Father’s Rights

2 thoughts on “Father’s Rights”

1. Excellent! The father deserves to be heard on any such case, and to acknowledge paternity in the matter.

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2. To Life Issues.

   First of all, I need to say that I am very pro-life. Therefore, the response that I have to this law makes me very uncomfortable. I’m usually in favor of all pro-life legislation, but not necessarily this one. I understand that the goal is to create more barriers to prevent the snap decision to abort. However, what wasn’t said is if there are protections in place for the mother and child to prevent an unwanted, ongoing involvement with said father who could be very abusive to the child and mother.

   Let me tell you our family’s story and perhaps it will help to explain my concerns. My husband is a pastor. Our daughter was raised in a Christian home. After graduation from a Christian high-school, she worked to save money for further schooling. She was involved in youth leadership with another church in the area, but she was also affected by more worldly influences as well. When she was 19, she met a 32 year old man who really swept her off her feet. When we learned of it, we tried to encourage her to break it off. After about six weeks, she did so. Two weeks later she came to me with the news that she was pregnant. We had questions about this man’s character all along, but now, since he was the Father of our grandchild we had to dig deeper. My daughter began receiving harassing texts and threats. I won’t bore you with all the details, but what we learned about him was that he already had three children from two other women. That he knew how to play the court system well and was threatening to try to go for full custody, because he had already worked the courts before and would do it again so that our daughter would end up paying him support and he would owe her nothing. It’s crazy and, it probably wouldn’t have gone exactly as he threatened, but it was a very scary time for our family. The idea of this baby spending any time in this man’s home unsupervised, with the parade of women that he continued to bring through after our daughter broke it off with him, terrified us. We ended up getting a lawyer and draining our savings to try doing as much damage control as we could. In the end, we were advised to get our daughter out of state before the birth, which, through many miraculous circumstances we were able to do. I left with our daughter, who delivered a healthy baby girl. Then, six weeks later, I had to return home, leaving them in the care of friends. It was a horrible time. Three months later, God blessed us with a ministry in the same state, about 90 miles from our daughter. She ended up moving back with us, going to cosmetology school and also working while I cared for her daughter. That was ten years ago. We’ve heard almost nothing from the father since. Our prayer has been that he would not be involved in our granddaughter’s life until he can be a godly father for her. By the way, we have learned that he has had three more children since our granddaughter.

   The idea of this man having any say over my daughter’s body, just doesn’t sit right with me. If he cared so much, he shouldn’t have been having unprotected sex and risking bringing a fourth child into the world when he couldn’t even provide a home, for the first three. I just don’t see this bill being a good answer. I wish that men could get penalized for being irresponsible with their sperm rather than be allowed just one more control over the woman that he didn’t care enough to show respect for in the first place. I can see this creating more enmity between the mother and the father. How is that going to be good? I might be more comfortable with this bill if the man were forced to be mentored and take parenting classes and agree to stop dating other women if the child is saved from abortion. After all, this child is going to need a mature, self-disciplined man to look up to. It’s not enough for him to stop the mother from having an abortion, he should agree to some conditions as well. Admitting paternity may be a good start, but a lot of guys have bragging rights over how many children they’ve created even though they’re not responsible for any of them, leaving it to we the tax payers to take care of them for him.

   Sorry for the rant. It’s just hard to forget how we were constantly harassed and how this man tried to undermine us back then and knowing that he could use the courts to do it even more just reminds me of how frustrated we were back then. So many things were out of our control, including him. My husband tried to reason with him. Another pastor in the area gained this man’s trust and tried to arbitrate. We offered to have full custody with generous visitation for him and there was just no budging on his part. It’s almost like he wanted the whole situation to end up in court from the get go. Our daughter could have never stood up to him alone if we hadn’t stepped in to support her.

   Just to be fair, on the flip side, fathers should not be pressuring women to get abortions either. That is even worse! Perhaps legislators should be equally concerned about that issue and write a bill allowing the woman to sue for damages when they do.

   Kathy Du Bois
   Lake City, MI

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