I thought this was relevant to some of the comments Polish Knight had been making about sperm donors so I re-posted it. I came across it when I was looking for the post debunking those stats on single mothers.
Anyway enjoy:
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More nonsense from another sperm donor.
Of course, I believe he could win this particular case in spite of the fact that he has only ONE FAMILY LAW EXPERT supporting him versus 21 supporting the mother.
AND no, despite the article's attempted spin on this situation, it has nothing to do with the law just catching up to new technology. Use of sperm donors has existed for decades now. It's quite a common and simple procedure.
What has changed is not the technology but the legal climate favoring men. Who even when they, themselves, make the decision to be nothing but sperm donors STILL wish to retain the legal option to change their mind afterwards.
I mean what if the woman had a handicapped child and he would have been on the hook for lifetime child support, would he have shown up to contest his original agreement to be a sperm donor then????
Of course, all fathers rights nuts will be supporting this guy even through they are constantly screaming about men having no legal right before birth. Many men want legal rights to interfere with abortions or for men to have the right to a 'paper abortion', for instance, where they can opt out of paying child support.
YET when they get decision-making power, such as this man had, they also wish the prerogative to change their minds at anytime after the fact and throw some mother and her children lives in turmoil, similar to what that recreational sperm donor did to Bridget Marks and her poor twins in New York.
Frankly, this guy exercised his right to a paper abortion and now wants to rescind it...
Nobody forced him to donate sperm which he knew was going to be used for this woman to artifically inseminate herself with...they never even had sex or any sort of relationship. So he can't even claim the standard "I was 'tricked' into getting her pregnant" like many men in these situations try to claim. He went into this with both eyes wide open...
It's simply outfreakinrageous that he should be allowed to rescind his decision now and throw those kids lives as well as the life of their mother into such turmoil.
Outfreakinrageous.
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/16151079.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
Posted on Sun, Dec. 03, 2006
Kansas lawsuit could be landmark
The case involves a sperm donor who wants parental rights to twins born last year.
By DAVID KLEPPER
Family law experts across the country are watching as Kansas’ Supreme Court takes up a case that could decide the parental rights of sperm donors.
The suit, set for arguments before the court Monday, concerns a Shawnee County man who donated sperm to a friend. The woman underwent artificial insemination and delivered twins in May 2005. The man argues that he always intended to act as a father to the children. No agreement was put into writing, however, and a judge later decided the man had no rights as a father.
That’s because Kansas law denies parental rights to sperm donors unless they have a written agreement with the mother specifying that they will act as father. The 1994 law was designed to protect children conceived through artificial insemination from frivolous custody disputes, as well as to safeguard donors from child support lawsuits. (Emphasis mine: Exactly right, the law protects everybody concerned, especially the children protecting them from frivolous custody disputes.)
The unmarried woman, who, like the donor, is identified only by initials in court documents, argues that she never intended to share parenting with the man. She chose the man, whom she had known for 10 years, because of his good medical history.
“He is a donor only,” wrote the woman’s attorney, Susan Barker Andrews. Andrews argued that the man should have put his intentions in writing if he wanted to be a father.
The man appealed his case to the high court, arguing that the law is unconstitutional.
His attorney, Kurt James of Topeka, said his client had discussions with the woman about sharing parental responsibilities.
He said a better law would require donors to sign an agreement waiving their rights as parents.
The Supreme Court is expected to rule in February.
The verdict could affect laws governing sperm donation throughout the country.
(Emphasis mine: Family law experts have lined up on both sides of the case. Ummm ONE person, Linda Henry Elrod, does NOT fit the definition of plural experts. She is ONE expert.
Linda Henry Elrod, a family law professor at Washburn University, filed a legal brief in which she sided with the donor.) Elrod argues that to require a man to have a written agreement before he has parental rights over his biological children is to violate his constitutional rights. The law, she wrote, “cannot take away a constitutional right to be a parent” without due process.
(Emphasis mine: But 21 other family law experts across the country filed a brief supporting the woman.) They argued that the Kansas law in effect protects the interests of children created through sperm donation, as well as the mothers and the donors, by requiring any agreements to be set down in writing.
One of those professors, Nancy Polikoff, a family law professor at American University, said “biology is not enough” to give the man parental rights. The law assumes the mother (and any husband or partner she might have) will have custody when it comes to children of sperm donors. Without the Kansas law, she said, women could face custody battles from donors, or donors could find themselves being asked to support a child they never intended to know.
Both professors agreed that the case, the first of its kind in Kansas, is blazing new legal territory.
“It’s the Wild West out there,” Elrod said. “The advances in technology are just way ahead of where the law is.”
To reach David Klepper, call (785) 354-1388 or send e-mail to dklepper@kcstar.com.
posted by NYMOM | Saturday, December 09, 2006
4 Comments:
LeRoy Dissing said...
I agree with Elrod on this one. Parental rights belong to the biological parent unless they waive those rights. I am not sure how donor clinics work but I would not be surprised if they do not make sperm donors sign a waiver of any parental rights they may have from children produced from their sperm. I do NOT see this has causing as big a deal because signing a waiver by someone willing to dontate/sell their sperm is not going to cause them any problem.
In this case, I believe their should have been an agreement drafted by an attorney and signed by the donor waiving their parental rights. It protects him as much as her. I don't see it as protecting the child since I believe the child will want to know who they came from at some point in the future.
2:04 PM
NYMOM said...
I see and why should they have had to draft a special 'agreement' when Kansas law apparently already covers it...Because as usual men are allowed to skirt the law whenever they feel like it, that's why.
ONE out of 21 experts and you agree with the ONE who supports what is an obvious sperm donor.
Of course it's going to cause a 'big deal' as few women will wish to use the services of sperm donors anymore if they have to wait until AFTER the birth of a child in order to ensure a waiver is signed...since what's to stop the sperm donors from changing their mind after the child is born and suing for custody in order to get money and other financial benefits from the mother????
Nothing of course...
Clearly if you treat obvious sperm donors just like other 'parents' then the whole waiver business won't be legal until AFTER the birth...and a lot of Judges won't allow you to waive your parental rights anyway, unless there is another person to step in and fill the void...as in a single mother waiving her rights in order to surrender her child for adoption.
But in the ordinary course of events Judges don't allow it, especially with fathers as too many of them would do it to get out of paying child support.
Twenty one family law experts are clearly upset about it, as it leaves a loophole that a greedy sperm donor can drive a truck through...and yes it will harm the children...because in spite of what you say FEW children of sperm donors are that interested in the men who donated. This is just spin from men trying to be in charge of everything again and make sperm donors equivalent to mothers who give up children for adoption.
As you well know I posted an article a while back clearly showly that in places where they have allowed adult children to contact sperm donors, NONE took advantage of the law.
None of the adult children were interested. That's just spin on your part to say that the child would care about a sperm donor.
6:25 PM
LeRoy Dissing said...
If it is as you say a "spin", then there should not be any problem in making it a choice for the child. I have read more than a few blogs which would contradict what you claim and especially when it comes to adoption which I know is a different scenario.
The case in point is about a KNOWN man who dontated his sperm to a woman friend. They actually discussed parenting roles prior to the child being born. This is not the case of an annoymous donor. In this case, the man may be granted parental rights since he was a KNOWN quanity and expressed his desire to parent prior to the birth of the child. I see little difference between this scenario than her becoming pregnant by natural means with a live-in.
7:13 PM
NYMOM said...
Well as you know many bloggers already have a point of view and frequently tailor their blogs to support it. YET when one society actually implemented some of the changes you suggested no adult children of sperm donors followed through with a request to meet these sperm donors...
NONE.
So being curious about something doesn't always equate with caring about it...
I'm curious about many things, just not curious enough to go to any trouble in many cases to bother following through...
AND btw, that's the sperm donor's story that they discussed parenting roles. The mother's story is that they didn't, he knew very well he was expected to be just a sperm donor.
Why would he expect to have parental rights in a state that had laws that sperm donors have no rights unless they spell it out ahead of time????
The law is pretty clear to most people, even those who never used a sperm donor.
Actually, it's pretty common knowledge generally that sperm donors don't have parental rights, after all sperm donors have been around for decades now.
It's not like it's a new technology anymore, like the article tried to spin it. This was sooooo new that it caught the law by surprise. No, sperm donations as a way for women to get pregnant has been around for decades now. There is nothing new or unusual about it.
So again, why would he think he would have parental rights?
The big difference between this (and there is one, although you and your cronies would never admit it) and getting someone pregnant through 'natural means' as you call it, is that doing it through natural means obviously you'd expect to automatically have parental rights.
AND you would be right.
This way of inseminating a woman, as every sperm donor knows since donating sperm has been around for decades now, is that a sperm donor doesn't usually have any rights...
This is a very standard expectation of a sperm donor to have no parental rights.
So this is nonsense that he expected to have a parental role and this is no different from having children by natural means. There is a big difference and I believe he knew it...
10:57 AM
8 comments:
Question
Hello NYMOM.
It would be very helpful to me if you could clarify your position on the so-called 'rights' or non-rights of men as fathers in this situation.
If men don't have "rights" as "sperm donors" unless contractually specified, and you agree with this, then do you think that "child support" for non-married people should be eliminated? Or is this a case of men not having rights but burdens by default?
In regards to this case, this isn't a simple "sperm donor" case but rather of a he-said/she-said issue. He says he wasn't a simple sperm donor and she disagrees. This isn't the same as anonymous sperm donors going to clinics looking to claim babies years later...
I think I said many times that unmarried women should NOT be able to take a man into court for child support, although I would let the state take an unmarried man or woman into court IF the resultant child became a public burden.
I also stated that unmarried men should NOT be able to take a woman into court for visitation or custody.
These are things people would have to negotiate between themselves as they did in the past.
The ONLY time the state should get involved is if abuse or neglect is involved. Or a child is placed on public benefits of one kind or another.
That was Charles Murray's position back in the '80s when he wrote the infamous Bell Curve.
Recognizing that it is mostly the dopes of our society doing unmarried births (still true, for the most part), he advocated keeping the rules real real simple.
No marriage, no rights, no goodies.
But he also favored cutting the other illegitimate daddy, the state, out of the deal as well.
By ending the public benefits that encourage births among the least suitable parents and making unwed birth the financial disaster it once was.
Which is probably stronger medicine than our system can swallow, so we'll continue to have the least fit producing more offspring for the more fit to support.
At least until the Muslims swallow up Western society and unwed motherhood ceases to be a statistically significant phenomenon, for obvious reasons. I hope I won't be around for that.
Richard
Yes Richard, my position is just the opposite of Charles Murray's then.
I say that as long as people are not coming to others looking for handouts, they can do what they want with their lives. Marry, not marry, father works mother is home, mother works father is home or both parents work and use a trained chimp to raise thier kids.
I'm okay with it.
As long as the children are happy, healthy and safe it's up to their parents how they order their lives.
But Murray was wrong in many ways.
One thing that has been demonstrated recently in a pretty thorough study is that in states with strict enforcement of child support single mother birthrates dipped over 20%. That's a pretty big drop and I guaranteed you that most of the dip is in the communities that Charles Murray CLAIMED were just having kids to get money.
So women, even poor, young, uneducated ones, will change their behaviors if they see that it will lead to losing their children. What woman is going to make such an investment in having children only to risk having them snatched away a few months later????
So Murray underestimated the mother/child bond as men are often apt to do...
You're saying that child support enforcement leads to poor women losing their children?
Not following that. Unless maybe this is more of that BS about men suing for custody to avoid paying child support.
If so, not buying it. Poor women lose their kids all the fucking time and and least of all to the fathers. CPS takes them away all the time and puts them with fosters or with grandparents if they're willing.
They even have a nickname for CPS: "the baby-snatchers."
And poor women see kids all around them dead from drugs and crime, or carted off to juvie or jail.
None of it deters their reproduction one bit.
And Murray wasn't saying these gals have kids just to get the money. More like, they don't worry enough about having illegitimate kids because they know the benefits are there.
If child support enforcement changes anyone's behavior, ever think that maybe it motivates the guys to put on some of those free condoms that Planned Parenthood works so hard to get out?
Which is good for everybody.
Richard
I'm saying that stricter child support enforcement leads to more custody battles in our legal system which is currently infested with politically correct gender neutralized feminists. This has been going on since the late 80 early 90s...
I guess the word has now effectively spread, so there has been a dip of about 20% or so in the ratio of single mothers in those states with stricter child support enforcement.
I believe that this will also translate, if anyone cared to look, into a substantial dip in the population of African Americans in those states. Remember single mothers have been the engines of growth for that community. Let's face it if those woman had waited for a marriage to a husband with a good job in order to have any kids, their entire population would have been extinct about 50 years after the Civil War.
But that was the entire point when the idea of child support was first foisted off on the community after the riots in the 60s...a spiteful and mean-spirited attempt to destroy these people that has backfired and now haunts us all.
"But that was the entire point when the idea of child support was first foisted off on the community after the riots in the 60s...a spiteful and mean-spirited attempt to destroy these people that has backfired and now haunts us all."
Wow! That's got to be the most far-fetched conspiracy theory I've ever heard. Right up there with the government creating AIDS to wipe out the black population.
Turning to child support was nothing more or less than an effort to keep the monetary demands of single mothers from swamping the economy.
A "spiteful and mean-spirited attempt to destroy these people" would have been more like simply eliminating the public benefits altogether. Turning to child support to defray the costs wasn't mean-spirited at all. It was very moderate and logical under the circumstances.
But if it also gets more of those guys to put a glove on it, hey, so much the better.
Richard
Sorry I didn't respond but I didn't see this comment reflected in my emails. There's something slightly whacky about this google blog system, or maybe I'm not handling it correctly. Not sure.
But anyway: some public policy experts, at the time that the child support policies were enacted, saw the mean-spirited intent behind them. It was nothing but an attempt to shift the blame for the condition of Afr. Americans away from the 100 year post-emancipation denial of economic opportunities and foist it off onto the backs of their own families.
A more advanced form of blaming your mother or some other woman for everything men do wrong.
The changes were instituted under the Johnson Administration; but like many other public policy changes, the true impact didn't become apparent for a decade or two after the fact around the 80s/90s. The changes were made after a commission was put together to identify the 'causes' of the lack of advancement of Afr. Americans after the riots.
Anyway they came to the conclusion that the main problem was not a history of racism denying economic opportunity to black youth; but the fact that too many Afr. American men were abandoning their families and not providing enough economic support to their children.
The original intent behind child support was to reimburse the states for any assistance a poor woman needed to raise her kids. Initially it was just reimbursement for 'welfare' any actual money given to her. But now it's morphing into ANY assistance including state-supported child care in order for a mother to go to WORK...Eventually it will be for anything: medical, food stamps, housing and not to be able to pay it is considered criminal. Many many poor men are sent to jail and now, many poor women are starting to join them.
I actually used to correspond with a poor woman who lived in the south and hasn't been allowed to see her children in three years. She had lost custody to her ex-husband. Anyway she was under court-ordered house arrest, only able to go out to work and back (they had some kind of electronic bracket on her) and most of her paycheck was taken to pay child support. She was actually about to get evicted as she couldn't pay her rent on what she was left with...and many poor men are in the same situation as you know.
So this entire situation has gotten out of control, with even middle class families being dragged into it now (who never had a problem with collection of public benefits). Now the child support they pay is usually forcibly garnished through the state-run system that then uses those numbers to get reimbursed from the federal government for collecting child support monies. The federal government reimburses the state $1 for every $2 they collect or something of that nature.
So no one can address this issue properly to reform it, if we continue denying its ugly origins. Trying to compare this to some nut saying the government causes AIDS is not a valid argument. Why not try to address the actual child support issue instead of blowing it off.
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