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.
18 comments:
No surprise that this from Georgia. Georgia is a hotbed of FR rights. Some of the most blatantly vicious cases of mothers losing custody come from Georgia, like this woman named Wendy.
Wendy Titelman.
Are you talking about her????
I just can't get up any sympathy for that woman. She was a second wife who actively aided and abetted her husband in getting custody of his kids from his first wife...
THEN he turns around and does the same thing to her and we are ALL supposed to fly to her assistance????
Sorry...
I just think that woman have to use their heads in these situations...and if you are going to help some jackoff stab one of your sisters in the heart by taking her kids from her, well then I have little sympathy for you when the same jerk turns around and pulls the same stunt on you...
Wendy Titelman reaped what she sowed...
Well you must have sown a gorilla cause that is what you look like!!!! hahahahahahahahahha
Sigh...
You really are useless...
BTW, you might have fooled Red State Feminist on her blog, but you don't fool me. I believe you are that anonymous pest who keeps posting on her site.
This whole Martha name business of yours doesn't fool me in the least.
A lot of his writing style and the words he uses are the exact same ones you use here.
Idiot.
What court gave you custody of a child???
Adoption does not support Motherhood. And adopton agencies use the lack of clear law for fathers to totally seamroll over any father's wishes in order to finalize a "sucessful" adoption and put the profit in their pocket.
If caring about women's right is something that is important to you, then you shoud really look futher into the truth of adoption ...becasue really there are very few issues that rape women of their motherhood quite like it.
The father's wanting to parent thier children, even if teens, are not the problem..the angencies that enable this to happen are.
"...The father's wanting to parent thier children, even if teens, are not the problem..."
Oh but yes they are.
They are trying to give themselves undeserved rights through the courts...rights which historically men never had anywhere and aren't entitled to now...
That's precisely the problem. That teenage recreational sperm donor should have had no more right to contest that adoption then the man in the moon...none...
AND what the ultimate result of these collective actions by men will be is that there will no more adoption, more abortions or teenage girls deciding to keep infants that would have had a much better life being adopted.
This is precisely the fault of the greed and control issues of men. Trying to 'bogart' woman and children through the power of the state and give themselves undeserved rights that God, evolution and/or nature has already decided the male of the species is not entitled to, as their investment in the entire bringing forth life process is minimal...
More selfishness of men destroying the lives of others...that's what this is about, don't try to blame 'adoption agencies'...They have helped millions of kids over the years get into good homes and if they make some money off of the process so what????
This young man did everything right in this case. I read a case where an adoption agency was suing a birthmother over her twins. When the twins were born black, she knew who the father was. She did the right thing and gave the twins to their birth father. In my personal situation, my birth father did everything right. Granted he had an extramarital affair, he still went back to his wife, told her everything, and they both wanted to adopt me. Because he did this, my own birth mother got revenge and gave me to someone else. Now my life wasn't a bad life but his rights as father were denied. Now she has the rights and we still can't make contact. She gave up her rights.
A child deserves to know both parents. It doesn't matter which adult's best interests in this. Its the child that matters. Adoption agencies are very much to blame. They use unethical practices to get children so that they can earn a buck. Its adoption agencies that you need to be angry at. They use a woman's insecurity about herself against her. I have read studies that state this unequivocally. Check out the Alan Guttmacher Institute webpage. Check out the Evan B. Donaldson website and their study on birthmothers. I know countless women who have had their parents, society, and many others who had their children taken from them. By the way the adoption industry is a 1.6 BILLION Dollar business. Its adoptees, birth parents, and adoptive parents that suffer the consequences of the unethical practices.
Adoption agencies also earned chump change as you say.. Each adoption goes from $30,000 up to $100,000.
By the way, a teenage girl has to have permission from her family to get an abortion. She doesn't have to get permission from her parents to put her child up for adoption. She can do this as young as age ten in most states.
A friend of mine walked in a crisis pregnany center with her husband and two year old son. She was there to get a verification pregnancy test for medicaid. She was asked three times to give her child up for adoption in front of her family. She is happily married. She was praying for a daughter this time. Then she gets harassed to give up her child. Adoption agencies aren't corrupt give me a break. This happened this year in May.
Well we are definatly NOT going to see eye to eye on this one. Adoption agencies have "help" themselves to millions of children be seprated from their very good and willing mothers. And as one of those mothers, I do have an issue that they made a hefty profit off of my niativity and foolishness.
And I do think that an able willing father has a much right to his offspring as the mother. Not the man on the moon, not an agency, not the giovernment, not the desired adoptive parents, but the man/boy whatever that father's a child.
And if this actually makes adoption a thing of the past (which it won't becaise the demand for infants is too high, they will just find another way around it), then THAT would be a good thing in my book.It would be a much better thing if women DID parent thier children rather than placing hem for adoption.
Once again, it would behove you to look further into the rights of single mothers being abused by adoption before you lament it's possible passing. Try Origins USA, or Exiled Mothers.com. Soul of Adoption is also a good source of information. I think you might be surprised by what you find and how it changes your perception.
AS a woman who has lived with the loss of my child for over half my life, and DID participate in the "removal" of a father's rights..I can tell you without a doubt, that it really did not serve me well, nor even my child. And it sure doesn't feel great now.
I guess you are not going to post my replies. Such a shame. All that we adoptees, birth parents, and adoptive parents want of you is to educate yourself truly on adoption. I even did two posts on the corruption of adoption agencies. Doesn't take much to read about it. I am sure you heard of Louise Wise? What if in this situation things were reversed? You would be raising holy hell. What if it was the woman's parents that did this? The one at fault in this situation is the adoption agency/attorney.
First of all I'm happy you were adopted and ultimately had a good life. I think it's a little much for you to assume that your mother decided to let you be adopted as opposed to letting your father and stepmother raise you JUST FOR REVENGE as you say...
You don't know what your life would have been if you had been raised by a stepmother, particularly one whose husband cheated on her with your mother and had you.
That's a very small-minded reason to come up with for why your mother wanted you to be adopted. I'm a little surprised at a full-grown woman saying something like this. Most adoptees when they are old enough to understand, are grateful that their mothers saw to it that they had a good life by giving them up for adoption...
Countless studies have showed that mothers who give their children up for adoption are more mature and stable then single mothers who keep their children...so just because a mother cannot care for her child herself doesn't mean she's okay with dumping them off on anybody...especially not another teenager...
You have a very distorted view of life I can tell you that if you think adoption is the worse thing that can happen to a kid...
"As a woman who lived with the loss of her child for over half of her life..."
Well what in the heck do you think losing custody of a child is...it's another form of terminating the rights of the non-custodial mother or father and for a lot less reason then most courts can terminate your rights to adopt your kid out.
If you think your situation would have been any better if the courts had handed your kid over to an 'able willing father' you're dreaming. Your situation would have been much the same if not worse. So I don't get where you're coming from???
You lost your child to adoption and now you're arguing that it would have been better to lose your children to an able willing father...how do you know this????How do you even know he would have been a good father to the child? Are you aware that many fathers dump the responsibility of their children off on their girlfriends or some other woman? AND step-person abuse of children is very high????
You seem to be arguing from a very confused position.
Anyway this is not a place to either defend or condemn adoption agencies. As I said before you and this other woman are very confused if you think that adoption is the worse thing that can happen to a kid...
This is a site supportive of MOTHERS, not fathers...so you'll have to find another place to beat the drums about fathers' rights...
Amyadoptee commented:
I hope you don't mind but I used one of your comments on fathers rights in my blog. I write about adoptees, birth parents, and adoptive parents. Maybe you could stop by and read what adoption is really about.
NYMOM replied:
I erased your comment while trying to post it but I reposted it in this fashion.
No...I don't care if you use my comment on your blog.
But I'm not going to go there, only because this post was not about adoption agencies...it was not even really about adoption...
You appear to have missed the main point of what this site and this particular post is all about...it's about mothers vs. fathers rights. AND what happens when they are not clearly delinated right from the start...
A child cannot be born into two separate warring camps, each with the same decision making power over their life. When parents are married, they are one legal entity. So it makes sense for both, from the moment of birth, to have the exact same legal rights.
It does not make sense, however, when parents were never married to treat their parental rights in the same fashion as a married couple...that's what not fair to a child...
You have your issue which appears to be a war on adoption agencies.
Fine...that's what blogging is about people expressing themselves freely about the issues that are important to them.
But let me be clear, again, adoption is not my issue. It happens to overlap with my issue which is the rights of women in their role as mothers.
Okay...
Anyway, good luck with your blog...
Peace, have a good life, whatever...
quote: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? end of quote
How do you know this teenager doesn't have a support group that's ready willing and able to help this young man handle his responsibility? Why shouldn't this young man have the same rights as the mother? Why shouldn't he be allowed to raise his child? I think you need to get the facts before you rush to judgement, in this case or any others. Should a mother be allowed to give her child away just becasue she doesn't want to raise him or her? Should a you or I be able to go take a child away from a biological parent just because we assume we or someone else can do a better job raising the child. (keeping in mind that the child doesn't have a say in this)
What rational thinking human being would want to take a child away from a biological parent, especilly if that parent has the means to raise the child? What difference does age make, especilly it this young man has a support group willing to help, and what difference dose it make it the father is as you say, a "recreational sperm donor." Does that mean he can't be a good father? I've got news for you, most of us were conceived out of "reactional sex" by our parents.
Where is it written that a man can't be a good father just because he and the mother are not married? Certainly, this is not the ideal way, but the fact remains that it happens. A father should have rights, just as the mother does. Especilly, if the mother does not want the child, and that's exactly what happened in this case.
How do you know this teenager doesn't have a support group that's ready willing and able to help this young man handle his responsibility? Why shouldn't this young man have the same rights as the mother? Why shouldn't he be allowed to raise his child? I think you need to get the facts before you rush to judgement, in this case or any others. Should a mother be allowed to give her child away just becasue she doesn't want to raise him or her? Should a you or I be able to go take a child away from a biological parent just because we assume we or someone else can do a better job raising the child. (keeping in mind that the child doesn't have a say in this)
What rational thinking human being would want to take a child away from a biological parent, especilly if that parent has the means to raise the child? What difference does age make, especilly it this young man has a support group willing to help, and what difference dose it make it the father is as you say, a "recreational sperm donor." Does that mean he can't be a good father? I've got news for you, most of us were conceived out of "reactional sex" by our parents.
Where is it written that a man can't be a good father just because he and the mother are not married? Certainly, this is not the ideal way, but the fact remains that it happens. A father should have rights, just as the mother does. Especilly, if the mother does not want the child, and that's exactly what happened in this case.
This issue was not about adoption really or about whether or not an unmarried or married man could or could not be a good father. As if the mother didn't object to him raising this child, guess what: I would have no objection either...quite frankly I could care less.
This issue is about clearly outlining the presumptive and stronger legal rights that a mother needs to have vis-a-vis any children she bears...
Since if we don't do this, adoption and many other things we take for granted today will become a moot issue. As once young women and their families realize they can be overruled on placement of their infants after birth, they will just have abortions or keep the children themselves.
Adoption will drop off the radar.
Okay.
So this is not an argument about what a great young man this is or how great some men are as fathers whether or not they are married.
That's a side issue and a distraction from the real issue here which is that mothers do and should have priority in this area.
As God, evolution, nature whatever you wish to designate this entity/force as has already decided the issue...AND it has decided that women in her role as mother is the person best suited to decide the best interest of the young of every species, as well as our own.
Okay.
If men don't like it, tough...
Their role has been limited in the life bearing process by a higher authority then these courts they've designated to favor themselves; and thus, so must their after-birth rights be limited as well...
That's justice, fairness to all parties, etc., recognizing men's minimal role in this and not giving them more then their due...
You continue trying to not recognize what this is about and trying to act like it's about whether or not this one man can raise a child by himself...it's not about this one person...it's about a more basic issue with far larger scope then that. One that impacts the future of every woman who must make a choice about whether or not to bring a child into this world...if age old natural laws can be overturned by courts men created to favor themselves...
That's the issue...
Let me also add, adoption is a WONDERFUL thing, IF the mother and FATHER agree to it, and/or the biological parents are not able to care for the child.
Yes adoption is a wonderful thing.
Unfortunately today we have many sullen malcontents and other misfits who are determined to screw it up, like much else in our society that was good.
Now I'm going to lock this post so no more comments can be added to it, as I'm getting tired of you playing stupid and ignoring everything I said about the comments here.
This post is NOT about adoption nor is this blog about adoption. It's about women in their role as mothers and that's the ONLY issue I'm interested in.
Post a Comment