“Paternity Fraud”
In the wake of Liam Magills case in Australias high court overturning damages awarded to him for pain and suffering inflicted on him by his ex wife through paternity fraud, there is a movement at high levels to give men the right to disestablish paternity via DNA testing. Currently, the courts and the Child Support Agency do not accept DNA tests unless the mother gives permission for the tests.
According to the High Court, there is not obligation for spouses to tell the truth about extramarital affairs and that ultimately “there is a mantle of privacy over such conduct which protects it from scrutiny be the law”
This forms a twofold barrier between victims of paternity fraud and justice: even if he can get a DNA test done, the courts will not accept the results of the test unless the person with the greatest vested interest in not accepting those results agrees to accept the results. Further, the conduct of that person is protected from scrutiny in much the same way that domestic violence was once protected from legal scrutiny and for much the same reason.
Fortunately, Australias prime minister, John Howard has said that men should have the right to DNA tests in order to disestablish paternity This, of course, has brought the female supremacists out of the woodwork. The most dangerous of these simply ooze sympathy for the poor, benighted men who are too insignificant to warrant legal protection of any sort and who weren’t lied to in the first place.
Adele Horin is one such journalist with numerous articles published regarding this subject. She refers to “so called paternity fraud” as “not a pressing social problem as the incidence of wrongful paternity here is between 1 and 3 percent“. For 30% of the men who actually seek paternity testing, however, this problem is beyond pressing. It is of vital and life altering significance.
She goes on to excuse women who foist another mans offspring onto their loving husband referring to relationship overlaps, one night flings and (heres the real play) women coerced into wife swapping by their husband. Ever the feminist, Ms Horin plays the standard blame the victim card which is apparently acceptable when the victim is male. Both her and the courts reject any notion of responsibility on the part of women finding in men a convenient place to transfer responsibility.
But the real story here isn’t that women get choices (who will be the father, my lover or my husband) while men get responsibility. This is old news. What most seem to miss in this discussion is the manner in which opponents of paternity disestablishment subtly shift the terms of the debate to their advantage. The courts claim that women cannot be required to disclose affairs thus dismissing any responsibility women might have for holding the wrong man responsible for paternity. But there is no real demand of anything of the sort from men lobbying for the right to disestablish paternity.
A woman can do whatever she pleases, with whomever she pleases without paternity ever becoming an issue so long as she does not conceive a child outside of her marriage or primary relationship. In this, her position is no different from her partners. He can also do whatever he pleases with whomever he pleases so long as he does not create a child. So long as a person is careful with regards to contraceptives, no one needs to know that he or she is unfaithful to their spouse. In this day and age, no woman has any real excuse for conceiving a child inadvertently. Certainly no woman or man who does so has any business trying to evade the consequences. A man who fathers a child will be assessed for child support and his spouse will inevitably learn of this. A woman who conceives a child in circumstances which raise questions as to the childs paternity has a responsibility to advise he spouse of this fact. Even here, her responsibilities can be met without disclosure of her indiscretions if she can obtain a sample of his hair and conduct the DNA test discreetly. If she can determine beyond doubt that her husband is indeed the father, there is no need for disclosure. If she cannot, or she determines that he is not the father, simple justice insists that he be informed that he is not the childs biological father.
The refusal of female supremacists to accept this responsibility is an indictment of womens advocates and their refusal to accept the full adulthood of women.
Adele Horin conclude with two sentences:
“Deceit, infidelity, fraud – these are loaded words”
No, these are accurate words. If a man chooses to accept another mans child as his own, this is one thing. If a man is deceived about his paternity to the children that he raises, he is defrauded of something crucial. His life, his resources, his very self are seized and put to anothers purposes. Social fatherhood is all very well: so long as it is a choice. Social fatherhood through deceit and fraud amount to the worst sort of slavery imaginable, because he doesn’t even know that he has been enslaved.
Adele Horin finishes her article with a standby that has become eerily familiar in this debate: “lets’s also talk about children’s needs, and what being a father means”. This is the rallying cry of opponents to paternity disestablishment. They want us to believe that paternity is not biological: that biology has no relationship to what it means to be a father. This is a lie and they know that it is a lie Just ask them what should happen when a man discovers he has been a father and not known it. Their demand for child support will not be long in coming.
While fatherhood may have a social component, without either a biological component or consent to social fatherhood, it is meaningless.
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Stumble It!
November 20th, 2006 at 3:11 pm
Horin is just another feminist lacky. It has been screaming false regardless of consequence or affect.
A real feminist, lying and exaggerating just to promote that hate doctrine.