Virginia’s New Putative Father Registry Violates Fathers’ Right to Raise Their Own Children
Friday, August 31st, 2007American Chronicle: Virginia’s New Putative Father Registry Violates Fathers’ Right to Raise Their Own Children
Virginia’s controversial new Putative Father Registry law asks any man who has had heterosexual non-marital sex in Virginia to register with the State. Supporters say the law will help connect fathers with their children before the children are put up for adoption. Critics see it as another example of the erosion of citizens’ privacy. Both sides miss the real point of the Registry–to remove a father’s right to prevent his child’s mother from giving their child up for adoption without his consent.Incredibly, under the new law, putative fathers who fail to register waive their right to be notified that their parental rights are being terminated. They also forfeit the right to be notified of the adoption proceedings and to consent to the adoption. Rather than being required to make a legitimate effort to find and notify the father, the state can now simply check the Registry and, if the man has not registered, give his child away.
There are numerous other problems with the Registry. A registrant must provide his social security number, driver’s license number, home address, and employer, as well as details about the sexual affair and his sexual partner. This sensitive, personal information will be available to the baby’s mother, the lawyers involved in the adoption, court employees, and anyone able to hack in to the computer system.
Incredible, I could hardly believe what I was reading. Do they actually think that anyone is going to register in this thing? You’d have to be an idiot (ok, there will be some people that register, maybe a lot). I can just see the next step, they’re going to try to push some kind of promiscuity tax on the poor bastards that register on this and have sex with more than X number of women a year, because they are potentially fathering more than their fair share of children. Just wait. And how much do you think it will cost the state to run a program like this, 5, 10 million a year? I could probably run it for a 10 grand or less, but we all know how well the government manages their money.
