Worthy of an Oregon Ping, for sure...
Why are the child's rights and the mother's rights inseperable? It seems to me the child would have an interest in knowing his father even if the mother doesn't want that stranger in her life.
Oh the troubles we create when we manipulate nature.
What a mess. FWIW, the mother & M.H. ought to be fighting OHSU together.
That certainly is bizarre. Is there actually a child? Did the man and his fiancee have a child? Is the woman the biological molther of a child.
Too many unanswered questions.
What a terribly written story, it was very difficult figuring out what happened to who! (Whom?)
Anyway, men are notoriously mistreated in abortion cases where they don't have a say in their child's life or death--OHSU screwed up royally here, and there *should* be repurcussions for that staff. How wussy was that woman when they "forced" her to take the morning-after pill?!? I'd have had there rear ends in a sling instantly! >:-(
I'm sure glad they had experts around to point that out.
There really is no way to be totally fair here, but lots of money is going to change hands, I'd bet.
Seems like the fairest thing to happen is the mother/child keep their anonymity, but the biological father gets to have a test performed and know if the child is from his sperm.
Such a statement completely discounts the potential desire of the child to have a relationship with the biological father. So much for equal treatment under the law. It was for such reasons that I considered supporting the Equal Rights Amendment way back when. It would have given a Constitutional reason to turn back the anti-male thrust of case law. The cons outweighed the pros, however, and I'm glad on balance that it didn't pass. I think one reason why it faded as a cause is because the feminists realized the "wrong" court could reverse many of their judicial activism gains. Still, the above statement pisses me off and shows there is a long way to go.
When the mother and her husband get full custody of the child don't be surprised if they don't get back at him for being so hard on them that they make him pay child support. I have heard cases worse than this where the biological father has to pay whether he ever sees the kid or not.
I presume that, when she was to get pregnant by an "anonymous" sperm donor, that the hospital had interviewed the donor, had blood tests, knew the medical history. That information would be made available to the recipient, so medical science would have an accurate medical history if the child needed it later.
Further, the mother may have wanted to choose the race of the donor, or some other characteristic.
Obviously, none of that information is available from M.H..
Or at least, if it is, the woman has no right to that information (of course, she had no right to his sperm either, but that ship has sailed).
The child would certainly want to have access to that information, if the child was informed that he had a biological father separate from his family. I suppose the child might have been kept in the dark in the previous arrangement, since the parents would have the medical information and could provide it without revealing to the child the circumstances.
So when does he have to start providing child support but have no visitation rights.
"Prevented"? I'd like to hear exactly how. I don't believe for a second that they were physically prevented from leaving until she swallowed a pill she didn't want to swallow. If that had actually happened, the couple should have called police immediately, and filed charges of false imprisonment right after a detour to a hospital emergency room to get her stomach pumped.
Amazing, though, that fertility clinics don't cover all this in written contracts in advance. This sort of error is quite rare, and I guess they don't want to remind people that it can happen. But they can pretty easily transfer liability to the patients involved, if the patients have contractually agreed in advance to do X in the event of an error, and then subsequently refused to do X after an error actually occurred.
My relative weightings:
His rights: 0.0%
Her rights: 0.0%
Best interest of the child: 100.0%
It seems to me that we need some rules related to the operation of these clinics. First, all "natural" rights to your sperm and egg must be waived to start the process. It is a business and a contract, not natural procreation. Something goes wrong, there must be a legal fix to the problem (money) that doesn't ruin a child's life.
This is a counter-example to the law of supply and demand.
Let's just hope that the DNA test results show that M.H. is not the father. Problem solved....
Test tube procreation is wrong. In-vitro is wrong. All this stuff is wrong. It should be outlawed.
I hope I made my opinion clear.
They had been trying unsuccessfully for several years to start a family, according to court documents. That day, they paid $515 for sperm from an anonymous donor.
Shortly afterward, OHSU contacted the woman to inform her of the mix-up.
"Jane Doe" alleges clinic doctors then told her she had to get "medicine" to make sure she did not become pregnant.
When the couple came in, they allege, workers there prevented them from leaving until she swallowed the medicine, also referred to in the documents as the morning-after pill, as a nurse watched.
They also allege workers offered the woman a free abortion, in case she became pregnant, and two free artificial inseminations, in case she did not.
I am a little confused? Did the woman have the baby after taking the morning-after pill? And she never had the abortion offered?