Three Utah bills to change rights of biological fathers in adoption cases encounter pushback

Submitted by Mastodon on Thu, 2014-03-13 23:41

Article here. Excerpt:

'Loopholes in Utah's adoption law have been making it possible for pregnant women to head to the state and put children up for adoption, without consent of the biological fathers. Now three bills have been introduced during the current session in the state legislature to change things, but there's pushback.

"The policy of this state is to encourage marriage," said state Representative Merrill Nelson, during a recent house committee meeting.

He was objecting to proposed legislation to share information between states about fathers who are searching for their offspring. "Our job is to look after the rights of the child primarily, what is best for the child and it's not to look after the rights of the reckless, unwed father who fathered the child," Nelson added.
...
Donna Pope, owner of Heart to Heart Adoptions, co-signed the letter. She claims only a small percentage of fathers who truly want to be involved are actually left in the dark.

"We don't want to change the law for the small population and devastatingly affect the other population of women that are affected by it," says Pope.

She worries abused woman who do not want the fathers contacted would opt for abortions instead. Currently, women can say they have been abused and get out of notifying the dads, but SB 246 would require documented abuse.'

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Whatever.

Woman arrives in Utah, pregnant. She doesn't want the child for some reason, and doesn't want to hand the child over to the kid's father because that may put her on the hook for child support. So she goes to Utah and says she is single and the kid's father wants nothing to do with him/her, or the father is abusive, etc. So they say fine, take the kid and she's off. No obligations for her since the other parent of the child is unknown to the Utah authorities (all she need do is say she isn't married; do they even try to find out if she is telling the truth, or locate a hospital record in the state she says she is from that records the father's name?). Off she goes. Meanwhile, the father either a) doesn't even know he's a father, b) knows he's a father but doesn't know where the baby mama went running off to with their (well, her, really) child, and/or c) now must live in fear that the mother and child had something bad happen to them maybe, or if not, that some day a child support claim notice will arrive from some court telling him he's in arrears for the past 5 years of C/S and must pay up $xxx,000 for a kid he never knew the fate of since the mother ran off with him/her. Try living with that over your head.

And BTW, if mothers have, as they do now, this right to give up unilaterally children for adoption, do fathers do also? Betting not.

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Submitted by Matt on Sat, 2014-03-15 19:50