Scarlet Letter much?
Thursday, August 8th, 2002
Ah, nothing like checking the news first thing in the morning and coming across this:
"Women who put babies up for adoption required to publish sexual pasts"
That’s right - in Florida, if a pregnant woman who plans to give her baby up for adoption can’t find the biological father to notify him (or, isn’t sure who the father is), then she has to put an ad in the newspaper with her name, a description of herself, the name or description of the possible father(s) and the date and location of conception.
Now. I am fully aware that men are often disadvantaged when it comes to having a say in the fate of the offspring they have sired. I understand that there have been cases in which a woman has put a child up for adoption only to have the biological father come a-knockin’ and try to get the kid back (or at least claim that he had been treated unjustly by not being given the opportunity to choose whether he wanted the kid for himself).
In many cases, it would indeed seem fair for the birth mother to let the biological father know what was going on. But for a woman to be forced to publicly announce who she’s slept with, when and where before she can give her child up for adoption (which I’m sure is difficult - if not traumatic - enough in itself) is cruel and degrading beyond words.
Of course I hear the argument already: if the woman hadn’t been so irresponsible as to get pregnant in the first place, she wouldn’t have to go through this. Well, you know, it does take two to tango. The potential fathers aren’t being forced to publish their sexual histories in the paper - and they shouldn’t be forced to. It’s a private matter. But the double standard is infuriating.
It’s just an unfortunate twist of nature, I suppose, that women are the ones forced to bear the physical burden (i.e., pregnancy) of an irresponsible sexual encounter (or simply of an accident such as a broken condom - not all unplanned pregnancies are the result of carelessness, after all).
And now, in addition to that physical burden and the psychological burden that undoubtedly goes along with it, women are faced with the added humiliation of having to make the most private part of their lives public knowledge. Women are being punished for wanting to do a responsible, courageous thing - that is, give their children up to someone who they feel could can care for them better.
Well, no, actually. Women aren’t being punished for giving their children up for adoption. It seems to me that women are essentially being punished for having had the insolence to have sex in the first place.
I guess not a whole lot has changed since Hawthorne’s day.
Comments
1
Ahhhh, the land of Anita Bryant and Rush Limbaugh … kind of makes you never want to drink orange juice again!
I have got to figure, if the guy didn’t stay around for more than a month or two, the sex was nothing more than sperm donation and his rights should be non-existent.
Political correctness as usual trumps common sense.
2
I have to say I agree with you - both as far as Anita Bryant / Rush Limbaugh are concerned, of course (you forgot to mention Katherine Harris and Jeb Bush, though…), and regarding the type of guy who wouldn’t even know that a woman he had slept with wound up getting pregnant.
I mean, look at the situations of the three women mentioned at the start of the newspaper article: does anyone really think that a guy who would administer a date-rape drug, a teenage boy or a guy who paid a drug-addicted woman for sex would want to have *anything* to do with the babies these women have given birth to? And to be honest, I’m surprised that more *men* haven’t gotten up in arms about the issue - I mean, having your name published as a potential father is a pretty massive invasion of privacy as well.
I’m not sure about the political correctness thing, though. In what way do you feel this measure is "politically correct"? Or perhaps I should ask: what’s your definition of political correctness?
I tend to think of political correctness as liberalism pushed to the point of fascism (in the sense of the desire to suppress all opposition). This adoption measure doesn’t really seem to come from a "liberal" desire to protect the rights of men that are somehow being disenfranchised, but rather from the conservative, moralistic point of view that "little missy got herself in a bind and now she’s going to pay for it" by being forced to publicly fess up to her sexual activity. There is certainly the aspect that "the father has the right to know", but the subtext seems to be that the *woman* was wrong for "sleeping around" (not the man!) and therefore she is the one to bear the brunt of the responsibility - and the humiliation.
3
I understand your point about political correctness but there may be two ways in which it is being inflicted on us in this case… 1) the liberal desire to give men as many rights as possible to avoid seeming "favoritism" to women or 2) the conservative desire to use it as a club to strike out against liberal foes and seemingly stand up for the rights of the "family". Probably, given the state the latter is more appropriate.
This leads us to any even more interesting question. Typical the right and left are seen as political extremes on a linear scale. Facism is the result of extreme conservative politics and communism that of extreme liberal thought. Since each of these philosphies when actually practiced (not in theory but, as I said, practiced) result in almost identical oppression, is it not possible the ideal model is circular with any form of extremism ending in overall oppression and the dissolution of individual rights???
Oh such thoughts on a Monday morning!
4
According to the newspaper article, it was a Democrat who pushed for the adoption laws to be changed to include the requirement for women to publish all these details. The only justification given in the article is that there would be fewer failed adoptions due to fathers wanting their kids back (I would really like to know the statistic for the number of adoptions that fail because of this). No direct mention is made of protecting men’s rights, and no mention at all is made of protecting "family values" - though both of these aspects would seem to apply here. So ultimately, I can’t figure out where this law is coming from at all.
It’s really funny that you should mention the possibility of a circular model for political beliefs. I was reading about this idea not two days ago, but I can’t for the life of me remember where… It certainly makes sense to me, anyway. Oppression is oppression is oppression, whether it comes from the right or the left.
Having said that, I’m sure there *are* differences in the nature of a facist state as opposed to a totalitarian communist one, but my brain is not in full-on political theory mode at the moment… :-)
Sorry. Comments are closed.