“The Child has a right to be supported by both parents”
I read this over and over again on the SDMB so I believe this is the majority consensus.
Do sperm donor fathers get a free ride ?
They even get paid for their “donation” don’t they ? Why do they appear to be exempt ?
Is it perhaps because the implied contractual waiver of the mother abrogates the rights of the child ?
Does the mother’s right to bear a child trump the child’s right to paternal support?
Just to add to my OP
If a lothario carried a waiver card to be signed by his paramour of the evening prior to insemination would that satisfy the “child’s rights” crowd and absolve him of liability with respect to the resultant child ?
I don’t see what you mean by “free ride”. They don’t have to pay child support, certainly, but then they don’t get any of the benefits of a relationship or the raising of a child. It’s not as though they’re getting away with something.
I would argue that a man who donates sperm does not have an obligation to support any resulting child.
It’s not just the parents that need to decide who has responsibility, but the state. Assuming that said waiver card was acceptable to the state as a legal contract, yes, this seems fair to me. OTOH, the reverse would not be a similar situation; both because the mother has a mandatory obligation, assuming she chooses to keep the pregnancy, and because even if a card waiving the mother’s rights is signed she may change her mind during the pregnancy. That would be more of a complicated situation.
I’m quite certain that there are many “natural” fathers coerced into paying child support by the state who don’t have the benefits of a relationship or the raising of the child.
You’re assuming “both parents” means both genetic parents.
A woman who deliberately uses donated sperm does so either because she’s single and wants to stay that way while still having a child, or she’s married/partnered and her SO is incapable of getting her pregnant (perhaps because he’s infertile, or because he’s a she). In this second case, those two people are the parents, and it is their resposibility to support the child (financially and otherwise). The former I find more problematic: is it moral for a woman to take the sole responsibility for raising a child upon herself, and if so, should anyone else (individuals or the state) be expected to help?
In theory they have the same rights as the mother once the child is born (in practice it’s different).
Yes. I know there are “patsies”, men who assumed parentage of non biological children either by knowledge or subterfuge who are forced by the state to maintain child support. That is a whole other issue, but frankly I just see that as a societal imperative for child support passed on by the state to a minority of male individuals to relieve the state of its financial responsibilty to those less fortunate children.
They at the very least of the benefit of the actual sex. 
Seriously, though, there’s a big difference between donating sperm and breaking up with a woman after fathering a child with her. Aside from that, i’d imagine a woman who goes to a sperm bank is unlikely to want to give responsibility to the unknown donor.
I presume your question is not a moral one, but a legal one. The short answer is that an anonymous sperm donor has no child support obligation because the law does not impose one. See, e.g., Cal. Family Code section 7613(b): “The donor of semen provided to a licensed physician and surgeon for use in artificial insemination of a woman other than the donor’s wife is treated in law as if he were not the natural father of a child thereby conceived.” (This is the Uniform Parentage Act; google your state’s name along with Uniform Parentage Act to determine whether your state has adopted the UPA, with or without revisions.)
The longer and more interesting answer, at least in my view, implicates significant public policies. In California, is that the intended parents of a child are the legal parents. This article, although a bit dated, discusses some cases about surrogacy, sperm donation, etc.
I presume what you mean by this is that a mother and father “contract” to support a child, but when a mother uses a sperm donor to father her child, she is implied to have waived her contractual right to child support.
If so, it’s all wrong. Public policy of the state (all states) holds that it is better for a child to be supported by both parents than to be a ward of the state. Consequently, although it is legal in a prenuptial agreement for two adults to waive spousal support, a prenuptial agreement may not waive child support (or limit it, etc.). The child has an independent right to support from its parents.
Thus, the reason a sperm donor does not have child support obligations has nothing to do with the woman’s “implied contractual waiver.” Instead, it is a decision of the state – expressed in law – about what it means to be a mother or father.
Recently in California, there were some interesting decisions on lesbian parentage. More specifically, whether a woman who had not given birth to her partner’s child, nor adopted that child, could be considered the mother. As this article states, the answer is yes. What’s interesting is the court’s analysis. The court essentially analogized to the standards for fatherhood, and found that since the woman (although not the biological or adoptive mother) met the statutory definition for fatherhood:
“**The Child has a right to be supported by both parents”
I read this over and over again on the SDMB so I believe this is the majority consensus.**
This is the fundamental, basic principle under US law, in all 50 states as far as I know. It can be altered by legislation, but that varies state by state.
**Do sperm donor fathers get a free ride ?
They even get paid for their “donation” don’t they ? Why do they appear to be exempt ?**
They are exempt (when they are exempt) because the State has passed legislation which specifically says that they are, usually in the interest of getting people to donate sperm through sperm banks.
However, it is worth noting that sperm donors have been ordered to pay child support, either because the arrangement didn’t fall into the requirements of the exemption (which is usually written as immunity – roughly, “you may be liable for child support but we are going to say that under these circumstances no one can sue you to enforce it,”) or because immunity had not been enacted by statute in that state.
Is it perhaps because the implied contractual waiver of the mother abrogates the rights of the child ?
Absolutely not, or at least not in any state I can think of. The mother cannot legally waive child support on behalf of the child; it’s not her right to waive. Now, in practice this goes on all the time. The problem only arises when one or the other party to the agreement changes his or her mind, because the waiver cannot be enforced.
Contracts to pay back illegal gambling debts cannot be legally enforced either, which doesn’t stop people making them.
Does the mother’s right to bear a child trump the child’s right to paternal support?
No. But the State’s interest in regulating medical treatment, including fertility treatment, can.
I would agree. But the opposition to the choice for reluctant fathers is primarily based on the rights of the child. That right still appears to be subject to the whims of the mother, regardless of the issue of her right “to control her own body” which has been the biggest excuse for the legitimacy of the inequity regarding the consequences of a decision for or against abortion
Once again, an indication for the support of a specific women’s right superseding the rights of a child totally independant of her body.
It must be clear by now that I am quite concerned by the superior rights of women compared to men. Biology has been an excuse, the right of women to control their body has been an excuse, and the right of women to give up their child for adoption has been accepted, all the while coercing natural fathers to accept responsibility for a women"s decision. The mere fact that while the state has the right to coerce natural fathers and even assumed fathers, even that right, based on the rights of the child is subject to the whims of an individual woman. This cannot be justice.
Actually it is a moral one. I’m no sufficiently familiar with the legalities to participate in a debate as such. I am interested in twisting minds to my way of thinking.
In most cases, as fetus is not considered a person.
Right up until the moment of delivery, the right of the mother to control her own medical care trumps whatever rights, if any, the fetus has.
Congratulations: you’ve found a special exception to a general moral principle. For that, we salute you.
AFAICT, this statement does not correctly describe abortion law in any US state. The Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade that in later stages of pregnancy, and especially after fetal viability, states may legally prohibit abortion except where necessary to protect the life or health of the pregnant woman, and AFAIK all states do so. A woman’s right to choose an abortion for personal (non-medical) reasons does not trump the right to life of a late-term fetus.
“Excuse”? Hardly. As soon as you can fix it so that pregnancy and childbirth are shared equally between the man’s body and the woman’s, I’ll be with you 100% in insisting that men and women should have equal power in making decisions about abortion. However, as long as pregnancy takes place solely within a woman’s body, it is the woman who should have sole control over choosing an abortion (when that choice is not inconsistent with protecting a viable fetus’s right to life). It may not seem fair, but that’s because reproductive biology is not fair.
By the way, I think you’re mistaken in asserting that a woman has a “right” to give up her child for adoption, irrespective of the father’s wishes. The consent of both biological parents (when the identities of both are known) is required for the adoption process. If the father wants to keep the child and the mother doesn’t, she is not legally entitled to place the child for adoption without his consent. He can demand custody, and she has to pay child support.
Maybe you’re thinking of the laws that permit a woman to place a child for adoption without the father’s consent if she doesn’t know who the father is? Yes, in practical terms it is often possible for a woman to conceal her pregnancy from the father and then lie about not knowing who he is, but it’s illegal. There is no “accepted right” for a woman to lie in order to deprive the father of his right to participate in decisions about adoption. (And again, it’s only the unfairness of reproductive biology that makes such abuses of the system possible. If you men were doing your fair share of the process of carrying and birthing children, it would be impossible for women to deceive you about your paternal status.)
Having made those points, I’ll nonetheless agree with you that it is IMO morally wrong for a woman to seek child support from a biological father who has consistently made it clear that he didn’t want to be a father. (Assuming, that is, that the woman’s own reproductive rights haven’t been interfered with. If she wanted an abortion but wasn’t able to get one, and if for some reason the unwilling new parents can’t place the child for adoption, then he should be stuck with the unwanted child just as much as she is. But I hope such cases don’t often happen, for the sake of all concerned.) If you choose to bear a child by a man who has consistently and unambiguously indicated that he doesn’t want to be a father, then morally you should not demand that he undertake any of the responsibilities of fatherhood.
However, it would be an absolute nightmare to have the law attempt to sort out which unwilling fathers really made their unwillingness clear to their partners right from the start and all along, and which of them are just saying that they did because they changed their minds at some point after conception, and so forth. The current law is probably the best realistic compromise we can hope to achieve on such a thorny issue.
You do know that the Dope’s membership is international, right?
From [BBC NEWS | Health | IVF donor sperm shortage revealed]this article:
I did notice that, yes. Since I am in Holland as is the OP, I gather. But the question is framed differently in the US than it is here in the lovely Netherlands and he appears to me to be asking his question (over and over, lol) within the framework of the US approach.
So that’s how I answered it.
I think the reason sperm donors get a free ride (as well as the approach to child support) is different here than in the US, but I am only partially literate in Dutch. So I didn’t check.