What rights?

Nov 23, 2007

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“A woman who became pregnant after a one-night stand has been given the right to keep the birth a secret from the father. The Court of Appeal ruling came after a county court ordered the 20-year-old to tell both her parents and the father. She said she wanted the baby girl, who is now 19 weeks old, adopted at birth without the knowledge of either them or her father.

Lady Justice Arden said the father’s rights had not been violated because he did not have any to violate.” BBC

This comes a day or so after I was reading an news article about how important fathers were Peers attack ‘fatherless’ IVF bid .

Hmm.

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Comments

16 responses to “What rights?”

HelenHaricot
23 November 2007
Just commented on patch of puddles! i believe fatherhood to be more than accidental genetic donation alone! however i think the ‘rights’ issue is not particularly a simple one to sort out, particularly in an unplanned pregnancy in 2 adults who have had no relationship above a single event – which may or may not have been entirely consensual, as we have no evidence here . there are indeed no legal rights as the law stands, but maybe an ethical debate over what rights and therefore responsibilites it might be thought to be reasonable for the male genetic donor [ 🙂 ] to have would be interesting.
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Tim
23 November 2007
What got me was the contrast of the two stories. Apparently, fathers don’t matter unless the mother is a lesbian. Then they are terribly important.
I am not quite sure what I think about this case, but I think I would probably go with something along the lines that the individual who has rights in this is the child.
Ok, so the mother can’t be arsed with it, but why does that mean the child is deprived of the rest of its natural family.
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HelenHaricot
23 November 2007
well, this is my POP stance, and I would agree that there should be some effort i considering other alternative carers within the childs family including grandparents and biological father. i don’t think that the woman should e compelled into this though. there are to many ifs and buts with relationships to legislate fairly, but there has obviously been an attempt made to counsel her and persuade her before the court case to consider this, which is reasonable for the child. hmmmmmm. some decisions of intervention and non intervention are difficult [particularly as I have spent the last 2 days on a v specific kind of ethical dilemma course!]
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HelenHaricot said,
November 23, 2007 @ 10:26 pm
i think part of the adoption process is seeing whether there are alternative carers within the family who would be willing to bring up the child, and this is seen as best practice. i imagine this is why there was a push for parental involvement – as possible alternative carers, and also for the father.
As to whether this should ever have proceeded to a court caseâ€¦
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3
HelenHaricot said,
November 23, 2007 @ 10:31 pm
fwiw, if chris had had a child by a one night stand [prior to us meeting, otherwise no further one night stands possibleâ€¦] and he became aware that there was a child up for adoption, i would imagine he would have seriously considered bringing up the child, and probably would have.
This â€˜fatherâ€™ albeit in genetics only may also be similarly minded
i think when the mother doesnâ€™t wish to bring up the child, it is important to look for the alternatives. i think the ethics behind compelling are dodgy though. i also think that alternative related cares who chose not to bring up the child should not be then allowed to impede adoption – something perhaps this mother was concerned about. and a generous dollop of counselling was hopefully given.
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T-bird
23 November 2007
These sorts of things are never easy, especially as we don’t actually know many of the facts. We don’t know if the mother felt there was a very good reason to take the child right out of that “natural family” in the hopes of it being placed within a (hopefully) stable, loving family elsewhere. It may be nothing to do with her not being arsed, if she really didn’t care do you think she would have carried the child for 9 months? (and no, that’s not a dig at any woman who feels that she cannot carry on with a pregnancy for emotional or physical reasons, merely taht the option is there if she had chosen to close that chapter early)
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Tim
23 November 2007
Boy: Where’s my mum?
Council Official: Sorry mate, she doesn’t want you.
Boy: Ohhh. But I’ve got a dad. Where’s my dad?
Council Official: Ssssh!!! He doesn’t know about you. Your mum says we have got to find some strangers for you to live with.
Boy: But, but….. What about my grandparents? They’ll look after me, won’t they? Can I see my grandma and granddad and ask them?
Council Official: Ssssh!!! No, your mum said we weren’t to tell them about you, you are her little secret.
Boy: What about what I want? I want my dad. I want my grandma! I want my granddad!
Council Official: That’s tough. You have no rights and no say in what happens to you. The only person who gets a say is your mum. And she doesn’t want you.

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Jan
23 November 2007
Today I saw a young child whose teenaged parents didn’t really want it when it was born but didn’t actually make a decision about adoption. It has spent some time living with its Dad, some time with its grandmother, some time with its great-grandmother, some time with another grandmother. Its other grandfather is not allowed to see it because he once offended someone on the other side of the family. This has resulted in depression for which I prescribed prozac. At least 2 two or three other family members have been mentally ill over the past four years. It is currently living with a grandmother and an uncle, and grandmother is doing an OK job, but this child is growing up thinking that it has plenty of family and isn’t really wanted by any of them.
There are no easy answers to this kind of mess. The child has no rights in many situations – where parents move abroad or are estranged from family for whatever reason.
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Jax
24 November 2007
I read this one earlier and was very surprised to hear it had ended up in court at all, pretty much got to be more to this story than in is the papers. Can’t see how overruling the mother to place a child with her parents would work in the long run for family harmony anyway.
That’s a really sad case you’ve got there Jan 🙁
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T-bird
24 November 2007
Boy – Who’s my mum?
Adoptive parent – well, she didn’t feel ready to be a mother nor did she feel capable so she took teh very hard decision to carry on with the pregnancy, say the briefest of hello’s to you then allow a childless family to experience the joy of bringing you up as there own.
Boy – well what about my dad then?
Adoptive parent – he’s not listed on your birth certificate, you were the result of a wild night’s partying/a relationship that turned sour/a moment’s indiscretion, we don’t know really. Don’t worry though, it happens all the time, you’re not alone in this one and it doesn’t mean you aren’t loved and wanted.
Boy – so what about the rest of my family then?
Adoptive parent – We’re all the family you have for now son. We took you in as a tiny baby, raised you as our own. We know we aren’t your family by birth but we hope we are the family of your heart. But here, we do have a file with a few photos and a little of your family history. It’s not much I know but it’s a start. (and it’s more than children adopted before 1972 got.)
Tim, I know you are looking at this as a father, and one who loves his kids. And you are right to say that it’s pretty unpleasant to be the person telling a young boy that he has no rights to live with his original family if the mother chooses that.
I’m looking at it as both a mother who can’t imagine how hard it must have been to struggle on unsupported through pregnancy and then to give up the child at the end of that, and as an adoptee who, being born before 1972 should, in theory have nothing, not the faintest idea of my real identity (except my adoptive dad was a bad boy and took a note of my mother’s name so that I could at least have that scrap of information)
Obviously it would have been better if she had been a prim little woman, staying home with her needlepoint and having a chaperone when she walked out with her gentleman friends so that she went pure and chaste to her marriage bed but life ain’t like that and accidents happen. It would be wonderful if modern medicine could provide a 100% foolproof way to stop “accidents” (but then, never underestimate the power of the fool….) but in the mean time there will always be cases like this where one parent makes decisions on behalf of a baby and lives with the consequences.
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Gill
25 November 2007
Yes I agree with Tim – the child’s rights should be paramount. But I bet in the case where the child wasn’t seeing his grandfather, it was a bit more more than him having “once offended someone on the other side of the family,” especially if there’s widespread mental illness throughout the family. We have a similar situation in ours, but I wouldn’t necessarily explain all the ins and outs to my GP, so she could easily jump to a similar damaging assumption.
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Tim
25 November 2007
T-Bird: In the end, I suspect that in this particular case, the child is probably well out of its natural family.
If something is the entirely forseeable consequence of your actions, then it is not an accident. If your hobby is juggling eggs, then it makes sense to buy a mop beforehand.
Gill: I am not totally sure I agree with me. 🙂 I am very wary of any one size fits all solution to any problem.
The main thing which triggered me posting this was the contrast between this case and the Lords debate which seems to me to pan out as “fathers have no rights and are of no consequence except if you are one of those nasty lesbians, in which case fathers are terribly important”, I just thought the whole tone of the Lords debate was homophobic in a way which I thought we had moved past.
But, there are a number of other points which strike me in all this:
If as this child’s case suggests, fathers have no rights, then let’s be fair, lets give them no responsibilities. That would mean that fathers should never be expected to pay maintenance.
Alternatively, try this on for size. The mother is legally entitled to conceal the existence of a child from the father. A child is born, she goes and applies for income support. She is asked for the father’s name, provides it, but points out that the father is unaware he has a child and insists on her right to conceal its existence from him. Nevertheless, the CSA (or successor) is entitled to collect money from the father. Next month, the father sees a big deduction in his pay packet but is not entitled to find out why it has been taken out or where it has gone.
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Gill
25 November 2007
A Kafkaesque scenario, which – given current policies – could well take place in the near future.
Yes, there’s a definite contradiction between those two statements about fathers’ rights, but I think any kind of talk about any parents’ (or other adults’) rights over a child perpetuate the archaic and damaging concept of children being chattels like women once were.
OK, a baby can’t express an opinion and needs to be kept as realistically safe as possible, which dependent factors will vary widely from case to case. But very young children’s reactions to people can be observed and respected.
Also I’m of the opinion that anyone who truly loved a child wouldn’t unreasonably deny them access to anyone they wanted to see. But of course such an opinion is irrelevent in law and even more so in CSA World, in which every citizen is a client and nothing makes any sense at all. Shudder. *Gets garlic out*
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HelenHaricot
25 November 2007
hmm, copying and pasting from another comment of mine
there are interesting ethical issues there, however, in the broader sense. and i think society has gone so far away from the chattel position of wives and children, that perhaps the consideration of fathership is undervalued. that we automatically think of children in the view of the mother – note the legal case over the IVF embryos of a split couple. morals and ethics are always fluid, situation and time specific. my moral and ethical stance is unlikely to be my great grandaughters!
I think there will be a swing away from parental rights to childrenâ€™s rights next, which will indeed mean that potentially the father and grandparents are then involved, hopefully, though with great thought, consideration and safeguards for all individuals involved and more of a holistic view of family
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Tim
25 November 2007
Gill, I suppose, roughly, I think that parenthood confers responsibilities and any rights should be subordinate to and purely incidental to the carrying out of those responsibilities. I agree, treating children as chattels is plain wrong.
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Gill
25 November 2007
I hope you haven’t been listening to those government people, Tim. All this talk of rights and responsibilities! Have they finally got to you? 😉
Seriously… bleurgh. There really are no easy answers for very difficult situations re: families and babies/ young children, are there? But yes a holistic view has to be better for the child, you would think.
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Tim
25 November 2007
Gill, “those Government people” are indeed a perfect example of what I mean. Anything that goes right they claim credit for, anything that goes wrong is someone else’s fault. “I didn’t lose the CDs. … What CDs, no that was someone junior’s fault … nothing to do with me…”
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Gill
25 November 2007
Indeed! They have the RIGHT to earn huge salaries and the RESPONSIBILITY to.. er… yeeees. 🙄
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