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LOS ANGELES TIMES
August 12, 1993
No Wedding, No Rights For Fathers
By Dennis Prager
Whatever one's position on biological and adoptive parents, it
was not possible to regard as anything but awful the government's
taking of a 2-year-old girl from her family and handing her over
to two people she has never known.
Is there a way to prevent such an evil from recurring; as indeed
it is at this very moment in San Diego?
Yes, if we make marriage the only basis for fathers' rights and
responsibilities.
Society must announce to men: If you don't marry the mother,
you have no claims on her child; you have nothing to say if she
wants an abortion or wants to give the child to adoptive parents.
Conversely, society announces to women: If you aren't married
to the father, you have no claims on him for support.
Next week, the San Diego Juvenile Court will decide the fate
of another 2-year-old, Michael Stenbeck. The legal circumstances
are even more appalling than in the Jessica DeBoer case.
Michael was adopted by John and Peggy Stenbeck at the request
of Michael's birth mother, who continues to fight for Michael
to remain with the Stenbecks.
But the birth father, Mark King; who was never married to the
mother, who impregnated her when she was only 15 and he was 21,
after, she says, he plied her with liquor, and who was arrested
for bruising her in a fight; wants to take Michael away from
the Stenbecks. King's history Includes alcohol and drug abuse
and attempted suicide. Moreover, the court-appointed psychologist
argues against King and for the birth mother and adoptive parents.
As a result of the possibility of being taken away from his parents,
the child reportedly "has regressed with toilet training
and returned to drinking with a bottle."
Yet thanks to a concern with "fathers' rights," the
California Supreme Court ruled in another case in February, 1992,
that an unwed father can contest an adoption arranged by a birth
mother as soon as he learns of her pregnancy. And the California
Senate is considering legislation by Sen. Charles Calderon (D-Whittier)
that would give unwed fathers up to 90 days after birth "to
begin showing concern and thus get custody."
As Robert Fellmeth, University of San Diego law professor and
director of the Children's Advocacy Institute, notes, courts
are regressing to a l9th century view of children as property,
in the name of fathers' rights.
As a result of decades of preoccupation with group rights and
with individual rights with no commensurate individual obligations,
we have become a society that now legally enshrines selfishness.
Courts and lawmakers have ceased asking, "What is good for
society?" And, as the DeBoer and Stenbeck cases show, they
certainly do not ask, "What is good for the child?"
That is why irresponsible, absent fathers now have more rights
than children do. The solution to this problem; and an important
part of the solution to the even greater problem of children
born out of wed-lock; is simple: Give men legal rights and obligations
to their offspring only when they are married to the mother.
Our civilization needs to tell men If you are not married, you
are regarded as no more than an inseminator. We believe in marital
rights, not in sperm rights. The message is equally forceful
to women: You have every right to sleep with a man who is not
your husband, but just as he has no claims on your child, he
also has no obligations toward it.
Without this, the ruined lives of Jessica DeBoer and Michael
Stenbeck will be only the first in increasing numbers of children
whose irresponsible birth fathers will seek to reclaim them.
We can prevent such horrors and make a dent in the millions of
children born out of wedlock by reasserting the centrality of
marriage.
Lawyers may object, because this solution largely dispenses with
them. The law would be clear to a 10-year-old With marriage,
you have all parental rights and obligations without it, you
have none. But lawyers more Interested in society than in clients;
and such lawyers do exist; will recognize the need for the marital
solution.
Most men will welcome this, because most men are responsible
fathers. Women's groups may object because unmarried mothers
could no longer make economic demands on their impregnators.
But most women know that marriage is good for children, and feminists
will be pleased to have unwanted men out of women's lives.
Since the 1960s, American society has questioned every value
from the past. Some of them are worth keeping, such as, the best
way to raise children is by married parents. Children should
have a greater claim to society's laws, compassion and rights
than inseminators. |
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