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Can Parents Sue If Their Kid Is Born With the 'Wrong' DNA? (gizmodo.com)
Long-time reader randomErr quotes Gizmodo:
It's a nightmare scenario straight out of a primetime drama: a child-seeking couple visits a fertility clinic to try their luck with in-vitro fertilization, only to wind up accidentally impregnated by the wrong sperm. In a fascinating legal case out of Singapore, the country's Supreme Court ruled that this situation doesn't just constitute medical malpractice. The fertility clinic, the court recently ruled, must pay the parents 30% of upkeep costs for the child for a loss of 'genetic affinity.' In other words, the clinic must pay the parents' child support not only because they made a terrible medical mistake, but because the child didn't wind up with the right genes...
"It's suggesting that the child itself has something wrong with it, genetically, and that it has monetary value attached to it," Todd Kuiken, a senior research scholar with the Genetic Engineering and Society Center at North Carolina State University, told Gizmodo. "They attached damages to the genetic makeup of the child, rather than the mistake. That's the part that makes it uncomfortable. This can take you in all sort of fucked up directions."
"It's suggesting that the child itself has something wrong with it, genetically, and that it has monetary value attached to it," Todd Kuiken, a senior research scholar with the Genetic Engineering and Society Center at North Carolina State University, told Gizmodo. "They attached damages to the genetic makeup of the child, rather than the mistake. That's the part that makes it uncomfortable. This can take you in all sort of fucked up directions."
You didn't even read to the end of the summary, it seems. The problem is they are not suing over the mistake made by the clinic, but that the child has the wrong genes. Suing the clinic over medical malpractice is fine, but the couple has sued for a completely different formulation of the problem.
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
From the court's decision:
"In the circumstances, the Court recognises that the Appellant's desire to have a child of her own, with her Husband, is a desire that is a basic human impulse, and its loss is keenly and deeply felt.
"The ordinary human experience is that parents and children are bound by ties of blood and this fact of biological experience - heredity - carries deep socio-cultural significance...
"And when, as in the present case, a person has been denied this experience due to the negligence of others then she has lost something of profound significance and has suffered a serious wrong.
"This loss of 'affinity' can also result in social stigma and embarrassment arising out of the misperceptions of others, as was the case here."
>"The kid does have the wrong genes. They wanted their kid, they got somebody else's kid. It fucking matters!"
I will certainly say that in many ways it should not matter. It is their kid, just not their offspring. Semantics aside, one can provide the exact same love and joy for a child, regardless of genetics. Look at sperm/egg donors, adoption, even pet lovers- doesn't even have to be the same species :)
The only reason it might really matter is later when dealing with healthcare and hereditary diseases, blood and organ donation, etc.
But it was a mistake. And the company SHOULD be punished. And punished they were! Had the company done it intentionally (like they just don't care, or it saves them money) then the punishment should be even worse.... because then we are talking fraud.
The kid does have the wrong genes. They wanted their kid, they got somebody else's kid. It fucking matters!
More-or-less everyone understands this. And more-or-less everyone throughout history would understand this.
The people claiming this is "weird" or "fucked up" are either strange themselves, or they're pretending. Either way, they're pushing a moral or ethical idea that contradicts nature. They're going to need a better sales pitch.
The legal system for child support came about because plenty of "real fathers" were only too willing to abandon their families when the going got rough or a more winsome piece of ass drifted on by.
What revisionist twaddle. Child support after a divorce came about because originally fathers kept the children and got both the benefits of custody and the responsibility to support them. Then we decided that children belong with their mothers, but financial responsibility should stay with the fathers.
The 'deadbeat dad' narrative came about as a way to defend this clearly unfair system, and the fact the fathers (quite reasonably) feel more responsible for children that they are allowed to be the fathers of, rather than kids they aren't allowed to see.
The problem the GP describes, with cuckolds paying child support for kids that aren't theirs, stems from the same sexist urge. In most cases a DNA test can only give a man responsibility (even if they were underage and she wasn't, even if he was unconscious) but not remove it (he was married to her at the time and waited until the child was six months old, he 'acted like a father').
And as a side note, it's incredibly crass of you to try to justify the ill treatment of some men by pointing out the bad behavior of other men.
On the assumption that you're American, you're wrong
http://www.child-support-laws-...
"This financial dependency theme recurred almost in every children support case decided by the courts of America during the nineteenth century, primarily because newly divorced American mothers in nineteenth-century were almost always forced to live in poverty.
Even families that were well off financially before the divorce found that after the divorce, the father almost always profited and the mother almost always became impoverished. This occurred because the men were suddenly free from the expenses of the family, whereas the women were forced to take on the financial burden of raising the children.
In addition, if the mother did attempt to find a job for herself, she generally earned less than what a man would make in the same field. "
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Bull. Where can't a woman get an abortion whenever she wants it?
Well, Malta bans it outright, as does Ireland, and Poland only all it under special circumstances. And of course, Texas and other US states under the thumb of right-wing theocrats have eliminated lots of clinics, and of course, there are the murdered doctors assassinated by the thugs in the anti-abortion movement. That these are the same people aghast that health insurance was covering birth control which reduced the incidence of abortions merely makes it ironic. Their opposition to a cost control method made things worse.
Kermit Gosnell would perform abortions between a pregnant woman's contractions in the labor room if that's what she wanted, and he was by no means the only late-term abortionist in the world.
Or you could go to Grover Norquist and Ayn Rand who would drown them in the bathtub.
Kinda a tell there, kenh, why don't you go help Bill O'Reilly write his memoirs about sexual harassment?
Because actually, regressive legislators in Iowa, Missouri, and Kansas are still trying for their person good laws.
All that effort, yet they don't even want sex Ed classes in school. They would much rather force a human vegetable to take up space in an ICU.