Posted by
Playful Walrus on Monday, August 20, 2007 12:05:58 PM
In our Brave New World with donated eggs, donated sperm, donated human beings (as embryos), and rented wombs (surrogate “motherhood”), there are people who are helping singles and same-sex couples obtain children. The intent is to raise these children in a home where they will be deprived of either a mother or a father. (This may also happen with adoption in the traditional sense.)
There have been court decisions granting financial child support to children from men who have donated sperm, regardless of the contracts or agreements entered into by the adults at the time. The reasoning is that the financial child support is for the child, and the adults could not consent to waive that child support on behalf of the child.
This makes me wonder if a child who was, say, raised by two men could successfully sue a “surrogate parenting” business for intentionally depriving him of a mother?
I think a clever lawyer could make a good argument for this case, especially based on precedents.
People have been successfully sued for “alienation of affection” for “stealing” a spouse. Grandparents and even those not related to a child have successfully sued for visitation rights. Why couldn’t a child sue for alienation of parentage? Isn’t emotional support and role modeling more important than financial support?
Or is child support really about getting the state off of the hook for the expense of raising a child - even though enforcing child support can cost more that the amount of child support itself – and punishing people (mostly men) for not staying in a relationship, and not really about the child’s well being?
Although people exercise their freedom every day to conceive children without a committed relationship, and thus, quite often the child will be raised without having both a mother and father present, it is another story when a third party gets involved for profit and knowingly, intentionally assists in assigning that child to a life without a mother or without a father.
Those businesses have a financial stake in denying the difference between men and women and the benefit a child will have by having both a mother and father present in the home.
Children should have a mother and father who are married to each other. This is another reason why people should not risk conceiving children unless they can provide such a home, and another reason why someone should not donate sperm or donate eggs, or engage in procedures that can create “extra” embryos.