Ummmm...
If we have an extra $500,000 lying around somewhere this is the LAST place that it should be used.
Clearly these two women weren't thinking about the best use of resources when they recommended this.
Let me spell it out plainly: Local police departments, county sheriffs, et al, are all part and parcel of the enforcement arm of a legal system which has been shown time and again to be biased and unfair to MOTHERS today...as millions of mothers have now been separated from their children due to unfair and biased custody rulings by Judges favoring fathers.
That's what all the studies have been showing, the Census figures, AARP statistics on grandparents' custody and, in fact, it was the entire point of the "Breaking the Silence" documentary that was recently shown on PBS.
Clearly Feinstein and Hutchinson haven't been paying attention.
If we have any extra money lying around, we should be looking at starting up an "Underground Railroad" sort of operation to assist children unfairly separated from their mothers due to men manipulating the court system...NOT giving the enforcement arm of a biased against mothers legal system extra funding.
Actually these very abusive and unfit parents mentioned in the article are the very ones most likely to start a custody battle in their ongoing attempts to continue abusing the mother via the kids...so many of them already have custody of their children. They don't need to abduct them. So you are basically giving these men another tool to continue their victimization of a child's non-custodial mother.
A totally objective look at some of the most high-profile media cases over the last few years have shown that frequently the fathers involved are the court-approved custodial parent. They have already been through a court-ordered evaluation and have legal and physical custody already: as in OJ Simpson, Christopher Rhodes, Darren Mack, three good examples. Say what you will about Susan Smith and Andrea Yates, neither of these mothers had ever been evaluated as parents and been given court-ordered custody.
So why in the name of God would we wish to give the enforcement arms of courts that made these ridiculous custody decisions in unfit fathers' favor (and millions more just like them) more money supposedly to 'help children'...
Isn't that the very definition of insanity. Doing the same thing over and over again yet expecting a different result?
http://www.ktre.com/Global/story.asp?S=5698618&nav=menu118_3
11/17/06 - Washington DC
Anti-Family Kidnapping Bill
News Release
The Senate Thursday night unanimously passed a measure sponsored by U.S. Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) that would help prevent abductions of children by family members and authorizes $500,000 in matching grants for FY 2008 to help fund local law enforcement efforts to investigate and prosecute these cases.
"The kidnapping of a child by a family member is our nation's most common form of abduction. These kidnappings represent a growing epidemic that receives little or no attention from the media or law enforcement. In fact, approximately 70 percent of States lack the funding and the legal guidelines necessary to investigate and prosecute these tragic cases," Senator Feinstein said.
"The bill approved by the Senate provides matching grants to give State and local law enforcement the tools they need. It is an important first step towards helping to alleviate the trauma experienced by the thousands of children who are abducted by a family member each year."
"More than half of abducting parents have a history of violence and abuse, yet these abductions are often overlooked because they are viewed as domestic disputes," Senator Hutchison said.
"This legislation will help establish guidelines and provide new funding to law enforcement agencies to solve these cases. We must give family abduction the concern and attention needed to return missing children home safely."
Bill Summary
Specifically, the "Family Abduction Prevention Act" bill would authorize $500,000 in matching grants for FY2008 (and funds, as necessary, through FY 2009 and FY 2010), to states to assist with costs associated with family abduction prevention...
Sunday, November 26, 2006
Our Courts Continue Undermining Natural Law Supporting Motherhood
Continuing to allow never-married men veto power over a single mother's adoption decisons will lead to more abortions. As more of these adoptions are overturned and the word gets out in communities across the US, the choices for mothers will become either a) keeping their babies themselves; or, b) abortion.
Adoptions won't even be on the radar any longer.
Why do people assume that just because a mother decides she can't raise her child herself that she would consider it just dandy to hand her child over to another teenager or some irresponsible recreational sperm donor? Single mothers who give a child up for adoption have historically been documented as being mature, caring individuals, actually more stable then single mothers who keep their children...at least that's what the research used to say 20 odd years ago.
Now that men have decided they wish to be in charge of everything again: including children they historically ignored, suddenly these mothers who chose adoption are being demonized as these horrible people, just trying to keep a kid away from a 'loving' father just for spite or for reasons of child support. Even though caring mothers have been chosing adoption in their children's best interest LONG before child support was even invented.
BTW, you're not a loving father just because you decided to have casual sex with someone and accidentally reproduced a child.
But IF we are going to have this strict DNA definition of fatherhood, then we need to give a maternal grandmother the exact same rights as a biological father. As she contributes the exact same DNA mix as he does...
http://www.gwinnettdailypost.com/index.php?s=&url_channel_id=32&url_article_id=21598&url_subchannel_id=&change_well_id=2
Gwinnett Daily Post
Gwinnet County, Georgia
November 24, 2006
Gwinnett case prompts dads' rights bill 11/16/2006
By Dave Williams Staff Writer
dave.williams@gwinnettdailypost.com
ATLANTA - When Rashad Head found out late last year that his girlfriend was pregnant, the Gwinnett County teenager said he decided he wanted to take responsibility for his unborn child.
"I made him," said Head, now 17, of Lawrenceville. "I don't want him to feel that he doesn't have a place in the world."
But Head's now ex-girlfriend thought differently.
She decided to give up her son, who was born last July, and surrendered her parental rights to a Florida couple who are seeking to adopt the child.
It all happened without Head's permission or even his knowledge, which is allowable under Georgia law.
Now, Head's pastor at Christ the King Baptist Church in Dacula, who also happens to be a state legislator, wants to make sure no other Georgia father ever finds himself in a similar situation.
Rep. Ron Sailor, D-Decatur, Wednesday made "Rashad's Law" one of the first bills to be introduced into the General Assembly on the first day for prefiling legislation for the 2007 session.
"When a father is ready, willing and able to take care of a child, we believe the father's right to do so ought to be protected,"
Sailor said during a news conference at the Capitol. Sailor's bill would prohibit unmarried mothers who want to surrender their parental rights from transferring custody of their child without the biological father's consent.
The father would have 30 days after receiving notice of the mother's intent to object to a third party gaining custody. (emphasis mine: This will also impact ALL custody decisions going forward, btw, not just adoptions. So even if a single mother is in the military and deploys, it will impact her custodial plan for her children as well.)
If the father objects and the mother doesn't wish to maintain custody, the father would assume custody of the child.
Since the legislation would not be retroactive, it wouldn't affect Head's case, which is now pending in Gwinnett County Superior Court.
Leslie Gresham, the lawyer representing Head and his parents, said it's also possible that the case could be transferred to Florida.
She said a court order is now in effect that prohibits her client even from finding out the names of the Florida couple or where they are living with the child. (emphasis mine: As usual we can always count on another woman spearheading the efforts to undercut mothers' rights regarding our own children.)
Head said all he has is a photo of his son that the child's mother sent him.
He said he is working part time, and his parents have offered to help support his son. "I believe I could take care of a child as well as (the Florida couple) could," he said.
Gresham said she is optimistic that Head will prevail in court and win custody of his son. "More and more, I think, courts ... are going with fathers' rights," she said.
Sailor said the General Assembly also has looked favorably on fathers' rights in recent sessions, giving him reason to be encouraged about his bill's prospects. (emphasis mine: Good old Dixie, on the wrong side of EVERY SOCIAL MOVEMENT AND HUMAN RIGHTS ISSUE WE EVER HAD TO FACE AS A NATION...EVERY SINGLE ONE...FROM SLAVERY RIGHT THROUGH TO UNION ORGANIZING, SO COMMON PEOPLE WOULD HAVE A DECENT STANDARD OF LIVING...Well guess what: that's not much of a reference that a Georgia assembly has looked favorably upon fathers rights.)
This year, the Legislature set new guidelines for child-support awards, a follow-up to a law enacted last year that requires judges to consider the incomes of both divorcing parents when awarding child support.
Before the change, only the incomes of noncustodial parents were counted in child support awards.
Adoptions won't even be on the radar any longer.
Why do people assume that just because a mother decides she can't raise her child herself that she would consider it just dandy to hand her child over to another teenager or some irresponsible recreational sperm donor? Single mothers who give a child up for adoption have historically been documented as being mature, caring individuals, actually more stable then single mothers who keep their children...at least that's what the research used to say 20 odd years ago.
Now that men have decided they wish to be in charge of everything again: including children they historically ignored, suddenly these mothers who chose adoption are being demonized as these horrible people, just trying to keep a kid away from a 'loving' father just for spite or for reasons of child support. Even though caring mothers have been chosing adoption in their children's best interest LONG before child support was even invented.
BTW, you're not a loving father just because you decided to have casual sex with someone and accidentally reproduced a child.
But IF we are going to have this strict DNA definition of fatherhood, then we need to give a maternal grandmother the exact same rights as a biological father. As she contributes the exact same DNA mix as he does...
http://www.gwinnettdailypost.com/index.php?s=&url_channel_id=32&url_article_id=21598&url_subchannel_id=&change_well_id=2
Gwinnett Daily Post
Gwinnet County, Georgia
November 24, 2006
Gwinnett case prompts dads' rights bill 11/16/2006
By Dave Williams Staff Writer
dave.williams@gwinnettdailypost.com
ATLANTA - When Rashad Head found out late last year that his girlfriend was pregnant, the Gwinnett County teenager said he decided he wanted to take responsibility for his unborn child.
"I made him," said Head, now 17, of Lawrenceville. "I don't want him to feel that he doesn't have a place in the world."
But Head's now ex-girlfriend thought differently.
She decided to give up her son, who was born last July, and surrendered her parental rights to a Florida couple who are seeking to adopt the child.
It all happened without Head's permission or even his knowledge, which is allowable under Georgia law.
Now, Head's pastor at Christ the King Baptist Church in Dacula, who also happens to be a state legislator, wants to make sure no other Georgia father ever finds himself in a similar situation.
Rep. Ron Sailor, D-Decatur, Wednesday made "Rashad's Law" one of the first bills to be introduced into the General Assembly on the first day for prefiling legislation for the 2007 session.
"When a father is ready, willing and able to take care of a child, we believe the father's right to do so ought to be protected,"
Sailor said during a news conference at the Capitol. Sailor's bill would prohibit unmarried mothers who want to surrender their parental rights from transferring custody of their child without the biological father's consent.
The father would have 30 days after receiving notice of the mother's intent to object to a third party gaining custody. (emphasis mine: This will also impact ALL custody decisions going forward, btw, not just adoptions. So even if a single mother is in the military and deploys, it will impact her custodial plan for her children as well.)
If the father objects and the mother doesn't wish to maintain custody, the father would assume custody of the child.
Since the legislation would not be retroactive, it wouldn't affect Head's case, which is now pending in Gwinnett County Superior Court.
Leslie Gresham, the lawyer representing Head and his parents, said it's also possible that the case could be transferred to Florida.
She said a court order is now in effect that prohibits her client even from finding out the names of the Florida couple or where they are living with the child. (emphasis mine: As usual we can always count on another woman spearheading the efforts to undercut mothers' rights regarding our own children.)
Head said all he has is a photo of his son that the child's mother sent him.
He said he is working part time, and his parents have offered to help support his son. "I believe I could take care of a child as well as (the Florida couple) could," he said.
Gresham said she is optimistic that Head will prevail in court and win custody of his son. "More and more, I think, courts ... are going with fathers' rights," she said.
Sailor said the General Assembly also has looked favorably on fathers' rights in recent sessions, giving him reason to be encouraged about his bill's prospects. (emphasis mine: Good old Dixie, on the wrong side of EVERY SOCIAL MOVEMENT AND HUMAN RIGHTS ISSUE WE EVER HAD TO FACE AS A NATION...EVERY SINGLE ONE...FROM SLAVERY RIGHT THROUGH TO UNION ORGANIZING, SO COMMON PEOPLE WOULD HAVE A DECENT STANDARD OF LIVING...Well guess what: that's not much of a reference that a Georgia assembly has looked favorably upon fathers rights.)
This year, the Legislature set new guidelines for child-support awards, a follow-up to a law enacted last year that requires judges to consider the incomes of both divorcing parents when awarding child support.
Before the change, only the incomes of noncustodial parents were counted in child support awards.
Monday, November 20, 2006
Finally-- Justice has It's Day in Court
It's about time that this common sense step has been taken.
I'm 1000% behind this woman and am hoping she wins her case.
Men have been cheating on their wives for centuries and getting away with it. They have even profitted from no-fault divorce today, as it makes no distinction on custody and/or marital property issues for 'bad boy' behavior. A husband can be cheating on his wife for years and when she finally gets fed up with it and files for divorce, the cheater can still get custody of any children, alimony and a 50/50 split of marital property with no penalties whatsoever for his bad behavior...
Bad behavior get rewarded everyday of the week in this context.
A good example of this is Hallie Berry, whose husband cheated on her 29 times before she finally filed for divorce. YET he was still eligible for alimony, even though it was a short-term marriage, both had careers, no kids...
All I can say is Thank God Hallie you didn't have any kids with him. OTHERWISE you would have been facing the dreaded "Fed-ex" syndrome...
It's like PAS, the same but different...
Generally exhibited by greedy men trying to get custody so they can juice the mother for money, the state for tax credits and benefits; but most importantly they don't have to pay child support themselves. It's a dirty living but some men have to do it, as they are so worthless they aren't good for much else...
Anyway, I receive emails constantly from mothers who have told me they lost custody of their children to some empowered by the courts monster, who cheated on them constantly...AND when they finally dared to try and do something about it, they lose their children...
So we see where no-fault divorce has morphed into another tool used as a club by men against women.
Even though originally no-fault divorce was supposed to be about 'helping' women get out of abusive marriages easier...
As usual every law made to help women has been seized upon and misused by men to help themselves...
Well what else is new????
Anyway, allowing women to take these cases, of disease spreading through careless sexual behavior by cheaters, to civil court ensures that justice MIGHT finally be served.
Many will say that women can be taken to court as well under these circumstances and yes, that's true. But somehow I have a feeling that the vast majority of these cases will see men as defendants...as history has a way of repeating itself over and over and over again. Thus, I believe men will continue being the primary cheaters as they have been throughout the ages and I don't care how many 'empowered women' newspaper columns or magazine articles claim are out there cheating...
So we'll see, but for the time being I say THIS is a good thing for women. A very good thing.
Actually you should be able to take men to civil court for POTENTIALLY spreading an STD to you...POTENTIALLY...through irresponsible sex with someone they hardly know...
Again, a good thing to do to cheaters.
http://www.sanluisobispo.com/mld/sanluisobispo/16057207.htm
STD suit could set precedent in state
By Leslie Parrilla
lparrilla@thetribunenews.com
A former San Luis Obispo County resident is suing her ex-husband, claiming he negligently infected her with a sexually transmitted disease in what experts say could be a precedent-setting case in California.
Legal experts say the case between Janet Smith and Patrick Neiland Smith is significant because many people do not realize passing on an STD could pose a legal liability.
The San Luis Obispo case could set a precedent because it may be the first in the state to be resolved after a California Supreme Court ruling this year stating that people are liable not only when they know they have an STD, but also when they should have known.
"People are not as careful perhaps as they need to be," said Loyola Law School professor John T. Nockleby. "People probably aren’t thinking about potential legal liability when they’re having casual sex."
The Smiths were married in 1979 and lived in San Luis Obispo County. They are completing divorce proceedings.
Janet Smith, 52, now a resident of Nevada, is asking for an unlimited amount of compensation in the lawsuit, claiming her ex-husband was unfaithful during their marriage, contracted the human papillomavirus, or HPV, and negligently infected her.
She underwent a hysterectomy and was left fearful of having contracted other STDs, the suit states.
Civil suits represent only one side of the story.
San Luis Obispo attorney Mark B. Connely, who is representing Patrick Neiland Smith, now a resident of Santa Barbara County, argued during a jury trial this week that his client did not negligently infect his ex-wife with HPV and that Smith did not know he had the virus.
The jury will decide whether Smith is negligent and whether he should have known he had an STD.
Nockleby said the Supreme Court decision in John B. v. the Superior Court of Los Angeles County "says you can sue somebody else for giving you an STD, not only if they know they have the STD, but if they had symptoms" that would have caused a reasonable person to go and find out whether they were infected.
That is something Nockleby believes the general public does not know.
"Not that I want to make sexual relationships about law, but I do think people who engage in casual sexual encounters ... need to know about this kind of thing," he said.
The Smith case is expected to continue with closing arguments today.
Leslie Parrilla can be reached at 783-7645.
I'm 1000% behind this woman and am hoping she wins her case.
Men have been cheating on their wives for centuries and getting away with it. They have even profitted from no-fault divorce today, as it makes no distinction on custody and/or marital property issues for 'bad boy' behavior. A husband can be cheating on his wife for years and when she finally gets fed up with it and files for divorce, the cheater can still get custody of any children, alimony and a 50/50 split of marital property with no penalties whatsoever for his bad behavior...
Bad behavior get rewarded everyday of the week in this context.
A good example of this is Hallie Berry, whose husband cheated on her 29 times before she finally filed for divorce. YET he was still eligible for alimony, even though it was a short-term marriage, both had careers, no kids...
All I can say is Thank God Hallie you didn't have any kids with him. OTHERWISE you would have been facing the dreaded "Fed-ex" syndrome...
It's like PAS, the same but different...
Generally exhibited by greedy men trying to get custody so they can juice the mother for money, the state for tax credits and benefits; but most importantly they don't have to pay child support themselves. It's a dirty living but some men have to do it, as they are so worthless they aren't good for much else...
Anyway, I receive emails constantly from mothers who have told me they lost custody of their children to some empowered by the courts monster, who cheated on them constantly...AND when they finally dared to try and do something about it, they lose their children...
So we see where no-fault divorce has morphed into another tool used as a club by men against women.
Even though originally no-fault divorce was supposed to be about 'helping' women get out of abusive marriages easier...
As usual every law made to help women has been seized upon and misused by men to help themselves...
Well what else is new????
Anyway, allowing women to take these cases, of disease spreading through careless sexual behavior by cheaters, to civil court ensures that justice MIGHT finally be served.
Many will say that women can be taken to court as well under these circumstances and yes, that's true. But somehow I have a feeling that the vast majority of these cases will see men as defendants...as history has a way of repeating itself over and over and over again. Thus, I believe men will continue being the primary cheaters as they have been throughout the ages and I don't care how many 'empowered women' newspaper columns or magazine articles claim are out there cheating...
So we'll see, but for the time being I say THIS is a good thing for women. A very good thing.
Actually you should be able to take men to civil court for POTENTIALLY spreading an STD to you...POTENTIALLY...through irresponsible sex with someone they hardly know...
Again, a good thing to do to cheaters.
http://www.sanluisobispo.com/mld/sanluisobispo/16057207.htm
STD suit could set precedent in state
By Leslie Parrilla
lparrilla@thetribunenews.com
A former San Luis Obispo County resident is suing her ex-husband, claiming he negligently infected her with a sexually transmitted disease in what experts say could be a precedent-setting case in California.
Legal experts say the case between Janet Smith and Patrick Neiland Smith is significant because many people do not realize passing on an STD could pose a legal liability.
The San Luis Obispo case could set a precedent because it may be the first in the state to be resolved after a California Supreme Court ruling this year stating that people are liable not only when they know they have an STD, but also when they should have known.
"People are not as careful perhaps as they need to be," said Loyola Law School professor John T. Nockleby. "People probably aren’t thinking about potential legal liability when they’re having casual sex."
The Smiths were married in 1979 and lived in San Luis Obispo County. They are completing divorce proceedings.
Janet Smith, 52, now a resident of Nevada, is asking for an unlimited amount of compensation in the lawsuit, claiming her ex-husband was unfaithful during their marriage, contracted the human papillomavirus, or HPV, and negligently infected her.
She underwent a hysterectomy and was left fearful of having contracted other STDs, the suit states.
Civil suits represent only one side of the story.
San Luis Obispo attorney Mark B. Connely, who is representing Patrick Neiland Smith, now a resident of Santa Barbara County, argued during a jury trial this week that his client did not negligently infect his ex-wife with HPV and that Smith did not know he had the virus.
The jury will decide whether Smith is negligent and whether he should have known he had an STD.
Nockleby said the Supreme Court decision in John B. v. the Superior Court of Los Angeles County "says you can sue somebody else for giving you an STD, not only if they know they have the STD, but if they had symptoms" that would have caused a reasonable person to go and find out whether they were infected.
That is something Nockleby believes the general public does not know.
"Not that I want to make sexual relationships about law, but I do think people who engage in casual sexual encounters ... need to know about this kind of thing," he said.
The Smith case is expected to continue with closing arguments today.
Leslie Parrilla can be reached at 783-7645.
Saturday, November 18, 2006
Single Mothers by Choice
I don't understand why so many people are upset about this class of women deciding to be single mothers. I mean we've had women in the lower classes as well as the rich doing this crap for decades and no one was the least concerned. Now suddenly responsible career women, who've worked productively all their lives and contributed to society, decide they wish to be mothers and it's the end of civilization as we know it.
It's not that big a deal.
This woman has worked, she has a career. That child will do just fine. He'll be no more of a burden then any of the millions of ghetto mothers' or some rich bimbo starlets' irresponsibly produced children will be.
Actually having a baby in this manner takes planning as well as stable finances. Anyone can see this as it's already cost the woman $10,000 in IVF treatment to have her child.
If people want to pick on some irresponsible reproductive behavior why not focus on some of the two categories I mentioned above. Those that produce vast amounts of children through irresponsible reproductive behavior which eventually become a burden on the taxpayers in most systems.
This child and others produced like him will not become that...their mothers will make enough income to support them quite comfortably...
This woman is rather plain, although she appears nice enough from the story. Yet, she might have never met a man who was willing to settle down and have a stable long-term relationship with her, however. As let's face it, in our media-obsessesed world most men want the women they marry to be much nicer looking then this poor girl.
Not to mention that at her age, she'll probably never meet anyone if she hasn't met them already.
YET she'll probably be a fine mother, dote on her only child and ultimately raise a fine, healthy, productive son--all without the use of a male overseer to monitor her behavior.
Imagine that.
Many are condemning her as selfish. Well guess what ALL parents are selfish. You have to be to bring any children into the world we've created for them today. So if you are going to tag women like this as selfish, then prepare for extinction...as that's the next step when all these wonderful unselfish people lead us down that road.
Last point: men better get used to this happening more and more today, as women are getting highly fed up with their behavior...even all this custody crap they started recently to avoid child support, ie., as in Fed-ex's and Brittany's Spears' custody fight.
Men are rapidly sliding into irrelvancy with all the trouble they are causing.
As I've said many times, a test tube is cleaner, quieter, and a heck of a lot less trouble then the average man is today...and these women are proving my point.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?
in_article_id=416733&in_page_id=1879&in_a_source=
Daily Mail
24 hours a day
Motherhood is my right
By RUTH YAHEL Last updated at 08:22am on 16th November 2006
A growing generation of single career women are reaching their late 30s unmarried but still desperate to become mothers. Many are embarking on parenthood alone - and their quest will soon be made easier.
Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt wants the law changed to allow single women and lesbians to have fertility treatment without the need to prove there will be a father figure in the child's life.
Here, Ruth Yahel, a 41-year-old TV production executive, explains why she decided from the outset to be a lone parent, and why - in her opinion - they should not be vilified:
When I was in my 30s, I remember feeling pangs of longing whenever I held friends' babies. My biological clock was ticking but it was never the right time, never the right relationship.
Even when I reached my 39th birthday, I didn't feel I had yet become one of those women destined not to have children. Then, at the start of 2004, my married sister - the mother of a baby boy - asked me whether I still wanted children. When I said 'yes', she asked me how I thought 'that might happen'. My initial reaction was one of annoyance, but her words sparked something inside me. I was fast approaching 40 and a potential loss in my fertility, yet I had a desperate desire to have a child.
In every other area of my life I had made conscious decisions about what I wanted.
But when it came to what, potentially, was the most important thing of all, I was leaving everything to chance. I had always been rather intimidated by career women who would categorically state that motherhood was not for them. I couldn't imagine letting go of the idea unless I had to.
Sometimes I envied them and thought how liberating it must be not to have to worry any more. But, mostly, I feared falling into the group of women who don't get around to having children and end up bitterly regretting it.
Like most women my age, I had tied in all hopes for children with the desire for a lasting relationship. It had never occurred to me to see the two things as something separate. That evening with my sister, it suddenly dawned on me that these two things might never coincide. I had to act - and quickly.
I was lucky enough to have a friend, Nico, prepared to father my child. We met in Italy in 1991 when I was teaching English as a foreign language in a private school. Nico was one of my students. He was married at the time and I was in a relationship, and we became close friends - although sex was never on the agenda.
Long before I'd started worrying about my fertility, he once suggested having a child together and I'd laughed it off. Now I thought about it differently.
I was fortunate in that I already had a genetic father, Nico, who wanted to be an active figure in the child's life, so I decided to go for it.
Before embarking on the process, I went to a clinic in London to make sure I had no fertility problems. With hindsight, I wish I'd done this when I turned 30.
A lot of women spend their 20s and 30s trying to not get pregnant and it's only when they want to that the problems begin to surface. In my case, the damage had already been done.
Endometriosis had affected my ovaries and Fallopian tubes. The only option now was IVF. Two cycles of expensive IVF, costing £5,000 each, followed. I had counselling before and during fertility treatment to help me through the outcome.
I took stock of how I'd come to this point. It was my time to reflect on my fears and concerns, my time to feel sorry for myself (and at times I did) that I wasn't going to have a child within a conventional relationship.
It was like a mourning process. But I would leave each session feeling strong enough to work towards my chosen goal.
On February 7, 2005, I celebrated my 40th birthday at a party thrown for me by friends and family. Many people in the room didn't know I was having IVF treatment, and I didn't touch the champagne they handed me. I knew that in a week's time, I would be taking a pregnancy test and finding out if I was going to have a baby.
The wait was nerve-racking. When I took the test and it was positive, I was stunned. I couldn't believe that such a clinical process had resulted in a pregnancy.
Nico, my friends and family were all delighted. If they were sad that I wasn't going to have a child as part of a couple, they didn't show it. They knew that I already bitterly regretted that myself.
Luca Gabriel, was born naturally in October that year after a healthy pregnancy. My mother and sister were there and Nico held his son minutes after he was born. We chose his name together. I felt totally vindicated. I had my baby and nothing else mattered.
Now I feel utter relief and joy that I found the courage to act. But at the same time, I feel anger and frustration for other women in the same position as I was.
I believe that modern motherhood is in crisis. Women have been told they can and should compete equally in the workplace. We invest a huge amount of our time, money and energy in the pursuit of this so we feel we're achieving something.
But somewhere along the line we've all too often had to leave behind motherhood. As much as I hate to admit it, these two roles do not fit naturally together.
In your working life you have some control - you have a structure and, hopefully, you feel a sense of accomplishment and are rewarded both financially and emotionally.
As a mother, your day has little structure; you're busy all the time, yet when asked: 'What did you do today?' you can hardly recall what filled that time and why you didn't get out of the house.
When we think about returning to work, we worry we won't be flexible enough to respond to the work environment and that we'll have to compromise on material and personal pursuits. We worry about lack of money and free time.
Most of all, we feel like bad mothers for handing our babies over to childminders.
And employers don't always do all they can to dispel those fears.
Of course, being a mother, especially a single mother, is hard work. But once you've made the decision to go for it, you will find the time and energy you need and make it your priority. You learn to live a different life with your child. I've had considerable support from my workplace and have been able to work flexibly around my commitments to my son.
Things that seemed so important to me before - material things, my appearance, going out to smart restaurants - seem less so now.
The main accusation levelled at woman who, like myself, have chosen to be single mothers, is that we are selfish. People say it wasn't meant to be or accuse you of being rash and irresponsible.
But there is nothing irresponsible about the thought processes and procedures a single woman has to go through to have her own child or adopt.
As the son of a women who became a single mother by choice, at least Luca won't have to go through the pain of his parents splitting up. He knows his parents' relationship has clearly defined boundaries.
He will have access to his birth father and extended family, and will know as much of his own cultural heritage as he chooses, because I was lucky enough to have a suitable known donor. Even though Nico is now teaching in Rome, he sees Luca every few months.
I was no more selfish than any other woman conceiving. We all want to feel our baby in our arms, hold them close, smell their sweet skin, relish their triumphs and watch as others coo over our child.
In the end, we are all selfishly driven as parents. We are driven by our own need to procreate, and we feel it's something that as human beings we should do - even if we have to act outside the bounds of convention: the desire to have a child doesn't go away because a woman is single.
Motherhood is something that every woman has a right to try for. When there is no father figure, a woman will do much soul-searching on how to provide male role models for her children.
I was worried, of course, that Luca wouldn't see his father every day. I didn't know for sure what effect this would have on him, but I vowed that I would do everything in my power to compensate for that and try to limit the damage.
I agree that a good marriage or relationship may well be the best family background you can offer a child, and it's something I still want for myself. But it's most definitely not the only responsible way to do it.
And I would say that single parents planning for children are most acutely aware of the difficulties involved. They understand their own obligations and probably deal with their children's needs as sensitively as possible because they've had to struggle so hard to have them.
Hopefully, our children will be less likely to complain that they were overlooked or taken for granted.
I still hope to find a great relationship in the future. Maybe Nico will have children of his own; maybe Luca will have a sibling via conception or adoption.
Undoubtedly, Luca will have friends who come from single-parent homes via more conventional circumstances, if divorce rates are anything to go by.
Last year, I took part in the Channel 4 series The Baby Race. It brought together a group of single, incredibly brave women, all united by our quest to be mothers.
We formed a support network for each other that is still going with many more members. Of all ages and backgrounds with different routes to motherhood in mind, we always had a common goal.
I remember meeting them all for the first time at a photoshoot and being completely overwhelmed by the feeling of solidarity and unconditional support from a group of strangers.
Some of us have managed to have and adopt children, some are no longer single. The majority, however, are still trying for and awaiting their babies. Their children will have an upbringing full of love, hope and possibility.
Single women can change things and set a good example to those around by exercising their right to have children and bringing them up compassionately and with dignity in the face of any scepticism. The face of modern motherhood is changing and we must accept that.
Luca has just turned one-year-old. I planned a family party at home with cake and presents. Nico came over for the weekend.
The last year has been a whirlwind. I don't realise how much he has changed my life until occasionally I'm without him, and I walk into his bedroom and look at the empty cot. When he's not around, something is always missing.
I wouldn't go back to my old single life for anything. My overriding message to women in my position would be to make a positive choice about whether to try for motherhood. Don't leave things to chance and don't feel powerless simply because you haven't met the right man.
It is your decision, and yours alone.
It's not that big a deal.
This woman has worked, she has a career. That child will do just fine. He'll be no more of a burden then any of the millions of ghetto mothers' or some rich bimbo starlets' irresponsibly produced children will be.
Actually having a baby in this manner takes planning as well as stable finances. Anyone can see this as it's already cost the woman $10,000 in IVF treatment to have her child.
If people want to pick on some irresponsible reproductive behavior why not focus on some of the two categories I mentioned above. Those that produce vast amounts of children through irresponsible reproductive behavior which eventually become a burden on the taxpayers in most systems.
This child and others produced like him will not become that...their mothers will make enough income to support them quite comfortably...
This woman is rather plain, although she appears nice enough from the story. Yet, she might have never met a man who was willing to settle down and have a stable long-term relationship with her, however. As let's face it, in our media-obsessesed world most men want the women they marry to be much nicer looking then this poor girl.
Not to mention that at her age, she'll probably never meet anyone if she hasn't met them already.
YET she'll probably be a fine mother, dote on her only child and ultimately raise a fine, healthy, productive son--all without the use of a male overseer to monitor her behavior.
Imagine that.
Many are condemning her as selfish. Well guess what ALL parents are selfish. You have to be to bring any children into the world we've created for them today. So if you are going to tag women like this as selfish, then prepare for extinction...as that's the next step when all these wonderful unselfish people lead us down that road.
Last point: men better get used to this happening more and more today, as women are getting highly fed up with their behavior...even all this custody crap they started recently to avoid child support, ie., as in Fed-ex's and Brittany's Spears' custody fight.
Men are rapidly sliding into irrelvancy with all the trouble they are causing.
As I've said many times, a test tube is cleaner, quieter, and a heck of a lot less trouble then the average man is today...and these women are proving my point.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?
in_article_id=416733&in_page_id=1879&in_a_source=
Daily Mail
24 hours a day
Motherhood is my right
By RUTH YAHEL Last updated at 08:22am on 16th November 2006
A growing generation of single career women are reaching their late 30s unmarried but still desperate to become mothers. Many are embarking on parenthood alone - and their quest will soon be made easier.
Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt wants the law changed to allow single women and lesbians to have fertility treatment without the need to prove there will be a father figure in the child's life.
Here, Ruth Yahel, a 41-year-old TV production executive, explains why she decided from the outset to be a lone parent, and why - in her opinion - they should not be vilified:
When I was in my 30s, I remember feeling pangs of longing whenever I held friends' babies. My biological clock was ticking but it was never the right time, never the right relationship.
Even when I reached my 39th birthday, I didn't feel I had yet become one of those women destined not to have children. Then, at the start of 2004, my married sister - the mother of a baby boy - asked me whether I still wanted children. When I said 'yes', she asked me how I thought 'that might happen'. My initial reaction was one of annoyance, but her words sparked something inside me. I was fast approaching 40 and a potential loss in my fertility, yet I had a desperate desire to have a child.
In every other area of my life I had made conscious decisions about what I wanted.
But when it came to what, potentially, was the most important thing of all, I was leaving everything to chance. I had always been rather intimidated by career women who would categorically state that motherhood was not for them. I couldn't imagine letting go of the idea unless I had to.
Sometimes I envied them and thought how liberating it must be not to have to worry any more. But, mostly, I feared falling into the group of women who don't get around to having children and end up bitterly regretting it.
Like most women my age, I had tied in all hopes for children with the desire for a lasting relationship. It had never occurred to me to see the two things as something separate. That evening with my sister, it suddenly dawned on me that these two things might never coincide. I had to act - and quickly.
I was lucky enough to have a friend, Nico, prepared to father my child. We met in Italy in 1991 when I was teaching English as a foreign language in a private school. Nico was one of my students. He was married at the time and I was in a relationship, and we became close friends - although sex was never on the agenda.
Long before I'd started worrying about my fertility, he once suggested having a child together and I'd laughed it off. Now I thought about it differently.
I was fortunate in that I already had a genetic father, Nico, who wanted to be an active figure in the child's life, so I decided to go for it.
Before embarking on the process, I went to a clinic in London to make sure I had no fertility problems. With hindsight, I wish I'd done this when I turned 30.
A lot of women spend their 20s and 30s trying to not get pregnant and it's only when they want to that the problems begin to surface. In my case, the damage had already been done.
Endometriosis had affected my ovaries and Fallopian tubes. The only option now was IVF. Two cycles of expensive IVF, costing £5,000 each, followed. I had counselling before and during fertility treatment to help me through the outcome.
I took stock of how I'd come to this point. It was my time to reflect on my fears and concerns, my time to feel sorry for myself (and at times I did) that I wasn't going to have a child within a conventional relationship.
It was like a mourning process. But I would leave each session feeling strong enough to work towards my chosen goal.
On February 7, 2005, I celebrated my 40th birthday at a party thrown for me by friends and family. Many people in the room didn't know I was having IVF treatment, and I didn't touch the champagne they handed me. I knew that in a week's time, I would be taking a pregnancy test and finding out if I was going to have a baby.
The wait was nerve-racking. When I took the test and it was positive, I was stunned. I couldn't believe that such a clinical process had resulted in a pregnancy.
Nico, my friends and family were all delighted. If they were sad that I wasn't going to have a child as part of a couple, they didn't show it. They knew that I already bitterly regretted that myself.
Luca Gabriel, was born naturally in October that year after a healthy pregnancy. My mother and sister were there and Nico held his son minutes after he was born. We chose his name together. I felt totally vindicated. I had my baby and nothing else mattered.
Now I feel utter relief and joy that I found the courage to act. But at the same time, I feel anger and frustration for other women in the same position as I was.
I believe that modern motherhood is in crisis. Women have been told they can and should compete equally in the workplace. We invest a huge amount of our time, money and energy in the pursuit of this so we feel we're achieving something.
But somewhere along the line we've all too often had to leave behind motherhood. As much as I hate to admit it, these two roles do not fit naturally together.
In your working life you have some control - you have a structure and, hopefully, you feel a sense of accomplishment and are rewarded both financially and emotionally.
As a mother, your day has little structure; you're busy all the time, yet when asked: 'What did you do today?' you can hardly recall what filled that time and why you didn't get out of the house.
When we think about returning to work, we worry we won't be flexible enough to respond to the work environment and that we'll have to compromise on material and personal pursuits. We worry about lack of money and free time.
Most of all, we feel like bad mothers for handing our babies over to childminders.
And employers don't always do all they can to dispel those fears.
Of course, being a mother, especially a single mother, is hard work. But once you've made the decision to go for it, you will find the time and energy you need and make it your priority. You learn to live a different life with your child. I've had considerable support from my workplace and have been able to work flexibly around my commitments to my son.
Things that seemed so important to me before - material things, my appearance, going out to smart restaurants - seem less so now.
The main accusation levelled at woman who, like myself, have chosen to be single mothers, is that we are selfish. People say it wasn't meant to be or accuse you of being rash and irresponsible.
But there is nothing irresponsible about the thought processes and procedures a single woman has to go through to have her own child or adopt.
As the son of a women who became a single mother by choice, at least Luca won't have to go through the pain of his parents splitting up. He knows his parents' relationship has clearly defined boundaries.
He will have access to his birth father and extended family, and will know as much of his own cultural heritage as he chooses, because I was lucky enough to have a suitable known donor. Even though Nico is now teaching in Rome, he sees Luca every few months.
I was no more selfish than any other woman conceiving. We all want to feel our baby in our arms, hold them close, smell their sweet skin, relish their triumphs and watch as others coo over our child.
In the end, we are all selfishly driven as parents. We are driven by our own need to procreate, and we feel it's something that as human beings we should do - even if we have to act outside the bounds of convention: the desire to have a child doesn't go away because a woman is single.
Motherhood is something that every woman has a right to try for. When there is no father figure, a woman will do much soul-searching on how to provide male role models for her children.
I was worried, of course, that Luca wouldn't see his father every day. I didn't know for sure what effect this would have on him, but I vowed that I would do everything in my power to compensate for that and try to limit the damage.
I agree that a good marriage or relationship may well be the best family background you can offer a child, and it's something I still want for myself. But it's most definitely not the only responsible way to do it.
And I would say that single parents planning for children are most acutely aware of the difficulties involved. They understand their own obligations and probably deal with their children's needs as sensitively as possible because they've had to struggle so hard to have them.
Hopefully, our children will be less likely to complain that they were overlooked or taken for granted.
I still hope to find a great relationship in the future. Maybe Nico will have children of his own; maybe Luca will have a sibling via conception or adoption.
Undoubtedly, Luca will have friends who come from single-parent homes via more conventional circumstances, if divorce rates are anything to go by.
Last year, I took part in the Channel 4 series The Baby Race. It brought together a group of single, incredibly brave women, all united by our quest to be mothers.
We formed a support network for each other that is still going with many more members. Of all ages and backgrounds with different routes to motherhood in mind, we always had a common goal.
I remember meeting them all for the first time at a photoshoot and being completely overwhelmed by the feeling of solidarity and unconditional support from a group of strangers.
Some of us have managed to have and adopt children, some are no longer single. The majority, however, are still trying for and awaiting their babies. Their children will have an upbringing full of love, hope and possibility.
Single women can change things and set a good example to those around by exercising their right to have children and bringing them up compassionately and with dignity in the face of any scepticism. The face of modern motherhood is changing and we must accept that.
Luca has just turned one-year-old. I planned a family party at home with cake and presents. Nico came over for the weekend.
The last year has been a whirlwind. I don't realise how much he has changed my life until occasionally I'm without him, and I walk into his bedroom and look at the empty cot. When he's not around, something is always missing.
I wouldn't go back to my old single life for anything. My overriding message to women in my position would be to make a positive choice about whether to try for motherhood. Don't leave things to chance and don't feel powerless simply because you haven't met the right man.
It is your decision, and yours alone.
Monday, November 13, 2006
Another "Unfit" Judge OR Why I Like the "Cookie Cutter" Approach that Leaves Judges No Discretion
This is really a joke comparing this Judge to King Solomon.
A joke, albeit a sick one..
Yet it speaks to what I have already said dozens of time: mothers and children cannot trust the family court system in this country to rule on our custody cases…
They simply have proven themselves unfit for the role.
Even this farce of a hearing to supposedly decide how to send this little girl down to Uruguay to visit her mother after her mother is deported. I predict this little girl won’t see her mother or Uruguay for the next 18 years and living with a drug dealer, who knows what will have happened to her between now and that time.
http://www1.tcpalm.com/tcp/local_news/article/0,2545,TCP_16736_5082466,00.html
Judge must play King Solomon with Vero Beach child
By DAN GARCIA
October 21, 2006
VERO BEACH — A judge ruled a 22-month-old girl at the center of a bitter custody dispute should live with her father, who is a drug offender, rather than with her mother, an illegal alien.
Circuit Judge Paul B. Kanarek ruled that Dane Cassidy, 26, of Vero Beach should provide the primary residence for the child, despite pleas from the mother's attorney the girl will grow up in a "toxic atmosphere" because of the father's alleged drug use.
After a day-long hearing Friday, Kanarek ruled against the mother, Noelia Noemi Sosa Espindola, 23, who sought to be named as the child's primary provider despite the fact she faces imminent deportation to her native Uruguay.
However, Kanarek asked attorneys for both parties to submit proposals outlining methods in which the child would be flown regularly to Uruguay for visitation with Sosa. (emphasis mine: this is a joke really, a total waste of the mother and attorney's time.)
Sosa's attorney, Margaret Anderson, described the case as "a tragedy," saying Cassidy repeatedly threatened Sosa and her family with deportation if she did not remain with him, hurled ethnic slurs at the family and turned over documents to the Indian River County Sheriff's Office that led to Sosa's arrest for using someone else's Social Security number to find work.
After her arrest, Sosa was placed on a federal detainer for deportation to Uruguay because she overstayed her visa when she traveled to the United States in 2003.
Cassidy's attorney, Kate Hill, told the court "there is no evidence he turned her in" to authorities by telling them Sosa was in the country illegally.
"He was contacted by a detective and that's the first he ever heard of it," Hill said.
Cassidy and Sosa had Danelia Nicole Cassidy out of wedlock Nov. 21, 2004, but they broke up in August 2005 in a bitter spat, during which Sosa flushed her engagement ring down the toilet, according to both of them.
Cassidy, who works for a screening construction company, testified he broke up with Sosa because she was "going to clubs" instead of staying home with their child.
Sosa testified she initiated the breakup because of Cassidy's drug use and because he struck her three times, insulted her family's ethnicity, and broke his curfew by staying out past 10 p.m.
According to court records, Cassidy recently completed drug-offender probation after being charged in St. Lucie County with possession with intent to sell or deliver marijuana on April 20, 2004. (emphasis mine: Just your friendly neighborhood drug dealer, no big deal obviously in a custody case.)
Sosa, who was brought to court under the custody of two federal agents, testified tearfully Cassidy "wasn't mature enough to be a father.
"We got into fights, and the subject was always drugs," Sosa said. "Everytime we got in a fight, he told me he was going to deport me."
Cassidy testified he gave a sheriff's investigator a Social Security card used by authorities to charge Sosa with criminal use of personal identification. Cassidy said he found the card in a closet in November, but didn't gave it to a detective until April — on the eve of his child-support hearing. (emphasis mine: but of course we all know it's not about the money, it never is. It's about the love of a father for his daughter. What a joke.)
Sosa reported to the Vero Beach Police Department her Social Security card and passport were stolen from the vehicle of a friend, Cathleen Vicuna, on Oct. 6, 2005, when she and Vicuna went jogging near Riverside Park.
In considering proposals in which Danelia would be allowed to travel to Uruguay, Kanarek cited Uruguay as a signatory to the international Hague Convention, in which countries are bound to honor family court orders.
Kanarek asked Anderson and Hill to submit proposals within 10 days "that place the child with the father and spell out specifically how the child will have contact with the mother." (emphasis mine: This is a joke really, a complete waste of time, totally unenforceable from the minute the custody order is signed and the mother is on the plane headed back to Uruguay.)
A joke, albeit a sick one..
Yet it speaks to what I have already said dozens of time: mothers and children cannot trust the family court system in this country to rule on our custody cases…
They simply have proven themselves unfit for the role.
Even this farce of a hearing to supposedly decide how to send this little girl down to Uruguay to visit her mother after her mother is deported. I predict this little girl won’t see her mother or Uruguay for the next 18 years and living with a drug dealer, who knows what will have happened to her between now and that time.
http://www1.tcpalm.com/tcp/local_news/article/0,2545,TCP_16736_5082466,00.html
Judge must play King Solomon with Vero Beach child
By DAN GARCIA
October 21, 2006
VERO BEACH — A judge ruled a 22-month-old girl at the center of a bitter custody dispute should live with her father, who is a drug offender, rather than with her mother, an illegal alien.
Circuit Judge Paul B. Kanarek ruled that Dane Cassidy, 26, of Vero Beach should provide the primary residence for the child, despite pleas from the mother's attorney the girl will grow up in a "toxic atmosphere" because of the father's alleged drug use.
After a day-long hearing Friday, Kanarek ruled against the mother, Noelia Noemi Sosa Espindola, 23, who sought to be named as the child's primary provider despite the fact she faces imminent deportation to her native Uruguay.
However, Kanarek asked attorneys for both parties to submit proposals outlining methods in which the child would be flown regularly to Uruguay for visitation with Sosa. (emphasis mine: this is a joke really, a total waste of the mother and attorney's time.)
Sosa's attorney, Margaret Anderson, described the case as "a tragedy," saying Cassidy repeatedly threatened Sosa and her family with deportation if she did not remain with him, hurled ethnic slurs at the family and turned over documents to the Indian River County Sheriff's Office that led to Sosa's arrest for using someone else's Social Security number to find work.
After her arrest, Sosa was placed on a federal detainer for deportation to Uruguay because she overstayed her visa when she traveled to the United States in 2003.
Cassidy's attorney, Kate Hill, told the court "there is no evidence he turned her in" to authorities by telling them Sosa was in the country illegally.
"He was contacted by a detective and that's the first he ever heard of it," Hill said.
Cassidy and Sosa had Danelia Nicole Cassidy out of wedlock Nov. 21, 2004, but they broke up in August 2005 in a bitter spat, during which Sosa flushed her engagement ring down the toilet, according to both of them.
Cassidy, who works for a screening construction company, testified he broke up with Sosa because she was "going to clubs" instead of staying home with their child.
Sosa testified she initiated the breakup because of Cassidy's drug use and because he struck her three times, insulted her family's ethnicity, and broke his curfew by staying out past 10 p.m.
According to court records, Cassidy recently completed drug-offender probation after being charged in St. Lucie County with possession with intent to sell or deliver marijuana on April 20, 2004. (emphasis mine: Just your friendly neighborhood drug dealer, no big deal obviously in a custody case.)
Sosa, who was brought to court under the custody of two federal agents, testified tearfully Cassidy "wasn't mature enough to be a father.
"We got into fights, and the subject was always drugs," Sosa said. "Everytime we got in a fight, he told me he was going to deport me."
Cassidy testified he gave a sheriff's investigator a Social Security card used by authorities to charge Sosa with criminal use of personal identification. Cassidy said he found the card in a closet in November, but didn't gave it to a detective until April — on the eve of his child-support hearing. (emphasis mine: but of course we all know it's not about the money, it never is. It's about the love of a father for his daughter. What a joke.)
Sosa reported to the Vero Beach Police Department her Social Security card and passport were stolen from the vehicle of a friend, Cathleen Vicuna, on Oct. 6, 2005, when she and Vicuna went jogging near Riverside Park.
In considering proposals in which Danelia would be allowed to travel to Uruguay, Kanarek cited Uruguay as a signatory to the international Hague Convention, in which countries are bound to honor family court orders.
Kanarek asked Anderson and Hill to submit proposals within 10 days "that place the child with the father and spell out specifically how the child will have contact with the mother." (emphasis mine: This is a joke really, a complete waste of time, totally unenforceable from the minute the custody order is signed and the mother is on the plane headed back to Uruguay.)
Sunday, November 12, 2006
Another Defeat for Common Sense
Well I was sorry to see this measure defeated.
As I have stated many times litigating custody through the court system helps men. It plays to their strength in these situations: which is manipulation of the legal system through men’s control of greater financial resources. It should be pretty obvious by now to everyone that this presumptive Joint Custody measure, although not ideal by any means, was the lesser of many, many, many, evils that mothers and children could face if forced into court. Many evils.
I guess it also points out that this ‘custody war’ situation which has been going on for the last decade or so probably has to be addressed by attacking the root of the problem, which is money. It’s not custody or parenting or 50/50 visitation, etc., it is money. The system that currently has made custody of children worth money to people must be dismantled. Then people will have nothing to fight over and I guarantee you that this whole custody litigation business will become moot as few parents will bother contesting it anymore.
I was just listening to a woman talking on an early morning news show today and she was estimating that for the parent of ONE CHILD with the Earned Income Credit (EIC), child care credit and numerous other tax deductions, that custody of ONE child directs about $10,000 annually (not even counting child support) to a custodial parent. That $10,000 is just the EIC and tax credits/deduction a custodial parent is eligible for. It doesn’t even address the non-money benefits, btw, such as food stamps, Medicaid, Section 8 housing subsidiary, even some citizenship benefits…
This is the root of the problem.
Solve this and the whole custody issue will end as quickly as it began. Parents will be back to settling this between themselves and the more interested parent (which is generally the mothers in spite of the endless propaganda to the contrary) will voluntarily assume custody with no argument from the other…there will be no more incentive to fight over visitation/parenting time as there will be no money issues related to who spends more time with the kids...
http://www.bismarcktribune.com/articles/2006/11/08/news/state/123564.txt
Child custody measure, loses, eminent domain comes up big
By DAVE KOLPACK Associated Press Writer
Voters have rejected a proposal to revamp North Dakota's child custody laws, but approved constitutional measures to limit the government's right to acquire private property and adjust the way the state manages trust funds.
With 97 percent of the state's precinct's reporting, the child custody measure trailed 57 percent to 43 percent.
The proposal to restrict eminent domain was leading 68 percent to 32 percent, and a measure changing trust fund management was leading 67 percent to 33 percent.
The child custody measure drew the most emotional debate of the three, and several voters on Tuesday said it was the one issue that brought them to the polls.
Ashley Helbling, 25, of Bismarck, called the measure "just asinine."
Carrie McKay, 35, of Bismarck, said she voted against it because it "doesn't seem right" for the children."
There are a lot of fathers who need help, too," McKay said. "But they needed to word that differently."
Mitchell Sanderson, of Grand Forks, a sponsor of the child custody measure, said the initiative was hurt by "fear-mongering from attorneys who were protecting their Lexus payment and lake home payment."
He said he would attempt to work with the Legislature on a new bill.
"If that doesn't work, I will come back with another initiative that is plain and clear: joint physical custody unless you're found unfit," he said.
**********************************************************
I thought it would be interesting to post some comments from the Bismarck Herald on the feelings of a non-custodial mother when the Presumptive Joint Custody measure failed there last week. She mentions how her children are punished if their father finds out they even say hello to her…
“T wrote on November 10, 2006 8:45 PM:"In response to the one that said it would be good to the father that is the non-custodial parent. Live with reality, non-custodial parents are mothers as well as fathers, and the measure should be looked at again, revised and passed. Free up the civil courts, let the children be children of BOTH parents, and yes, have the parents co-parent and quit putting the kids in the middle... after all at one time, the both were good enough to procreate with, were they not? Besides, the judges do not always know what is in the best interests of the children, they are limited in their time, and are so busy, that it's a wonder they even keep the cases straight anymore."
“T wrote on November 10, 2006 8:54 PM:"In addition to my last post before anyone berates my comments, yes, I am the mother of my children, and they mean the world to me. My ex-husband and his wife make four times than what I do, yet I pay child support and alot of their expenses i.e. clothing, personal hygiene supplies, any of their extra curricular activities... The divorce papers say we have joint legal and joint custody with open visitation for me, yet when my children contact me, or try to see me, they get punished. They are not even allowed by my ex-spouse to say hi to me if we happen to run into each other.... hmmm..."
“T wrote on November 12, 2006 4:16 AM:"to advocate4mykids... have taken my ex to court twice for contempt, the judge just tells him not to do it anymore, as for the child support, it doesn't matter what he makes, they don't take that into consideration, with the expenses being paid, he tells the kids I'm not paying for it, if your mom doesn't pay, then you go without... yes, it is parent alienation by far, and maybe divorced lawyer will go pro bono for me haha... attorneys cost money, and my ex has pretty much made a point of draining it from me so I can't afford an attorney to take him back to court"
**********************************************************
The above was for the benefit of those self-described advocates for women from NOW and such who continue fighting these presumptive Joint Custody measures. These pompous assholes can’t seem to get it through their heads that non-custodial parents being alienated from their children are not just fathers, but many mothers as well.
I don’t know how many times I have to say this but litigating custody through the courts FAVORS fathers. It favors them. Studies have demonstrated this time and again in different states including NOW’s own studies, which have shown that 70% of fathers win custody when they litigate, NOW's own studies. Yet these same nitwits continue saying women shouldn’t settle for the ‘cookie cutter’ approach of presumptive Joint Custody and every case should be individually litigated.
It’s like dealing with a brick wall, I swear to God.
They can’t seem to get it through their thick heads that when fathers litigate, they win. NOW’s own studies have shown this. It is obviously considered trendy and progressive today to give fathers custody and millions of mothers have lost custody of their children today due to this trendiness. BTW many of these mothers never see their children again, due to these unprincipled monsters, who take custody of children to avoid paying child support.
I don’t know…it appears hopeless when you are dealing with a bunch of gender neutralized feminists who continue to disregard the studies they, themselves, funded on this very issue and insist on mothers being required to litigate custody…
All I can say is wake up.
As I have stated many times litigating custody through the court system helps men. It plays to their strength in these situations: which is manipulation of the legal system through men’s control of greater financial resources. It should be pretty obvious by now to everyone that this presumptive Joint Custody measure, although not ideal by any means, was the lesser of many, many, many, evils that mothers and children could face if forced into court. Many evils.
I guess it also points out that this ‘custody war’ situation which has been going on for the last decade or so probably has to be addressed by attacking the root of the problem, which is money. It’s not custody or parenting or 50/50 visitation, etc., it is money. The system that currently has made custody of children worth money to people must be dismantled. Then people will have nothing to fight over and I guarantee you that this whole custody litigation business will become moot as few parents will bother contesting it anymore.
I was just listening to a woman talking on an early morning news show today and she was estimating that for the parent of ONE CHILD with the Earned Income Credit (EIC), child care credit and numerous other tax deductions, that custody of ONE child directs about $10,000 annually (not even counting child support) to a custodial parent. That $10,000 is just the EIC and tax credits/deduction a custodial parent is eligible for. It doesn’t even address the non-money benefits, btw, such as food stamps, Medicaid, Section 8 housing subsidiary, even some citizenship benefits…
This is the root of the problem.
Solve this and the whole custody issue will end as quickly as it began. Parents will be back to settling this between themselves and the more interested parent (which is generally the mothers in spite of the endless propaganda to the contrary) will voluntarily assume custody with no argument from the other…there will be no more incentive to fight over visitation/parenting time as there will be no money issues related to who spends more time with the kids...
http://www.bismarcktribune.com/articles/2006/11/08/news/state/123564.txt
Child custody measure, loses, eminent domain comes up big
By DAVE KOLPACK Associated Press Writer
Voters have rejected a proposal to revamp North Dakota's child custody laws, but approved constitutional measures to limit the government's right to acquire private property and adjust the way the state manages trust funds.
With 97 percent of the state's precinct's reporting, the child custody measure trailed 57 percent to 43 percent.
The proposal to restrict eminent domain was leading 68 percent to 32 percent, and a measure changing trust fund management was leading 67 percent to 33 percent.
The child custody measure drew the most emotional debate of the three, and several voters on Tuesday said it was the one issue that brought them to the polls.
Ashley Helbling, 25, of Bismarck, called the measure "just asinine."
Carrie McKay, 35, of Bismarck, said she voted against it because it "doesn't seem right" for the children."
There are a lot of fathers who need help, too," McKay said. "But they needed to word that differently."
Mitchell Sanderson, of Grand Forks, a sponsor of the child custody measure, said the initiative was hurt by "fear-mongering from attorneys who were protecting their Lexus payment and lake home payment."
He said he would attempt to work with the Legislature on a new bill.
"If that doesn't work, I will come back with another initiative that is plain and clear: joint physical custody unless you're found unfit," he said.
**********************************************************
I thought it would be interesting to post some comments from the Bismarck Herald on the feelings of a non-custodial mother when the Presumptive Joint Custody measure failed there last week. She mentions how her children are punished if their father finds out they even say hello to her…
“T wrote on November 10, 2006 8:45 PM:"In response to the one that said it would be good to the father that is the non-custodial parent. Live with reality, non-custodial parents are mothers as well as fathers, and the measure should be looked at again, revised and passed. Free up the civil courts, let the children be children of BOTH parents, and yes, have the parents co-parent and quit putting the kids in the middle... after all at one time, the both were good enough to procreate with, were they not? Besides, the judges do not always know what is in the best interests of the children, they are limited in their time, and are so busy, that it's a wonder they even keep the cases straight anymore."
“T wrote on November 10, 2006 8:54 PM:"In addition to my last post before anyone berates my comments, yes, I am the mother of my children, and they mean the world to me. My ex-husband and his wife make four times than what I do, yet I pay child support and alot of their expenses i.e. clothing, personal hygiene supplies, any of their extra curricular activities... The divorce papers say we have joint legal and joint custody with open visitation for me, yet when my children contact me, or try to see me, they get punished. They are not even allowed by my ex-spouse to say hi to me if we happen to run into each other.... hmmm..."
“T wrote on November 12, 2006 4:16 AM:"to advocate4mykids... have taken my ex to court twice for contempt, the judge just tells him not to do it anymore, as for the child support, it doesn't matter what he makes, they don't take that into consideration, with the expenses being paid, he tells the kids I'm not paying for it, if your mom doesn't pay, then you go without... yes, it is parent alienation by far, and maybe divorced lawyer will go pro bono for me haha... attorneys cost money, and my ex has pretty much made a point of draining it from me so I can't afford an attorney to take him back to court"
**********************************************************
The above was for the benefit of those self-described advocates for women from NOW and such who continue fighting these presumptive Joint Custody measures. These pompous assholes can’t seem to get it through their heads that non-custodial parents being alienated from their children are not just fathers, but many mothers as well.
I don’t know how many times I have to say this but litigating custody through the courts FAVORS fathers. It favors them. Studies have demonstrated this time and again in different states including NOW’s own studies, which have shown that 70% of fathers win custody when they litigate, NOW's own studies. Yet these same nitwits continue saying women shouldn’t settle for the ‘cookie cutter’ approach of presumptive Joint Custody and every case should be individually litigated.
It’s like dealing with a brick wall, I swear to God.
They can’t seem to get it through their thick heads that when fathers litigate, they win. NOW’s own studies have shown this. It is obviously considered trendy and progressive today to give fathers custody and millions of mothers have lost custody of their children today due to this trendiness. BTW many of these mothers never see their children again, due to these unprincipled monsters, who take custody of children to avoid paying child support.
I don’t know…it appears hopeless when you are dealing with a bunch of gender neutralized feminists who continue to disregard the studies they, themselves, funded on this very issue and insist on mothers being required to litigate custody…
All I can say is wake up.
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
The Drumroll of Gender Neutralized Nonsense Continues...
Well who didn’t see this one coming.
I’ve heard many men complaining that their children ignore them when they become adults. Men, of course, have begun blaming motherhood for this. I guess men presumed that when they bogarted their way into the nursery, that it set up some kind of reverse debit system. Whereas kids were then supposed to be more involved with their fathers as they grew older, since men paid so much more attention to children today then their fathers ever paid to them. This should have been obvious, right?
Sadly this isn’t the way it works.
Mothers don’t invest the time they do in their children because they are looking for some ultimate payback when the kids reach maturity. Instead, it is the inutero bonding that sets the stage for the mothers’ love which follows. Which is why the mother/child bond is unique. Most women already intuitively know that bond is the only ‘payday’ a mother ever receives. Since you can be a good, bad or indifferent mother going forward and it guarantees you nothing in the way of future contact, visits or even telephone calls from your kids. Actually some of the best mothers I know rarely see their kids. As once their children have left the nest (or launched as gender neutral proponents now like to say) many move half way across the country or even to Europe and have such full lives there is quite simply little time to visit with their mothers. Maybe once or twice a year if that. Yet their mothers are content, as they know their children are doing well...
This mother/child bond exists, even for the mothers who give their children up for adoption. Which is why when a mother is giving a child up for adoption, hospital personnel generally won’t even let her see the baby or hold it after it is born…as the result could be the mother changing her mind once she is confronted with the reality of the child. But even if she never sees her child, she can be content as a mother if she knows her child has been given a good home and upbringing, one that she couldn't provide...that's a mother's love.
Not so with a sperm donor as it's a totally income driven process, the donor could care less who receives the sperm or what is done with it. Actually they could be using the deposited sperm for a scientific experiment for all a donor knows.
Anyway men attempting to compare the mother/child bond with the experience of a sperm donor are doomed to failure, as this latest nonsense attests. To be honest, I don’t believe there was ever any large amount of children conceived via sperm donation trying to contact their ‘fathers’. This was men trying to equate themselves with mothers, who gave up children for adoption. Clearly a bond exists between those mothers and children as anyone with common sense could attest to. It is NOT the same with sperm donors. This was a bunch of foolishness to begin with, instigated by men, always trying to act like the world revolves around them. The process of donating sperm does not equate with nurturing a child inutero, bonding with it and giving birth to said child from your own body as mothers do.
Please.
No bond is formed because a man discharges a bodily fluid into a dixie cup while looking at pictures of naked women.
Sorry but there is no comparison here between a sperm donor and a mother.
This was men trying to be at the center of the universe in all things once again.
Sigh...the endless struggle continues.
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,20706484-2862,00.html#
Herald Sun
Kids ignore chance to meet donor dads
Kate Jones, medical reporter
November 06, 2006 12:00am
DESPITE new laws and a statewide advertising campaign, no Victorian children conceived by donor sperm have tried to find their biological parents. (emphasis mine: they mean biological fathers, as a mother cannot be a sperm donor. This is more of men trying to equate themselves with mothers. I'm sure many adoptive children wish to meet their biological mother.)
More than 100 young Victorians, who have turned or will turn 18 between July and December this year, are eligible under the new consent laws to apply for identifying information about their biological parents.
The laws came into effect on July 1.
But so far, the Infertility Treatment Authority has yet to receive one application from a donor-conceived child.
ITA chief executive Louise Johnson said many children may not be aware they were conceived with the aid of a donor, "or the time may not be right for them," she said.
It is thought 30 to 50 per cent of donor-conceived children are not told about their true origins.
Next year, more than 200 donor-conceived children will be eligible to contact their biological parents. Donors also have the right to apply for information about children.
Providing there is consent, a donor and child may contact each other.
The ITA has received 10 applications from donors wanting to know details about offspring and 16 donors have voluntarily supplied their information. (emphasis mine: I'm sure that should be interesting. AND if the 'father' conceived 16 or 60 kids with his deposits, I'm sure he'll now lead a rich full life with all his 'children' congregating around his home come the holiday. What a lot of nonsense.)
I’ve heard many men complaining that their children ignore them when they become adults. Men, of course, have begun blaming motherhood for this. I guess men presumed that when they bogarted their way into the nursery, that it set up some kind of reverse debit system. Whereas kids were then supposed to be more involved with their fathers as they grew older, since men paid so much more attention to children today then their fathers ever paid to them. This should have been obvious, right?
Sadly this isn’t the way it works.
Mothers don’t invest the time they do in their children because they are looking for some ultimate payback when the kids reach maturity. Instead, it is the inutero bonding that sets the stage for the mothers’ love which follows. Which is why the mother/child bond is unique. Most women already intuitively know that bond is the only ‘payday’ a mother ever receives. Since you can be a good, bad or indifferent mother going forward and it guarantees you nothing in the way of future contact, visits or even telephone calls from your kids. Actually some of the best mothers I know rarely see their kids. As once their children have left the nest (or launched as gender neutral proponents now like to say) many move half way across the country or even to Europe and have such full lives there is quite simply little time to visit with their mothers. Maybe once or twice a year if that. Yet their mothers are content, as they know their children are doing well...
This mother/child bond exists, even for the mothers who give their children up for adoption. Which is why when a mother is giving a child up for adoption, hospital personnel generally won’t even let her see the baby or hold it after it is born…as the result could be the mother changing her mind once she is confronted with the reality of the child. But even if she never sees her child, she can be content as a mother if she knows her child has been given a good home and upbringing, one that she couldn't provide...that's a mother's love.
Not so with a sperm donor as it's a totally income driven process, the donor could care less who receives the sperm or what is done with it. Actually they could be using the deposited sperm for a scientific experiment for all a donor knows.
Anyway men attempting to compare the mother/child bond with the experience of a sperm donor are doomed to failure, as this latest nonsense attests. To be honest, I don’t believe there was ever any large amount of children conceived via sperm donation trying to contact their ‘fathers’. This was men trying to equate themselves with mothers, who gave up children for adoption. Clearly a bond exists between those mothers and children as anyone with common sense could attest to. It is NOT the same with sperm donors. This was a bunch of foolishness to begin with, instigated by men, always trying to act like the world revolves around them. The process of donating sperm does not equate with nurturing a child inutero, bonding with it and giving birth to said child from your own body as mothers do.
Please.
No bond is formed because a man discharges a bodily fluid into a dixie cup while looking at pictures of naked women.
Sorry but there is no comparison here between a sperm donor and a mother.
This was men trying to be at the center of the universe in all things once again.
Sigh...the endless struggle continues.
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,20706484-2862,00.html#
Herald Sun
Kids ignore chance to meet donor dads
Kate Jones, medical reporter
November 06, 2006 12:00am
DESPITE new laws and a statewide advertising campaign, no Victorian children conceived by donor sperm have tried to find their biological parents. (emphasis mine: they mean biological fathers, as a mother cannot be a sperm donor. This is more of men trying to equate themselves with mothers. I'm sure many adoptive children wish to meet their biological mother.)
More than 100 young Victorians, who have turned or will turn 18 between July and December this year, are eligible under the new consent laws to apply for identifying information about their biological parents.
The laws came into effect on July 1.
But so far, the Infertility Treatment Authority has yet to receive one application from a donor-conceived child.
ITA chief executive Louise Johnson said many children may not be aware they were conceived with the aid of a donor, "or the time may not be right for them," she said.
It is thought 30 to 50 per cent of donor-conceived children are not told about their true origins.
Next year, more than 200 donor-conceived children will be eligible to contact their biological parents. Donors also have the right to apply for information about children.
Providing there is consent, a donor and child may contact each other.
The ITA has received 10 applications from donors wanting to know details about offspring and 16 donors have voluntarily supplied their information. (emphasis mine: I'm sure that should be interesting. AND if the 'father' conceived 16 or 60 kids with his deposits, I'm sure he'll now lead a rich full life with all his 'children' congregating around his home come the holiday. What a lot of nonsense.)
Saturday, November 04, 2006
Misplaced Priorities focusing on Womens' Eggs versus Her Children
October 25, 2006, 9:16 a.m.
Chicks Protect Their Eggs
Cloning is a women’s issue.
By Kathryn Jean Lopez
“Wow. I never really thought about that.”
That’s the response Jennifer Lahl says she gets “over and over again” when she talks to people about “the women’s health and safety” concerns at the heart of the debate over embryonic-stem-cell research and cloning.
Lahl is a spokeswoman for a nonpartisan group with an international reach called “Hands Off Our Ovaries,” which seeks “a moratorium on egg extraction for research purposes until such time as global discourse and scientific research yields information sufficient to establish adequate informed consent.”
The organization was launched earlier this year on International Women’s Day in March as “a 2006 version of bra burning,” Lahl jokes. The movement is deadly serious, though: She hopes that the Hands Off Our Ovaries message — uniting pro-life and pro-choice women, conservatives and liberal feminists — can serve as a wake-up call to folks who have just never thought through the hows of such complicated and controversial research. Obviously, Lahl says, people know you don’t get the necessary eggs for cloning embryos from a basket. But unless they’ve had extensive experience with infertility issues (and egg “donation”), most busy Americans will have this issue completely off their radars.
Already routine at fertility clinics, egg donation is an unpleasant process that includes prodding and surgery; “donors” (sometimes highly paid) are given hormones to ensure they produce more than the routine monthly amount of eggs — more means a better shot at success. This largely unregulated industry (an estimated $38 million one) has paid little attention to the potential long-term harm from such hyperstimulation. As two bioethicists from Stanford declared last year in an article in Science magazine, at a minimum women should be made aware both that the risks include infertility and even death and that their “donations,” in the case of embryonic-stem-cell research and cloning, may never actually contribute to a cure for anything.
The Hands Off Our Ovaries cautionary message and call for a moratorium on hyperstimulated cloning research may have the opportunity to be heard like never before in the run-up to Election Day. In response to a dramatic plea by Parkinson’s sufferer Michael J. Fox for Missourians to vote against Republican Jim Talent because of his opposition to cloning (my c-word, not Fox’s; the gist of Fox’s disingenuous commercial for Democrat Claire McCaskill is, essentially, that Talent is a mean man who doesn’t like sick people, or at least doesn’t want them to get well), a counter ad is scheduled to air Wednesday night in Saint Louis during game four of the World Series. This ad may be the first time many Missourians hear of the egg factor in the embryonic-stem-cell-research debate.
A ballot initiative is the reason for the ad wars. Amendment 2 would write a constitutional right to human cloning into the state constitution, putting the complicated issue above the reach of the elected legislature.
The anti-Amendment 2 ad is a good, celeb-filled response to Michael J. Fox’s platitudinous and dishonest pull at the heartstrings. It features Jim Caveziel (from The Passion of the Christ), Cardinals pitcher Jeff Suppan, and others. And proclaiming the Hands Off Our Ovaries kind of message is Patricia Heaton, best known for playing Ray Romano’s wife on Everybody Loves Raymond. During the minute-long commercial, Heaton (who, as a spokeswoman for Feminists for Life, is no stranger to such activism) says: Amendment 2 actually makes it a constitutional right for fertility clinics to pay women for eggs. Low-income women will be seduced by big checks and extracting donor eggs is an extremely complicated, dangerous, and painful procedure.
Jennifer Lahl is hopeful, for both the short and the long term. Speaking to National Review Online from Oakland, Calif. on Tuesday night, she noted that she’s a veteran of cloning-initiative fights, having seen one pass in 2004 in California — but asserted that this time, she seems something different happening: “I really think that the egg issue is going to make a difference.” Back during the Golden State Proposition 71 campaign, cloning proponents “could get away with a Michael J. Fox ad.” This time, though, there is another side ready — one offering a coordinated message, and a reasonable, alternative sober message to counter the usual unsubstantiated hype.
— Kathryn Jean Lopez is the editor of National Review Online.
http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=MjU4YzkzZWJlZjUzZjA1ZGYzNjViYTNmN2YwNThhNTk=
What they fail to mention is that everything to do with woman's reproductive process generally involves some form of 'extremely complicated, dangerous and painful procedure'...that's just a fact of life.
My problem with this situation is that I'd hate to see women being denied the right to use donor sperm in the future if they wish to create families and haven't found a marriage partner at some point before they are 30. Since the flip side of making egg donations illegal is that it will also probably eventually lead to making sperm donations illegal as well. Especially since some estimates suggest that somewhere between thirty thousand and seventy thousand children are born each year as the result of sperm donations, and only about three thousand each year are conceived using donor eggs; thus it appears women could once again be getting the short end of the stick here.
So basically signing off on this moratorium could be giving away the farm for something that impacts very few women (if those estimates are to be believed.)
I personally feel they should both be legal as long as you are dealing with adults who know the risks involved. Although I wouldn't mind seeing the use of foreign women as donors be made illegal as this is exploitative of vulnerable women. Many of whom are forced into this procedure by the greedy men in their lives (who btw, also force women into donating kidneys and other valuable organs for offshore markets).
Interestingly enough no one (other then one professor on the columbia.edu website) ever thought to mention this aspect of donations of body parts...yet we are to believe that now everyone is concerned because women could be exploited through donating eggs. Nor has any of this crowd ever once mentioned the millions of mothers losing custody of their kids, since chicks also protect their hatched eggs as in mother hens. Yet I never heard of anyone suggesting a moratorium on that happening until we know the long-term results of that situation either.
Odd...really...for people who are suddenly so concerned about women.
Overall I think women have to carefully assess what limits they wish placed on their reproductive rights in this area and disregard the catchy slogans like "Hands Off Our Ovaries"...Not that I think every woman or even most women are going to use donor sperm to create a family with; yet it could eventually constitute a sizable minority of women who do this especially if men continue behaving like such stupid idiots in our society. So I don't want to close that possibility off to women who wish to be mothers.
Closing off those options to women, would result in placing our fates (and the fates of our children) back in the hands of men and the family courts system, which has not shown itself fit either in the past or present to rule on these issues...since children are a women's issue much more so then eggs.
Sadly these people seem to have their priorities mixed up if they think more women are concerned about the fate of an egg donation versus losing their children once they are born...
Chicks Protect Their Eggs
Cloning is a women’s issue.
By Kathryn Jean Lopez
“Wow. I never really thought about that.”
That’s the response Jennifer Lahl says she gets “over and over again” when she talks to people about “the women’s health and safety” concerns at the heart of the debate over embryonic-stem-cell research and cloning.
Lahl is a spokeswoman for a nonpartisan group with an international reach called “Hands Off Our Ovaries,” which seeks “a moratorium on egg extraction for research purposes until such time as global discourse and scientific research yields information sufficient to establish adequate informed consent.”
The organization was launched earlier this year on International Women’s Day in March as “a 2006 version of bra burning,” Lahl jokes. The movement is deadly serious, though: She hopes that the Hands Off Our Ovaries message — uniting pro-life and pro-choice women, conservatives and liberal feminists — can serve as a wake-up call to folks who have just never thought through the hows of such complicated and controversial research. Obviously, Lahl says, people know you don’t get the necessary eggs for cloning embryos from a basket. But unless they’ve had extensive experience with infertility issues (and egg “donation”), most busy Americans will have this issue completely off their radars.
Already routine at fertility clinics, egg donation is an unpleasant process that includes prodding and surgery; “donors” (sometimes highly paid) are given hormones to ensure they produce more than the routine monthly amount of eggs — more means a better shot at success. This largely unregulated industry (an estimated $38 million one) has paid little attention to the potential long-term harm from such hyperstimulation. As two bioethicists from Stanford declared last year in an article in Science magazine, at a minimum women should be made aware both that the risks include infertility and even death and that their “donations,” in the case of embryonic-stem-cell research and cloning, may never actually contribute to a cure for anything.
The Hands Off Our Ovaries cautionary message and call for a moratorium on hyperstimulated cloning research may have the opportunity to be heard like never before in the run-up to Election Day. In response to a dramatic plea by Parkinson’s sufferer Michael J. Fox for Missourians to vote against Republican Jim Talent because of his opposition to cloning (my c-word, not Fox’s; the gist of Fox’s disingenuous commercial for Democrat Claire McCaskill is, essentially, that Talent is a mean man who doesn’t like sick people, or at least doesn’t want them to get well), a counter ad is scheduled to air Wednesday night in Saint Louis during game four of the World Series. This ad may be the first time many Missourians hear of the egg factor in the embryonic-stem-cell-research debate.
A ballot initiative is the reason for the ad wars. Amendment 2 would write a constitutional right to human cloning into the state constitution, putting the complicated issue above the reach of the elected legislature.
The anti-Amendment 2 ad is a good, celeb-filled response to Michael J. Fox’s platitudinous and dishonest pull at the heartstrings. It features Jim Caveziel (from The Passion of the Christ), Cardinals pitcher Jeff Suppan, and others. And proclaiming the Hands Off Our Ovaries kind of message is Patricia Heaton, best known for playing Ray Romano’s wife on Everybody Loves Raymond. During the minute-long commercial, Heaton (who, as a spokeswoman for Feminists for Life, is no stranger to such activism) says: Amendment 2 actually makes it a constitutional right for fertility clinics to pay women for eggs. Low-income women will be seduced by big checks and extracting donor eggs is an extremely complicated, dangerous, and painful procedure.
Jennifer Lahl is hopeful, for both the short and the long term. Speaking to National Review Online from Oakland, Calif. on Tuesday night, she noted that she’s a veteran of cloning-initiative fights, having seen one pass in 2004 in California — but asserted that this time, she seems something different happening: “I really think that the egg issue is going to make a difference.” Back during the Golden State Proposition 71 campaign, cloning proponents “could get away with a Michael J. Fox ad.” This time, though, there is another side ready — one offering a coordinated message, and a reasonable, alternative sober message to counter the usual unsubstantiated hype.
— Kathryn Jean Lopez is the editor of National Review Online.
http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=MjU4YzkzZWJlZjUzZjA1ZGYzNjViYTNmN2YwNThhNTk=
What they fail to mention is that everything to do with woman's reproductive process generally involves some form of 'extremely complicated, dangerous and painful procedure'...that's just a fact of life.
My problem with this situation is that I'd hate to see women being denied the right to use donor sperm in the future if they wish to create families and haven't found a marriage partner at some point before they are 30. Since the flip side of making egg donations illegal is that it will also probably eventually lead to making sperm donations illegal as well. Especially since some estimates suggest that somewhere between thirty thousand and seventy thousand children are born each year as the result of sperm donations, and only about three thousand each year are conceived using donor eggs; thus it appears women could once again be getting the short end of the stick here.
So basically signing off on this moratorium could be giving away the farm for something that impacts very few women (if those estimates are to be believed.)
I personally feel they should both be legal as long as you are dealing with adults who know the risks involved. Although I wouldn't mind seeing the use of foreign women as donors be made illegal as this is exploitative of vulnerable women. Many of whom are forced into this procedure by the greedy men in their lives (who btw, also force women into donating kidneys and other valuable organs for offshore markets).
Interestingly enough no one (other then one professor on the columbia.edu website) ever thought to mention this aspect of donations of body parts...yet we are to believe that now everyone is concerned because women could be exploited through donating eggs. Nor has any of this crowd ever once mentioned the millions of mothers losing custody of their kids, since chicks also protect their hatched eggs as in mother hens. Yet I never heard of anyone suggesting a moratorium on that happening until we know the long-term results of that situation either.
Odd...really...for people who are suddenly so concerned about women.
Overall I think women have to carefully assess what limits they wish placed on their reproductive rights in this area and disregard the catchy slogans like "Hands Off Our Ovaries"...Not that I think every woman or even most women are going to use donor sperm to create a family with; yet it could eventually constitute a sizable minority of women who do this especially if men continue behaving like such stupid idiots in our society. So I don't want to close that possibility off to women who wish to be mothers.
Closing off those options to women, would result in placing our fates (and the fates of our children) back in the hands of men and the family courts system, which has not shown itself fit either in the past or present to rule on these issues...since children are a women's issue much more so then eggs.
Sadly these people seem to have their priorities mixed up if they think more women are concerned about the fate of an egg donation versus losing their children once they are born...
Stealing the Fruits of a Young Mother's Womb
S. Koreans Search Far and Wide for a Wife
Facing a shortage of prospective rural brides, many men are forced to look abroad.
By Barbara Demick, Times Staff Writer
September 21, 2006
NAMWON, South Korea It was the constellation of acne across her cheeks that made No. 242 stand out from the other young women who were paraded before him in a hotel in Ho Chi Minh City. (emphasis mine: kind of like a hungry wolf who sees a deer limping along and decides it could be easy prey.)
Jeong Ha-gi, 46, flew to Vietnam on a tour organized for South Korean bachelors. He was looking for a wife who would be tough enough to withstand the rigors of life on a rice farm. (emphasis mine: translation--looking for a workhorse to do all his chores for him, so he can lay around on his aging, lazy butt all day probably eating.) Trying to distinguish among all the women with the numbers pinned to their shirts, he decided the one with a bad complexion might be made of sturdy stuff. They were married three days later.
Today, they live together in sullen silence, a chasm of cultural differences between them. She speaks no Korean, he no Vietnamese. They communicate — barely — with a well-thumbed phrase book. Nguyen Thu Dong, who turned out to be only 20, doesn't like getting up at 5 a.m. to do the farm chores. She turns up her nose at kimchi.
"We have a lot of issues between us," said the burly Jeong, who in his undershirt resembles a Korean version of the young Marlon Brando . (emphasis mine: he'll probably turn out to be as fat as Brando became as well.) "Our age difference, our culture, our food. But I wanted a wife and she is who I got."
Despite the obvious pitfalls, South Korean men increasingly are going abroad to find wives. They have little choice in the matter unless they want to remain bachelors for life.
The marriage market in Asia is becoming rapidly globalized, and just in time for tens of thousands of single-but-looking South Korean men, most of them in the countryside where marriageable women are in scant supply. With little hope of finding wives of their own nationality and producing children to take over the farm, the men are pooling their family's resources to raise up to $20,000 to find a spouse abroad.
The phenomenon has become so widespread that last year 13% of South Korean marriages were to foreigners. More than a third of the rural men who married last year have foreign wives, most of them Vietnamese, Chinese and Philippine. That's a huge change in a country once among the most homogenous in the world.
To some extent, the globalized marriage market is having a trickle-down effect, exacerbating the shortage of marriage-age women elsewhere, particularly China.
"There is a long-standing son preference throughout Asia, but now it is happening in the context of this 21st century marriage market," said Valerie M. Hudson, a political scientist and author of "Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia's Surplus Male Population."
The preference for sons has translated in South Korea into 113 male births for every 100 females. Ultrasound became widely available here in the 1980s, and the first generation screened for gender before birth is now coming of marriageable age.
But perhaps an even larger factor in the disappearance of young women from the countryside is their tendency to move to the cities in search of careers or urban husbands or both.
"South Korean women don't want to live in the countryside. They don't want to do hard labor, getting their skin brown in the sun. The cities are less traditional, less patriarchal," said Yang Soon-mi, a social worker with the Ministry of Agriculture.
The wife shortage is most severe here in the southwestern region of Jeolla, the traditional heartland of Korea. This is one of the few swaths of South Korea where the rice paddies have not yet been cemented over for gray slabs of high-rise apartments. On a hot August day, the air is thick with the chirping of the cicadas, and red peppers are drying in the sun on the pavement.
On roads cutting through the fields, marriage brokers advertise their services on billboards.
"Vietnamese marriage," reads a billboard in shocking pink on an otherwise quiet country lane.
The wife shortage is having a devastating effect on the agricultural communities, already threatened by urbanization and free trade. Without wives, young men won't want to stay on the farm. Without wives, there are no babies to replenish the stock of farmers.
South Korea and Taiwan are tied for the lowest birthrates in the world, 1.1 per woman, according to a study released last month by the Washington-based Population Reference Bureau. Unlike China, South Korea does not limit births, and is in fact offering tax incentives to encourage more children.
Many of the villages around Jeolla are virtual ghost towns, with a sparse population of elderly residents and hardly a child in sight.
"There are only old people around here," said Le Pho, a 22-year-old Vietnamese woman who married a South Korean a year ago and is now pregnant. Her child will be the first born in the village, Seogok-ri, in more than 20 years. Despite a regulation, widely ignored, prohibiting doctors from divulging the sex of the fetus, Le knows already that she is having a boy.
"My husband and mother-in-law are very happy. They've treated me very well since they found out the baby is a boy," Le said. " (emphasis mine: Thank God, it was a boy...otherwise another poor little girl would probably wind up floating face down in a rice paddy over there.) The neighbors too. When they see my belly, they are amazed."
In fact, the foreign wives are key to rescuing some of these farm villages from extinction. (emphasis mine: why not let them go extinct???? It's continuing the line of hate mongers of women...what's the point?????)
In a nearby village, Oaktae-ri, there are five young children, four of them born to foreign women. Park Jeong-su, 46, whose Chinese-born wife recently gave birth to a daughter, said that all the Korean women in his village moved to Seoul and other cities because they didn't like the farming life.
"When I was a young man, I could find women to date, women who would sleep with me. But nobody who would go to the countryside," said Park, a powerfully built and handsome man with a roguish sense of humor. "Whenever I met a woman I liked, the first question she would ask was, 'Where is your apartment?' "
After more than a decade of looking for a Korean wife, Park went to the Philippines. He didn't meet anyone he liked. He then tried the Unification Church, which has often matched up international couples for group weddings. That didn't work either. He then accepted a friend's invitation to go to Harbin in northeastern China, where he was introduced by a friend's cousin to Yi Ok-ran.
Yi is ethnic Korean and already spoke the language.
"All the women in my village wanted to go to South Korea. We heard that life is good, that people are wealthy," said Yi, cuddling her infant daughter. As a result, she said, in her village in Tonghe County there are also only old people and few children. "There are so many old bachelors."
Many of the brides in South Korea come from the Mekong Delta region south of Ho Chi Minh City. The region is poor, and provincial authorities have been fairly liberal about licensing marriages between Vietnamese women and foreigners.
Newlywed Nguyen Thu Dong said she agreed to marry Jeong Ha-gi only to escape a life of certain poverty.
"A lot of the girls I know are getting married to foreigners. Men from Hong Kong, men from South Korea. Even if they have a Vietnamese boyfriend they like, they want to marry a foreigner to get away," said Nguyen, who is from Can Tho, a town about 80 miles southwest of Ho Chi Minh City.
Nguyen said that her parents told her on her 19th birthday they had been approached by the village matchmaker about setting her up with a foreigner.
"At first I said no," she said. "I was working at the time as a housemaid. But then I came back to my parents' home. I saw how badly they were doing financially, so I agreed."
She said she had no idea how much her family received. Another Vietnamese bride married to a South Korean said that the standard amount was $300.
The men, on the other hand, pay about $15,000 for a complete package that is supposed to include everything from the interpreter to the wedding gown.
Jeong, who had been married once before briefly, said he was talked into going to Vietnam in March by a younger brother. He joined a group of 12 men, from their mid-30s to their 50s.
The women were all younger than 25. They were paraded in small groups in front of the men, who were told to jot down the numbers of those they liked.
"It was like a Miss Korea pageant," Jeong recalled with faint distaste.
Nguyen said she was appalled to be wearing a number and almost ran away before it was her turn to appear in front of the men.
Both have the same complaint — that the interpretation was inadequate.
Jeong said that when they met, he told his prospective wife immediately that he was a farmer and that she replied that she grew up on a farm and liked rural living.
Nguyen said she was told that her suitor was an office worker in the city.
"He is very kind to me and I am grateful for that. But if I knew we were to live in the countryside, I wouldn't have come," Nguyen confided later. (emphasis mine: Exactly. How many American men go abroad lying to these women telling them they are rich, when many of them are the dregs of society that no decent American woman would want.)
Unable to communicate on their own, the couple quickly seized upon the opportunity to exchange a few thoughts through an interpreter who was accompanying a reporter.
"When will you let me visit my family in Vietnam?" she asked plaintively.
The reply came back: "When you give me a baby." Emphasis mine: vulture circling. My advice: watch your back Nguyen.)
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-bride21sep21,0,6352703.story?page=2&coll=la-home-headlines
I got a shiver down my spine reading this last line. It reminded me of a nature special I saw which had a flock of vultures circling a lioness struggling to give birth, alone and helpless in the bush.
AND God only knows how many of Nguyen’s girl babies will be murdered before she produces a boy child for this brute. It was very interesting to me that the author mentioned Marlon Brando actually, as Brando was another one always running around in foreign countries bringing women back here to take advantage of them. Everytime you turned around he was getting some foreign woman pregnant and then having a long-drawn out custody fight with them...he got custody of his kids eventually and most of them turned out very badly. The one boy going to jail for a murder and the daughter killing herself in Tahiti after losing custody of her own baby.
Anyway, we can’t do anything to help Nguyen, but if this story shows us nothing else it’s that the entire trade in foreign brides must be brought to an end in the US.
Case in point: the whole Genia Shockome situation is a good example. Bottom line Yevgenia Shockome should never have been here in the first place. She would have been safe right now in Russia with whatever children she gave birth to over there, in her homeland, living with their mother as children were meant to be.
Same thing with this Sadie Loeliger situation, another one of these immigrant marriage/abuse/custody cases…
And there are thousands more just like them too numerous to mention here.
Anyway, let’s just say no to this nonsense.
Men shouldn’t be allowed to troll foreign countries looking for gullible and desperate young women to bring here, so they can steal the fruit of their wombs.
Period.
Facing a shortage of prospective rural brides, many men are forced to look abroad.
By Barbara Demick, Times Staff Writer
September 21, 2006
NAMWON, South Korea It was the constellation of acne across her cheeks that made No. 242 stand out from the other young women who were paraded before him in a hotel in Ho Chi Minh City. (emphasis mine: kind of like a hungry wolf who sees a deer limping along and decides it could be easy prey.)
Jeong Ha-gi, 46, flew to Vietnam on a tour organized for South Korean bachelors. He was looking for a wife who would be tough enough to withstand the rigors of life on a rice farm. (emphasis mine: translation--looking for a workhorse to do all his chores for him, so he can lay around on his aging, lazy butt all day probably eating.) Trying to distinguish among all the women with the numbers pinned to their shirts, he decided the one with a bad complexion might be made of sturdy stuff. They were married three days later.
Today, they live together in sullen silence, a chasm of cultural differences between them. She speaks no Korean, he no Vietnamese. They communicate — barely — with a well-thumbed phrase book. Nguyen Thu Dong, who turned out to be only 20, doesn't like getting up at 5 a.m. to do the farm chores. She turns up her nose at kimchi.
"We have a lot of issues between us," said the burly Jeong, who in his undershirt resembles a Korean version of the young Marlon Brando . (emphasis mine: he'll probably turn out to be as fat as Brando became as well.) "Our age difference, our culture, our food. But I wanted a wife and she is who I got."
Despite the obvious pitfalls, South Korean men increasingly are going abroad to find wives. They have little choice in the matter unless they want to remain bachelors for life.
The marriage market in Asia is becoming rapidly globalized, and just in time for tens of thousands of single-but-looking South Korean men, most of them in the countryside where marriageable women are in scant supply. With little hope of finding wives of their own nationality and producing children to take over the farm, the men are pooling their family's resources to raise up to $20,000 to find a spouse abroad.
The phenomenon has become so widespread that last year 13% of South Korean marriages were to foreigners. More than a third of the rural men who married last year have foreign wives, most of them Vietnamese, Chinese and Philippine. That's a huge change in a country once among the most homogenous in the world.
To some extent, the globalized marriage market is having a trickle-down effect, exacerbating the shortage of marriage-age women elsewhere, particularly China.
"There is a long-standing son preference throughout Asia, but now it is happening in the context of this 21st century marriage market," said Valerie M. Hudson, a political scientist and author of "Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia's Surplus Male Population."
The preference for sons has translated in South Korea into 113 male births for every 100 females. Ultrasound became widely available here in the 1980s, and the first generation screened for gender before birth is now coming of marriageable age.
But perhaps an even larger factor in the disappearance of young women from the countryside is their tendency to move to the cities in search of careers or urban husbands or both.
"South Korean women don't want to live in the countryside. They don't want to do hard labor, getting their skin brown in the sun. The cities are less traditional, less patriarchal," said Yang Soon-mi, a social worker with the Ministry of Agriculture.
The wife shortage is most severe here in the southwestern region of Jeolla, the traditional heartland of Korea. This is one of the few swaths of South Korea where the rice paddies have not yet been cemented over for gray slabs of high-rise apartments. On a hot August day, the air is thick with the chirping of the cicadas, and red peppers are drying in the sun on the pavement.
On roads cutting through the fields, marriage brokers advertise their services on billboards.
"Vietnamese marriage," reads a billboard in shocking pink on an otherwise quiet country lane.
The wife shortage is having a devastating effect on the agricultural communities, already threatened by urbanization and free trade. Without wives, young men won't want to stay on the farm. Without wives, there are no babies to replenish the stock of farmers.
South Korea and Taiwan are tied for the lowest birthrates in the world, 1.1 per woman, according to a study released last month by the Washington-based Population Reference Bureau. Unlike China, South Korea does not limit births, and is in fact offering tax incentives to encourage more children.
Many of the villages around Jeolla are virtual ghost towns, with a sparse population of elderly residents and hardly a child in sight.
"There are only old people around here," said Le Pho, a 22-year-old Vietnamese woman who married a South Korean a year ago and is now pregnant. Her child will be the first born in the village, Seogok-ri, in more than 20 years. Despite a regulation, widely ignored, prohibiting doctors from divulging the sex of the fetus, Le knows already that she is having a boy.
"My husband and mother-in-law are very happy. They've treated me very well since they found out the baby is a boy," Le said. " (emphasis mine: Thank God, it was a boy...otherwise another poor little girl would probably wind up floating face down in a rice paddy over there.) The neighbors too. When they see my belly, they are amazed."
In fact, the foreign wives are key to rescuing some of these farm villages from extinction. (emphasis mine: why not let them go extinct???? It's continuing the line of hate mongers of women...what's the point?????)
In a nearby village, Oaktae-ri, there are five young children, four of them born to foreign women. Park Jeong-su, 46, whose Chinese-born wife recently gave birth to a daughter, said that all the Korean women in his village moved to Seoul and other cities because they didn't like the farming life.
"When I was a young man, I could find women to date, women who would sleep with me. But nobody who would go to the countryside," said Park, a powerfully built and handsome man with a roguish sense of humor. "Whenever I met a woman I liked, the first question she would ask was, 'Where is your apartment?' "
After more than a decade of looking for a Korean wife, Park went to the Philippines. He didn't meet anyone he liked. He then tried the Unification Church, which has often matched up international couples for group weddings. That didn't work either. He then accepted a friend's invitation to go to Harbin in northeastern China, where he was introduced by a friend's cousin to Yi Ok-ran.
Yi is ethnic Korean and already spoke the language.
"All the women in my village wanted to go to South Korea. We heard that life is good, that people are wealthy," said Yi, cuddling her infant daughter. As a result, she said, in her village in Tonghe County there are also only old people and few children. "There are so many old bachelors."
Many of the brides in South Korea come from the Mekong Delta region south of Ho Chi Minh City. The region is poor, and provincial authorities have been fairly liberal about licensing marriages between Vietnamese women and foreigners.
Newlywed Nguyen Thu Dong said she agreed to marry Jeong Ha-gi only to escape a life of certain poverty.
"A lot of the girls I know are getting married to foreigners. Men from Hong Kong, men from South Korea. Even if they have a Vietnamese boyfriend they like, they want to marry a foreigner to get away," said Nguyen, who is from Can Tho, a town about 80 miles southwest of Ho Chi Minh City.
Nguyen said that her parents told her on her 19th birthday they had been approached by the village matchmaker about setting her up with a foreigner.
"At first I said no," she said. "I was working at the time as a housemaid. But then I came back to my parents' home. I saw how badly they were doing financially, so I agreed."
She said she had no idea how much her family received. Another Vietnamese bride married to a South Korean said that the standard amount was $300.
The men, on the other hand, pay about $15,000 for a complete package that is supposed to include everything from the interpreter to the wedding gown.
Jeong, who had been married once before briefly, said he was talked into going to Vietnam in March by a younger brother. He joined a group of 12 men, from their mid-30s to their 50s.
The women were all younger than 25. They were paraded in small groups in front of the men, who were told to jot down the numbers of those they liked.
"It was like a Miss Korea pageant," Jeong recalled with faint distaste.
Nguyen said she was appalled to be wearing a number and almost ran away before it was her turn to appear in front of the men.
Both have the same complaint — that the interpretation was inadequate.
Jeong said that when they met, he told his prospective wife immediately that he was a farmer and that she replied that she grew up on a farm and liked rural living.
Nguyen said she was told that her suitor was an office worker in the city.
"He is very kind to me and I am grateful for that. But if I knew we were to live in the countryside, I wouldn't have come," Nguyen confided later. (emphasis mine: Exactly. How many American men go abroad lying to these women telling them they are rich, when many of them are the dregs of society that no decent American woman would want.)
Unable to communicate on their own, the couple quickly seized upon the opportunity to exchange a few thoughts through an interpreter who was accompanying a reporter.
"When will you let me visit my family in Vietnam?" she asked plaintively.
The reply came back: "When you give me a baby." Emphasis mine: vulture circling. My advice: watch your back Nguyen.)
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-bride21sep21,0,6352703.story?page=2&coll=la-home-headlines
I got a shiver down my spine reading this last line. It reminded me of a nature special I saw which had a flock of vultures circling a lioness struggling to give birth, alone and helpless in the bush.
AND God only knows how many of Nguyen’s girl babies will be murdered before she produces a boy child for this brute. It was very interesting to me that the author mentioned Marlon Brando actually, as Brando was another one always running around in foreign countries bringing women back here to take advantage of them. Everytime you turned around he was getting some foreign woman pregnant and then having a long-drawn out custody fight with them...he got custody of his kids eventually and most of them turned out very badly. The one boy going to jail for a murder and the daughter killing herself in Tahiti after losing custody of her own baby.
Anyway, we can’t do anything to help Nguyen, but if this story shows us nothing else it’s that the entire trade in foreign brides must be brought to an end in the US.
Case in point: the whole Genia Shockome situation is a good example. Bottom line Yevgenia Shockome should never have been here in the first place. She would have been safe right now in Russia with whatever children she gave birth to over there, in her homeland, living with their mother as children were meant to be.
Same thing with this Sadie Loeliger situation, another one of these immigrant marriage/abuse/custody cases…
And there are thousands more just like them too numerous to mention here.
Anyway, let’s just say no to this nonsense.
Men shouldn’t be allowed to troll foreign countries looking for gullible and desperate young women to bring here, so they can steal the fruit of their wombs.
Period.
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