From: trif@bike.rad.washington.edu (To Run In Fear)
Subject: Re: Right To Not Support
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle WA
	<BsL96r.4t6@news.cso.uiuc.edu>
Date: Sun, 16 Aug 1992 14:15:54 GMT


Not that anybody cares at all, I'm sure, but I view the issues of abortion
and child support as completely separate issues.

The principle behind abortion is that nobody, not government, not father of
prospective child, has the right to tell a woman that she must be host to
another organism for nine months inside her body.  The disparity in apparent
rights arises because removing a fetus from a woman's body kills it (in most
cases, we'll not get into late-term premies).  If it were the case that
removing it did not kill it, and the man could find a way to keep it alive,
IMHO, the woman has no right to demand its death.  This is one reason why
I do not agree with the opinion of the court in the following case:


In article <BsL96r.4t6@news.cso.uiuc.edu> slkg9733@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Steven L. Kellmeyer) writes:

   Note that there *IS* legal precedent for avoiding child support via 
   exercising the "right to choose not to be a father".  Check the recent
   Tennessee court ruling involving eight frozen embryos.  The embryos were
   created when husband and wife were still husband and wife.  Marital 
   problems and a divorce resulted in an unclear status on the embryos, with
   the mother desiring to carry to term, and the father trying to forbid it.

   The court ruled in the father's favor, claiming he had a right to "choose
   not to be a father" even though BOTH parties clearly intended to create
   children at the time the technique was performed, and both took clearly
   definable, narrowly applicable action to specifically procreate.  
   This was, in every sense, "a planned pregnancy."

   Considering the details of the case, the only specific difference between
   this case and a normal pregnancy was location of the embryos.  *IF* a 
   third party has control of the embryos, the man clearly has a right to
   "choose not to be a father".  If the woman controls the embryos, he
   currently does not.  However, this case could easily be used as a lever
   to pry away the "duty to support" which currently obtains in the courts.

   One has only to show that the location of the embryo is not germane to 
   the decision to support.  If a man can back out of fatherhood after a
   planned, intended embryo-creation, why can't a man back out of "fatherhood"
   after an unplanned, unintended embryo creation - especially when, in both
   cases, the embryo is not under his control?  There can be no breach of 
   promise, for if it did not obtain for the father of the frozen embryos,
   who most clearly DID make an implied contract with the mother, how can 
   it obtain for a one-night stand?  If we want to claim that accidental 
   damages would incur to the mother, alright, but that hardly works out
   to 18 years of support, and the court must then explain why the mother
   in the frozen embryo case was not *PERMITTED* to unilaterally accept
   these "damages". After all, the court could have allowed her to while
   denying that the man had to pay a dime.  Instead, it ruled the man had
   the right to "choose not to be a father."

Just as no one can force a woman to host a fetus for nine months, neither
can anyone force her to undergo an abortion against her will, according to
the same principle.

The issue of child support is entirely different.  Mothers do not sue fathers
for child support.  Mothers enjoin the state to sue on behalf of a minor (the
child) for what is currently the child's right under the law as it now stands.
I note that everybody here has assumed that mothers automatically get custody
and that mothers get the child support.  While the current situation is very
inequitable, there is no legal reason why the father could not also.  A woman
may not give a child up for adoption without the consent of the father---if
he wants custody, he may have it, and enjoin the state to sue her for child
support.

Currently under the law, a child has the right to support from both parents.
The mother cannot sign that right of the child's away, no matter how much she
may wish to.  She and the father may come to a de facto arrangement where this
is the effect in reality, but legally, she may not do so.

Consider what would happen if parents were able to simply disavow their
obligation to the child.  The father exercises his "Right to Not Support",
and the mother exercises hers.  Now what?  Usually, this is called "giving
up the child for adoption".  But what happens if there are no people who
wish to adopt the child?  Does the child receive no support at all?

Yes, the current situation is quite unequal, but because of biology not because
of the law.  There are two separate legal principles here---the right of 
bodily self-determination, and the right of a child to support from its
parents.  You either have to break one of these, or get around biology 
somehow.  Since we can't get around the biology currently, which principle
should be broken?
Xref: sparky misc.legal:16181 talk.politics.misc:40754