Given:
[list=A][li]R. Yates and A. Yates are extreme Fundamentalists (unchurched),[/li][li]Evidently do not believe in divorce (given A),[/li][li]Have no living children.[/list=A][/li]
What will the State of Texas do if:
[list=1][li]R. Yates and A. Yates demand conjugal visitation rights.[/li][li]A. Yates becomes pregnant, and[/li]refuses to have the pregnancy terminated even if her medication regime constitutes a danger to the developing fetus.[/list=1]
I hadn’t thought of this.
I have no answer.
I will be unable to sleep tonight.
My guess? Said child will be taken and put into foster care.
From what I’ve been hearing lately, I wouldn’t be surprised if Russell DOES leave her.
Not to break up a lovely GD with a GQ answer, but persons sentenced to life in Texas prisons don’t get conjugal visits. Or so says the article on Charles Watson, located in the September 2001 issue of Texas Monthly magazine.
I’ve done searches of both the Texas statutes and the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, and can find no provisions at all for conjugal visits. Nevertheless, the answer is simple. The baby isn’t a prisoner and can’t be kept in prison. Russell is still the daddy, and would therefore be entitled to custody unless the state starts termination proceedings and proves he’s an unfit parent. That ain’t gonna happen, but if it did, the kid would either be handed over to a relative who petitioned for custody or given to foster care.
And like Guin, I’m just waiting for Rusty to announce that Jesus said it’s okay for him to get a divorce.
You see, MM et al, I’m waiting for Yates and wife to sue the state regarding denial of conjugal visits. No doubt they will claim as another prisoner (heard it on a radio news show a couple of months ago) has done since the prisoner can claim that the state can’t deny him or her the right of procreation.
Cervaise: My apologies regarding your sleepless night.
Hey, any damn fool can sue. It’s winning that’s the tricky part, and they ain’t winning squat on that claim.
I note for the record that a bill was apparently submitted to the Legislature last term requiring TDJC to establish rules allowing conjugal visits. You can guess what happened to that bill.
Um, the prisoners got screwed?
d&r
What Cervaise said. Geesh!
But a question about what Monty said: is there a “right to procreation” in the U.S.? It’s not in the Bill of Rights, obviously, but is it a right?
[office space] I’m a free man and I haven’t had a conjugal visit in 6 months! [/office space]
There are many rights which over the years have been understood to be given that are not codified in the Constitution, and somewhere in there it talks about them.
I believe, thought I’m not certain, that procreation has been held to be a right. Unfortunately.
Yes and no, Green Bean. There is a substantive due process right for the state not to interfere in your decision to have children, but that right may be overcome by a “compelling state interest.” That’s legal-speak for “not on your life, in anything close to normal circumstances.” But prison clearly isn’t normal circumstances, and keeping security around prisoners is a pretty compelling interest, so there’s no right to conjugal visits.
There was an interesting case last year involving a prisoner and/or his prison-groupie wife who sued to be allowed in vitro fertilization. The theory is that there was no possible security risk in having the prisoner send out a sample, so no compelling state interest in prohibiting that form of conception. I don’t recall hearing what happened there (if any decisions have been made yet), although I would be terribly surprised if the Warden couldn’t still come up with a decent enough “compelling interest” to allow the courts to tell the prisoner to keep his deposits to himself. Of course, it might have been in the Ninth Circuit, in which case all bets are off. 
Compelling state interest, eh? Should be interesting to see what happens when we have a thorough understanding of our genes…one can imagine the state having a compelling interest in preventing bad people from spreading their genes around…
One can imagine 1984 too, Stoid. Doesn’t mean it’s at all likely to happen.
Am I wrong, or doesn’t he have a wife and kids?
Stoid the Supremes have already dealt with cases where a state tried to prevent bad people from spreading their genes around.
Several women in prison for murdering their children have been pregnant and given birth in jail. Elizabeth Diane Downs is probably the most famous. The state of Oregon took the baby away, and also terminated her parental rights to her other two children and the baby.
The two children were adopted by Fred Hugi, the prosecuting attorney. Ann Rule wrote Small Sacrifices (made into a TV-movie starring Farrah Fawcett), which is a highly biased book. Whether Diane was guilty is debatable.
If Adrea did get pregnant, she’d probably give birth and Rusty would get the child, unless he was also found guilty. Then the state would step in.
Guilty of what crime?
Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t her remaining children testify against her at the trial and say that she did it?
Texas is contemplating charges against Russel for neglect (ie leaving the children in the care of a demonstratably seriously mentally ill person).
Annie some of the children born to women inside are not the result of conjugal visits (sometimes guards, sometimes pregnant prior to incarceration).
Stop, In the name of love?
arf.