain full custody of the child should he want it. If the father doesn’t want to have anything to do with the kid, he should have an easy legal avenue to put it up for adoption.
If for whatever reason the father believes that the kid would be better off with the mother, even though she’s a crazy person, then… the courts can sort that one out.
At what point does Bruce not become liable for child support? Suppose Clarice shares his sperm with Ethel? And what if she were to share it with a dozen other women, all of whom bore Bruce’s children?
As previously noted, the right of the child to have support from both biological parents isn’t inviolable.
We’ve gotten the hospital out of the picture already.
Actually, it does. If a mom decides to raise her child without help, the child doesn’t have a right, on getting to the age of reason, to sue the father for nonsupport and get him to pay college tuition in lieu of that support.
It lives in the space of biological parenthood not involving either sex or anonymous sperm donation. That really isn’t a very big space, so that’s where it ends.
I don’t think we have, but I think it’s just a fundamental disagreement on how we see this issue.
But the mother has the right to sue for half the money she spent raising the child during those 18 years. The child had the right to be supported: the fact that he wasn’t supported didn’t cancel that right.
Why there? Why does a man who has sex with a woman who lies about having had a hysterectomy, or about being a man, or any other “couldn’t possibly get pregnant, no way no how” situation a “voluntary” parent but a man who gets his sperm stolen is an “involuntary” parent? Both have been defrauded.
The pedestrian hit by a car analogy presented by Manda Jo fails to recognize that special circumstances do in fact exist in law.
Albert and Bob are walking to the post office to collect mail. Cindy is driving drunk and runs up on the sidewalk, seriously injuring Albert and Bob.
Albert gets billed by the hospital. Bob does not. Why? Because Bob was walking to the post office as a part of his job duties. Bob is covered under worker’s compensation and is not personally liable.
Albert was on his day off and so is out of luck. He may have health insurance to cover much of the bill but is responsible for any uninsured medical costs.
Bob’s employer didn’t run him over. Bob’s employer didn’t do anything that put him in any unreasonable risk. Yet Bob’s employer is on the hook financially and must buy insurance to cover such a risk. If Bob’s employer fails to buy the insurance it can be held liable for the full cost of Bob’s treatment.
Point being, the law does allow for special circumstances. No reason it couldn’t, or shouldn’t, be adapted to account for the hypothetical in the OP.
You’ve heard of this happening in multiple jurisdictions?
A woman takes a man’s sperm from a glass, self-inseminates, gets pregnant, and sues for child support, and this happens so often that you, personally, have evidence of it happening in multiple jurisdictions?
One wonders why sperm banks exist if all you need is a glass.
I dunno, RT. I think the other side is a moral argument as well. There’s both a legal AND moral belief in US culture that a child is entitled to support from both parents when both parents are identified. Is it any more moral to exclude that support from a child due to factors entirely outside of its control (and it doesn’t get more outside of its control than the situation outlined)?
In effect, the law is put in the uneviable position of trying to balance two competing moral imperatives - the right to control ones procreation and the right of one to be supported as a child by both parents - within an existing legal structure. It strikes me that - given the circumstances and the pattern of the law - Bruce being on the hook for child support (thereby covering the child’s rights) and then suing Clarine for his loss (thereby covering Bruce’s rights) is a logical solution to the competing moral claims.
And then Clarice should have to pay child support to Bruce.
But why should it? What is wrong with the remedies we have in place?