Via Bridget Crawford here's a highly unlikely but also deeply gender-bound hitch in paternity law
Nathaniel was a California teenager who became a father in 1995. The mother of Nathaniel’s child was named Ricci, and at the time of conception, she was thirty-four years old. Nathaniel, however, was merely fifteen. Although Nathaniel admitted to having sex with Ricci voluntarily about five times, the fact that he was under sixteen years of age at the time made it legally impossible for him to consent to sexual intercourse. In other words, under California law, Nathaniel was not only a new father, but was also a victim of statutory rape. Nonetheless, in a subsequent action for child support, the court held that Nathaniel was liable for the support of the child who was born as a result of his rape. According to the court, “Victims have rights. Here, the victim also has responsibilities.”
Source: Feminist Law Professors
This is particularly vexing because unlike the standard "pro-life" solution for pregnancy and statutory rape when the victim is a woman, the unwilling, underage father is pretty much positively unable to "relinquish" his child for adoption unless the child's adult mother is willing. Thus he can be held liable in a way that underage maternity victims are not: he's held to "responsibilties" an underage, or even of age female counterpart wouldn't be. Without getting all rabidly MRA about the femininister hegemony being responsible (it isn't since nearly all paternity laws vastly, vastly predate feminism) one can still notice that it's... pretty unequal treatment under the law.
So. Short term such laws really ought to be changed.
Next, I'm still annoyed at the part where the woman who seduced the child isn't being held liable for the transgression. Let alone being allowed to keep the infant herself rather than, say, surrendering it to the victim's family. Even if they chose to "relinquish" the infant for adoption he or she would still end up in a better home than the mother would likely offer. (There's certainly precedent for this -- Mary Kay Laterno's victim's family raised the baby she had as a result of repeatedly statutorily raping her 13-year-old victim.)
The rest of the paper Prof. Crawford passes along might be a little more problematic. Having identified one area where an involuntary father can be held liable for an offspring he was unable to consent to the author, Michael J. Higdon of, I think, the University of Tennessee, proposes extending the standard release of parental liability given to voluntary sperm donors for IVF to non-consenting, involuntary sperm donors. That's problematic, I think, because without a really clear definition of "involuntary" you're going to open the door to a lot of guys who are perfectly happy to consent to sex but don't want to bother with the semi-inevitability of paternity.
But one way or the other the Nathaniel/Ricci case suggests that (pre-feminist) gender presumptions about men's and women's agency and responsibility in the domain of pregnancy really do need to be adjusted.
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Actually, the other author
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed, 2011-02-23 07:43.Actually, the other author explains that lack of consent only applies when the man did not consent to intercourse. He cannot claim he did not consent to be a father even though he willingly engaged in sex. He also has a pretty high burden in proving lack of consent.
This case isn't about gender;
Submitted by MoonlitNight (not verified) on Wed, 2011-02-23 08:17.This case isn't about gender; it's about unbalanced age/experience/capability, but the reversal from the trend of which gender plays which role is throwing our thinking out of whack.
The adult in the situation -- here the mother -- should have been willing and able to use contraception. The adult should also have understood that if there was no contraception, or it failed, that there could be a child, and that support of said child would logically fall on the adult. Therefore, the adult should have been taking precautions unless the adult really wanted to be a parent now, and if the adult did want to be a parent, should have at minimum been asking for the younger partner's consent. Better yet, the adult should have found a partner of a more appropriate age.
The teenager in the situation -- here the father -- cannot be reasonably be expected to provide for a child without either wrecking his or her future (say by taking a job, any job), or relying upon their family for financial and other support, especially in this economy. I would hope that a teenager in this situation would try to insist that they use contraception, but between inexperience and the likely abstinence-only education, said teen might not know exactly to put on a condom or how to use it. It would also be rather easy for the adult -- especially a female adult -- to deceive or intimidate the teen into skipping contraception. One, the adult is so experienced and competent that the teen will question his or her own judgement regardless of genders. Two, an adult woman can say she is on the pill and there is no easy way to check the truth of it. It would also seem illogical for her to lie about this, but that doesn't mean she can't or won't.
I have no idea what to do with the resulting baby -- I guess someone should investigate all the options and pick the least bad.
So were I a judge, chances are that I'd decide in favour of the teen involved, regardless of gender, with such an age/experience gap as this. I'd also be agitating for real sex education so that at least the teens would know at what point the risk of disease or pregnancy gets high enough to insist on a condom, and that it is weird and unfair for someone *that* much older than you to be approaching you for sex.