[MD Expat in PA]

Let’s look at it another way. A woman gets pregnant (yea, it takes two and she made a bad choice) but she tells the father and he tells her simply to “get lost”. He takes no interest what so ever in her or their unborn child. He tells her that she’ll have to sue him to get child support and good luck with that because “I’m already supporting two other illegitimate children and am married and have four kids to support.”

Rather than having an abortion, she decides to have the child and have the child adopted by a loving family. She needs his consent but while he has no interest in the child or supporting the child, he’s a control freak, he gets some sort of twisted satisfaction in keeping her dependent on him, as minimal as his involvement and support may be and as much as his "support" is merely court mandated, he enjoys making life as difficult as possible for her.

Don’t think that this doesn’t happen. I’ve seen this happen. It happened to a member of my family.

Not saying the law is right or well written but just adding another POV.

[DNA.2012]

First, I would definitely sign onto protecting the rights of all of the good fathers even if that meant that there would be an occasional legal wrangle with a few not-good ones in accordance with your scenario.

That said, fathers who did not want to raise the child would be unlikely to oppose adoption because they would wind up with 18 years of child support payments.

Also, a simple pre-condition can be built in: namely that for a father to veto an adoption, he has to be willing to accept full custody.