How many of you who self-identify as Republican or conservative support legislation like this?
Personally, I can’t, off the top of my head, find a single legal reason to do so (but then, I thought McCain-Feingold was on its face unconstitutional); and while I think restrictions on abortion are a matter for the legislature to take up (insofar as we’re in the peculiar position of having to balance the mother’s reproductive rights with those of the living fetus, or at the very least, that the idea of negative rights is not universally accepted), I don’t for one second believe the state should presume the right to stop non-criminals from using their bodies to reproduce out of some hypothetical future concern for the children—even if they can show that a large percentage of single-parent children grow up at a disadvantage.
But most interstingly, didn’t Bill Bennett—however obliquely—just argue against this very thing? That is, by pointing out that utilitarian arguments for restricting reproduction are nevertheless immoral and reprehensible when they impinge upon individual liberties (in his hypothetical, crime rates would decrease if black babies were aborted—the same kind of impulse that “justifies” this proposed Indiana legislation, inasmuch as it argues “society” will be compelled to pay for the failings of “broken homes”), wasn’t Bennett in fact on the side of many those who went out of their way to villify him?
Just a thought.
(h/t Bill, via Feministe)
Not me. The next step is they’ll want to control who you breed with. Supreme race, anyone?
I am absolutely opposed to this, but at the same time aren’t you kind of asking for it when you start expecting the state to bear the ultimate responsibility for a child’s welfare?
Unless I misread the thing terribly, it was only referring to reproduction by means other than sexual intercourse. Your linked source suggested it was a ban on sex, which of course it is not.
No, I can’t support this sort of thing. I have a hard time believing such a law would survive a court challenge. And yes, I’m reasonably sure I would vote against any legislator who pushed such a law.
Immoral, and probably unconstitutional. But definitely immoral.
Huh?
As it the draft of the new law reads now, an intended parent “who knowingly or willingly participates in an artificial reproduction procedure” without court approval, “commits unauthorized reproduction, a Class B misdemeanor.” The criminal charges will be
the same for physicians who commit “unauthorized practice of artificial reproduction.”
Actually, I self-identify as a small-l libertarian (who votes for Republicans for Congress, Senate and the White House). That said, what the fuck?
“Unauthorized reproduction?” You’re yanking me, right?
How many of the women who are single and using IVF are in a position not to support their children well? IVF is damn expensive and the ability of a woman to pay for it demonstrates an economic ability to take care of a child.
Something like $10k a treatment for the low-end stuff and it usually takes a couple of tries. We’re talking about people who can spend more than what the average american makes on getting knocked up.
And how do Christian legislators reconcile voting for this with their belief in the Virgin Birth?
Once you’ve made the birth of christ illegal well then we’ve crossed a surreal line in the sand…
It looks like its a ban on using artificial insemination/in vitro unless someone is married. I imagine it follows the old thinking about allowing children to be adopted only by married couples.
I don’t think it’s a good law and I don’t think it will pass.
But I agree with B Moe’s thoughts.
I almost used the Christ example, but wasn’t Mary married to Joseph?
Because if so, she gets a pass.
She was pregnant before they married. That’s one of the ways Joseph’s faith was illustrated, because he married her knowing she was carrying a child that wasn’t his.
At least I think so. I haven’t been to Sunday school in a long, long time.
The real question: WHAT DOES HUGH HEWITT THINK?
Prediction: SOLID A-
Mary didn’t use one of the conception methods mentioned in the law.
If the law starts outlawing pregnancies created by God, then we’ve got another problem.
I don’t agree with this kind of legislation. The state should not be involved in deciding who gets to reproduce.
Every time laws like these are proposed, conservatives/republicans get a black eye. I wish we could control our wackos better.
Jeff,
You have to be kidding us right? Even though you can look at the true verse of this bill, in regards to curbing welfare as it’s main purpose I suppose but the initial shock of the intention is what will defeat it. I guess… But then again I could have read it totally wrong…..
Sorta OT: Anyone else here seen Hoosiers? “God wants you on the floor, Harriet.”
and, the Immaculate Conception is Mary’s not Jesus’s … really. No, really. Mary was immaculately conceived.
Jesus was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, but that’s different from ‘immaculate conception’.
You can look it up.
—-
What’s missing from the legislation is the provision for a 15 year old girl to get herself artificially inseminated and have that pregnancy aborted without needing parental notification or consent.
I mean, I can sympathize with the desire to promote marriage before parenthood. I would welcome a return of some form of the socially valuable stigma on single-motherhood and illegitimacy. But this doesn’t seem to be the proper place for legislation in a free country. Tax incentives would be one thing–even if ineffective and controversial. But criminalizing motherhood is just monumentally stupid.
This may be the most outrageous pieces of legislation I’ve ever seen.
I love that it started because–if I’m understanding this, um, bimbo correctly–they were having trouble enforcing their ban on surrogate motherhood, or was it donated eggs? In other words, Indiana arbitrarily limits options for those who wish to become parents, and now they’d like to limit them more.
As a prospective adoptive parent, I’m keenly aware how “unfair” it is that we get screened nine times from Sunday and biological parents do not.
But the state’s function is not to dictate the terms of parenthood, or set arbitrary standards for same. (Bad enough that it gets to in cases of adoption, but that’s probably a necessary evil.) It most certainly isn’t to make life “fair.”
Single parenthood is more challenging than the two-parent approach. But it’s not for Indiana to prohibit it to women with fertility challenges.
as a gop-er, i believe any effort to achieve social utopia through force of law or regulation, whether proposed by the right or the left, should be shoved into a bag, taken out into the alley and beaten to death with a table leg.
Oh, come on. This sounds like something out of The Handmaid’s Tale. Are we sure these people really are Republicans, and not some contingent of moonbat moles trying to make the real Republicans look like the Children of the Corn?
T/W: “make.” Only one way to make a USDA-approved, government authorized baby…
What’s funny is, if you read the lefty sites I linked to, they want to suggest that this is the default position of Republicans and conservatives. We’re the Taliban, you see.
I put this post up because, 1) I believe this legislation is ludicrous 2) I believed most of the readers here would be against it 3) to suggest that Bennett was arguing against this kind of thing, and 4) because I was curious if there was some theoretical Constitutionality for something like this—particularly for those who, like me, followed the Thomas line on Lawrence.
OK, add me against this, even though I marginally fall into your qualifications. Maybe.
“wasn’t Bennett in fact on the side of many those who went out of their way to villify him”
Jeff, Jeff, Jeff… you’re look at reason and facts. Stop thinking for a minute in order to understand their hatred.
I’d be for it if the punishment was that they had to wear a big red ‘S’ on all their tops and coats. Just kidding, in a highly literary way.
That lefties believe this would be something “the right” would get behind shows how far gone they are.
I would support the right of a private organization to refuse to participate in artificial insemination of a single gal. That’s as far as I would go.
Good Grief! Is anyone here more conservative than I am?
The legislation is ridiculous. No one I know would support it either. The liberals create an illusion of what the rightwing looks like and it is that imaginary monster they fight.
I say that kind of law should only apply to those who have submitted to the government as their “baby daddy.” For you absent Sunday Schoolers, I believe it was Paul who very reasonably put forth the idea that people were the slave of whomever they submitted to.
Those that have submitted to government sustinence for their basic living needs, should have to submit to any requirement placed upon them in order to enjoy that privilege. And don’t stop there. If you’re living on the gov’t dole, then the fat police get to tell you what your WIC coupons and Food Stamps can and can’t buy for you until you lose weight. No ho-hos and twinkies until you drop 40 lbs! “Fit and infertile” is the least we can ask of those who are living off the goodwill of others. Right? (tongue loosely planted in cheek).
The rest of us would prefer to muddle through with our freedom intact, thankewverymuch.
I ain’t calling bullshit on this story yet, but the only other place I’ve found anything on this story (by using keywords from the linked blog post on Google News) is some outfit called “365ghey.com,” (wrong spelling used to beat Jeff’s blacklist software) and their article looks like it was cribbed from somewhere else (i.e. no direct quotes used).
Now, if it is true, well, the Hoosiers never have been accused of being the smartest people in the world.
A strict strict constructionist could find it constitutional on grounds that there’s nothing in the Constitution that expressly forbids regulation of reproduction. But even then, you’ve gotta wonder: if the Ninth Amendment doesn’t protect the right to procreate, what the hell does it protect?
For non-strict constructionists, it’s an easy call. The leading case is <a href=”http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=316&invol=535″>Skinner v. Oklahoma</a>, which held (curiously) that forced sterilization of convicts was unconstitutional because it wasn’t uniformly applied to different classes of felons. The holding isn’t so important, though; what’s important is the passage that begins, “We are dealing here with legislation which involves one of the basic civil rights of man.” That language has since been cited in a string of Court cases on the right of privacy, and no doubt would be deployed again to shoot down Indiana’s statute.
It’s worth reading the passage I mentioned if you have time. Note the year of the decision and the reasoning Douglas gives for why governments shouldn’t be able to mess with reproduction.
Meh. Four percent of Federal legislators are inclined toward a wacky notion. It’s not nearly so bad as when a much higher percentage agreed with Mrs. Clinton’s loopy idea that any doctor who might dare to practice medicine outside her universal Federal HMO would be jailed for exchanging their services for cash. That piece of crap had a lot of MSM support and went nowhere. This piece of crap will have no MSM support, no Democrat support, and the 4r;s will be astonished at how very few Republicans will agree. And they will be stunned to find how many Republicans think the 4r;s ought to get out of the legislation business and go get jobs.
Hmmm.
1. @ Jeff Goldstein
“How many of you who self-identify as Republican or conservative support legislation like this? “
I don’t agree with it at all.
It’s an obvious end-run to eliminate gays from having kids. If gay marriage is illegal then gays can’t be married. If gays aren’t married then they can’t hire a surrogate mother to bear them a child. They could still adopt, but that would be with the onus of being single rather than a married couple.
If that’s the real issue then they need to come out and spell it out and take their lumps. This weasel-word nonsense is frankly appalling.
Not I. But when you start with the premise that the government has the right to legislate everything then you’re bound to encounter legislative overreaching of all types.
Hell, I’m all for it. It’s tough enough to get laid these days, and with the gals opting for this artificial insemination stuff, well, there’s gonna be an awful lot of leftover testosterone. And that can’t be good …
We just need to re-think this whole reproductive rights thing, is all I’m sayin’. Maybe change this artificial insemination into some kind of required dating service instead. I bet the girls would really dig that.
ed wins a prize; this is all about keeping gay parents from having kids. It’s also almost the first I’ve heard of this piece of offal, and I live there. I couldn’t say how much chance this has; Indiana has on occasion, an odd libertarian streak, but there’s a lot of worrying about gays and lesbians.
And although I self-identify as conservative/libertarian, and I vote Republican (when the Libs get their shit together, call me), this is garbage.
TW: ‘picture’ – it’s an ugly one.
There are roughly two types of conservatives in this Great Land that we call the Good Ol’ U. S. of A. Small government conservatives and big government conservatives.
Big government conservatism is almost always bad. This proposal is big conservatism at just about it’s most obnoxious.
Would a loaded turkey baster be protected by the Second Amendment?
Found this, which provides some media corroboration.
(source)
This is a law that limits sperm-donor laws to married couples, and apparently none of the readers understand these laws or their background.
It’s probably the case that most sperm-donor laws are limited to married couples; they were certainly written that way to begin with. Before sperm-donor laws, the man who produced the sperm was always responsible for child support. Sperm donors were shielded from child support obligations by laws that effectively transferred the obligation to the husband. If there’s no husband, then the sperm donor has to pay.
I don’t think children should come into the world without two parents willing to support them, so I favor this law. Further, I would suggest that single women who desperately want a child should be supplied by the state with a goldfish, at taxpayer expense.
HOAX
Isn’t this how the whole system is supposed to work? Someone has an idea, they get themselves elected, they put their idea up for legislation. The legislation gets discussed, it’s either good or bad, it’s either passed or not.
I think this is a bad law but I think this is a good example of using legislation to get the laws to work the way you imagine they should.
The other choice is trying to put pressure on a court somewhere to find the right to use or deny artificial insemination hiding somewhere in the state constitution. At least this way the bad idea will be voted on and (most likely) put to rest.
Its what I wish would happen more often rather than less often.
You cannot legislate morality. I live in Taiwan and they try to do this all the time (changing now, though.) Usually the result is a major backfire.
Example: To get a divorce, both parties have to agree and have two witnesses.
The idea is to make it harder to get a divorce and keep families together.
Result: Let’s say you’re a woman being battered by her husband. You can’t get a divorce without him agreeing. What if he simply doesn’t agree? Basically he can control your life.
The problem is they tried to imagine a situation where they could make divorce harder for ‘nice’ couples so they wouldn’t divorce willy nilly. But if you’re nice, you probably won’t do that anyways. Instead the law gives leverage to the PSYCHO in dysfunctional marriages. GREAT!
So be very wary when they start passing laws like this: who’s it really going to affect?
If it’s a hoax, somebody went through a lot of trouble and fooled an Indiana newspaper.
Richard —
I haven’t made it through the entire document yet, but it seems to be about more than simply guarding against paternity suits. It seems to me more like an extension of adoption screening laws.
Here’s one bit, grabbed kind of at random:
(from page 19)
If it’s not a hoax it ought to be.
Maybee —
Well, that’s one of the reasons this interested me: I think it’s a bad use of time (and taxpayer money, which pays the salaries of the legislature) crafted laws that are on their face unconstitutional, but then, I thought that of McCain-Feingold.
This one, as Allah points out above, might work from a strict strict Constitutionalist standard, but the 9th Amendment seems to militate against even the very strictest of readings.
Anyway, thought it was worth a discussion. Richard is very active in parents / mens rights movements, so he has some background here. I wonder if he’d be willing to read through the entire document and pronounce on it.
It’s hard to believe this is reality, especially given the first far-lefty link. The second makes it hard to deny – what prankster would fix the url, then yammer on in pseudo legalese for 22 pages?
There are two issues at play here stemming from one problem: legislators with too much time in chambers, which makes them lose their perspective. Keep your day jobs, folks, and don’t show up here too often, it makes the farmers nervous. Also, apparently a bit of crack is being embibed out in the cornfields there.
First issue, stupid legislation. Get a stick and kill it. Second, calling meetings and not getting the e-mail out to everybody. I didn’t know we’d agreed to a push on overturning Roe. Damn that Rove.
I’d love to hear what Richard has to say.
It looks to me like legislation that would treat artificial/physician assisted reproduction laws more like adoption laws. Criminal background checks must be conduction, childcare plans filed, etc.
So the question I’d really be interested in is:does the fact that it requires physician intervention to create the pregnancy mean that it can be argued it is no longer a personal right (constitutionally). Kind of like abortion, really. We wouldn’t imprison a woman for miscarrying or even, god forbid, aborting her own fetus. But some do wish to make it illegal for a doctor to get involved.
I don’t like the law, but I don’t know that that makes it a waste of taxpayer’s money. Hate speech laws seem to me to be unconstitutional on their face, yet they are argued in State Legislations all the time. It seems to me that if there is a constitiuency for such things, the people have a right to try to make their case.
Sec. 13. (a) Before commencing assisted reproduction with an intended parent, the physician who will perform the procedure shall obtain the consent of each of the intended parents.
(b) The consent must contain the following:
(1) An affirmation by the intended parent.
(2) A statement that if an intended parent becomes pregnant, each intended parent waives the right to deny parentage of the child.
(3) A statement that the parentage of a child conceived by assisted reproduction shall be the child of the intended parent for all intent and purposes, the same as if the child had been conceived as a result of sexual intercourse.
(4) A statement that the contents of the consent are true under the penalties of perjury.
(5) The signature of at least the physician or a member of the physician’s staff.
It seems to me that the intent here is to ensure that parents seeking an artificial insemination or surrogacy conform to the same requirements as those seeking to adopt, which in Indiana means that they have to be a couple, and both have to accept legal and financial responsibility for the child.
I don’t see why this is a problem: the law is meant to ensure that children born of IVF or assisted pregnancy have the same rights as those born of natural birth already have, to two parents.
IVF and AI shouldn’t be a back-door around paternity laws, and those who object to this law are seeking “special rights” for unmarried mothers.
Did I take too big of a pull off the crack-pipe or does this HOAX/law consider the child a viable human before it is even conceived and then legislates the conditions under which it can be conceived?
Then it could be legally aborted because it is not a viable human?
Pummel me if you must.
I’ve been skimming through the draft legislation and it seems fairly apparent to me that the Booman Tribune is grossly misrepresenting this law. I’m no lawyer but the apparent intent looks to be to tighten up the surrogate/donor rules and avoid legal complications that come from having lax rules.
What the law does not does not do is make it illegal for an unmarried mother to have a child.
I haven’t read the bill, nor have I read most of the comments. But I did read the linked article. If this is true, I’m gonna go shop for a tinfoil hat, register for my moonbat card, and move to Canada. This is fucking insane.
The good news is it only took me 3 seconds to start compiling a list of reasons why such a bill would be unconsitutional. And, my view of constitutional interpretation is very conservative. After I down a few beers, I might even spew some of my thoughts if they’re still semi-coherent.
What concerns me here is that a child is not being “adopted,” unless, as someone else notes, we believe that personhood begins before the sperm and egg are joined. We’re regulating potentialities.
Am I wrong? I think Richard, Maybee, and Seth (probably others, too, but I’m too lazy to reread all the comments) raise some interesting points; but I think the points they raise in turn raise some interesting points.
The good old Hoosier state…I love ya, thanks for being the place I grew up, but you can write off ever having me as a resident again. I’d rather live in Iraq – there’s far fewer blue laws there.
When I deployed to the Gulf War, several Marines in the battalion suddenly got married. They soaked up married pay and allowances for 11 months (split with the “wife”) and then just as suddenly got divorced when we got back.
If this legislation is legit, instead of strengthening families or reinforcing the “sanctity” of marriage, it could have just the opposite effect. Women who want a kid, but may not want a husband will ‘contract’ a stand-in for a quickie marriage, get the kid, and annul the marriage once the kid is born.
It could cheapen rather than strengthen marriage, and won’t solve the “problem.”
Section 1 simply redefines “assisted reproduction” to include some new technologies (an upgrade from turkey baster).
Section 2 is again a fine tuning of the definition “child” … tho’ some make take issue with 13(c) “includes an unborn child”. It also updates the definition of “child” as covered by the “gestational agreement” (read “surrogate”).
Section 3 defines “conduct a criminal history check” as it could apply to other sections.
Section 4 … again definition of “donor” … who knew?
Section 5 is solely a reference.
Section 6 is again definition and reference … as is Section 7.
Section 8 … defines the parties to an agreement.
Section 9 … well ….. um …..
Section 10 … definition.
Section 11 separates “biological” from “gestational”
Section 12 is the .. ahem … meat of the document covering “Assisted Reproduction”.
It specifically excludes
(1) Sexual intercourse.
(2) Assisted reproduction in which:
– the intended father is the sperm donor; and
– the intended mother is the egg donor.
(3) A gestational carrier.
(4) Surrogacy.
… and seems mainly to attempt to “establish parentage”, in a situation of “assisted reproduction”.
Some of it is a CYA for the physician doing the procedure, some makes the parties to the “parentage” take full responsibility for what they are about to do …, gets a “donor” off the hook (and eliminates the possibility of blackmail), and an ex-spouse if he decided to leave any evidence around. It appears to stop the possibility of a surrogate backing out of the “deal”.
What I see here is the definition of “parents”. Nothing sinister.
Now, I know nothing of the Indiana definitions of “marriage”, “spouse” or “gay rights” … but I can’t see anything to preclude gay parents.
No, I’m not a lawyer.
I read it as simply an effort to confirm legally, who the legal and responsible parents are, in the event of assisted reproduction.
Am I wrong?
There is no “right” to have both a mother and a father. And there are a lot of two-parent families that are plenty dysfunctional when compared with honest, hard-working single moms and dads.
And I really don’t have any problem with single women having special privileges, if that “privilege” is giving birth. That special blessing/curse was placed upon us by God/biology, and it’s not the state’s place to take it away.
If we’re going to go down this road, we should probably make all parents–adoptive and biological–sign agreements to the effect that neither one of them will die until their offspring are all 18.
You know: to make it fair.
The very first paragraph says:
which leaves an awful lot of options open.
tw: reported-I am starting to think it is not as heinous as first reported. ^^
Let me take a step back and explain why laws like this are necessary. When an unmarried woman has a baby, the law recognizes the biological father of the child as a person with parental rights and responsibilities. That means he gets to pay child support, and it also means he can sue for custody, which means the mom gets to pay child support if he wins.
Some women would prefer this were not the case. So when a woman has a baby, she has to name the father, more or less. We don’t want a situation where unwed mothers are depriving fathers of their parental rights and depriving children of a relationship with their fathers; constitutional rights and all that.
So the law presumes that every child has a father. Sperm banks are in a special place because the men who make deposits don’t have parental rights and obligations, so the state has to establish a paper trail linking mothers to sperm bank withdrawals in order not to run afoul of the rights I just mentioned.
Indiana is a high child support state thanks to a feminist-run institute at Indiana U that studies child support levels and publicizes them, amidst all the arguments about how important it is for men to pay lots and lots of support. They say it’s for the children.
So if your state’s feminists are on the soap-box demanding lots and lots of money, for the children, is it any wonder that the child support consciousness would manifest itself in a bill that intends to ensure each child has a father to support it?
It’s common sense, really, so don’t act so surprised.
So it excludes getting pregnant from the bathwater?
Um….I’m skipping some comments so excuse me if someone else has caught this…but I’m up to page nine of slogging through 22 page pdf
And I haven’t seen a thing yet that substantiates the weird line of the linking article
So far, the only thing I’m seeing it the law is putting IVF (ONLY in cases where the child is not genetically connected to either parent or only one parent) on the same footing as ADOPTION… ie the parents gotta be married and the doctor cannot procede until the parents have obtained a certificate from a “licensed child placing agency” (page 8)
It seems a bit draconian, but after stuff like the case of Baby Richard in Illinois and other horrendous fights in who is really the parent of an infants born through surrogacy or without genetic connection to the mom…I can see a possible reason for trying to tighten up to avoid these cases.
Am I missing something here? Would someone point out in the 22 page doc where ALL WOMEN HAVE TO BE LICENSED TO REPRODUCE?
Now, this is on page 13
Ya know, that sounds downright reasonable.
Hmmmmmm.
Oh Jaysus on a Pony… I just read the end of the posting where this link appeared
A**hole poster didn’t even read the f**king LAW. Hell, never let FACTS stand in the way of a great slam against nefarious neo-talibanish Rethuglicans!!
Louis Farrahkan is out making public threats against Bill Bennett because of Bennett’s “advocation of black genocide”..which is repeated by his thug army and we wonder why people like Bennett should NOT back down?
Allah, I lived that damned movie. Well, sort of. The big bad team in that movie? My home town high school. Mid-fifties. One of the stories I grew up on. Probably the only moviegoers who booed that underdog victory onscreen were citizens of my birth burg, Muncie, Indiana. (The winning runts were actually a bodunk school called Milan).
If government interference in private life is abhorent to you, you should check out the effect the Groningen protocol is having on domestic life in the Netherlands–and it is primarily a movement of the left.
I fear these attitudes are ultimately going to be imported to us from the EU disguised as some form of progressive policy. Indiana may be ahead of the curve.
I dunno, Darleen: if I had had to screw my body up hormonally for weeks at a time when I was in college in order for an older couple to harvest my eggs, I would have asked for some kind of compensation. It’s rather a miserable process, shooting yourself up several times a day, getting your ovaries looked at every other day via ultrasound, and then having surgery to get the damn eggs taken out.
These girls should be paid for that kind of grief.
And it wasn’t the notion that “all women have to be licensed to reproduce,” but rather the idea that women who want to use even the simplest kind of reproductive technologies to that end have to get permission from the state before they are “allowed” to do it!
I have no problem with paperwork that spells out who is responsible for what early on, and makes it clear that donors aren’t to be saddled with childcare payments. But granting “licenses” so people can be parents strikes me as a dangerous thing.
AG
I’m not arguing the proposed law is a thing of beauty. I think in many ways it is too strict. However, from some of the horrendous cases over the years involving children ripped from parents because the genetic parent suddenly shows up I don’t blame a bit of hangwringing over what to do when technology gallops ahead of ethics and policy.
Heck, I don’t see why I can’t sell a kidney to the highest bidder (I got 3, I could spare one)…but ethical policy has decreed that the potential for exploitation is too great. That’s why even in private adoption the pregnant woman can’t be “paid” for the baby, just actual costs involved, like medical costs. The law seems to be trying to parallel adoption law…which is pretty invasive in and of itself.
I just didnt buy the whole histrionics about a Patriarchal Conspiracy to take over Womyn’s bodies and set up a New Taliban and baby farm.
Oh BTW AG?
On page 3 of the pdf… A husband and wife can have any assistence with reproduction with their own sperm and egg (AI, IVF, etc) without any “licensing”
This seems to deal exclusively where the child is NOT going to be genetically connected to one or both parents.
That is where lawsuits live..when the genetic donor decides to interfer with the parents down the road.
Darleen,
Attila Girl is right, suffice it to say, my wife and I wouldn’t have any kids had it not been for donor eggs and there is NO way that any qualified egg donor is going to go through all those shots, pain, discomfort (outside close relatives, which, IMHO, would make the parental rights situation worse) with out JUSTLY DESERVED compensation
“American women…bodies are property of the State”
Well since NOW’s, the notorious Marxist-based Feminist movement, ideology is based upon achieving a Marxist utopian State free of the stifling patriarchy parasite pregnacy which keeps bearfoot females stuck in the oppressive kitchen(ms. betty talk) then I would have to agree…women’s bodies are the property of the State of NOW.
I don’t think many American females have any idea the degree in which NOW owns the female body or how much NOW has enslaved the female’s body politic.
NOW is Nastiness on Wombs/Nogood over Women.
As for the legislation, it’s more gunk to the system. However, they way Marxist-Feminism is controlling all elements of reproductive issues how long will it be before males are completly excluded from any rights reproductive issues inside or outside the womb?
How come females are allowed to make all decisions over the baby(fetus)while in the womb, but the moment the baby travels through the birth canal it all the sudden becomes the right of the female to sue the the man’s pants off for child-support? How does NOW justify such a ridiculous destinction? Females have the right to castrate by abortion his balls but should She CHOOSE to keep the baby she has the right to sue his balls.
We are living on planet earth, no?
Wow Susan,
I don’t recall seeing so many “in your face” BALLS since Liberace passed. Bravo.
I, of course, cried HOAX, but as Mr. G said, if it is a hoax it’s as elaborate as the Valerie Plame Sting of ott-4.
If I get your meaning, an active NOW person of the female gender would have inter-you-know-what with a hunky guy and then run a Dunn & Bradstreet on him to decide whether to abort or not?
I think that bill goes way to far, but I don’t think that people on welfare or with multiple felonies should be allowed to reproduce. Doing such merely perpetuates the cycle of poverty. And I’m not talking about anything permanent, but peoplel gettin’ free money from the gummint should also get Orthocept and reversible vaesectomies.
JFH
I’m not disagreeing with you. Now, please define “just compensation.” All real expenses plus …?
This is a similar situation as prospective parents helping out the pregnant girl or woman who is going to give up her baby to them for adoption. She, too, goes through a lot with pregnancy and birth.
It’s about God damned time!
In fact, why don’t they extend the “unauthorized reproduction” prohibition to everyone?
They ought to make it illegal to even have sex, an even bigger penalty for getting pregnant, and then make you take a test to get your certificate.
And make the test really hard, too. Way harder than the SATs. Make it twice as hard as the bar exam, that’s what I say. Keep changing the topics every year just so people can’t study for it, either.
And then sterilize anyone who doesn’t pass after the second try. These babies cost money, and we’re the ones paying for them!
I mean, we’re not a free people, after all.
Let’s look at some other examples:
If someone operates a business, or dares to work in a licensed profession, the government can tell him that he doesn’t have the right to refuse service as he chooses.
You can’t voluntary agree to pay (or be paid) a mutually agreeable price for your goods or services, for everything from employment to a bushel of corn.
The government has a prior claim on your earnings, allowing you to keep only what it decides you can keep.
The government forces people to pay into a retirement benefits shell game that it knows is disadvantageous to almost everyone, just so the middle class will be duped into thinking it has a “stake” in the system and thus not think its welfare.
The government declares what money is, prints as much as it wants, and occasionally makes it illegal to even possess the commodity that free people consider to be money.
If the government decides that another person would be a more productive tax payer, it can evict you from your property.
The list goes on.
What is it about sexual liberty that makes it so much more special than economic liberty?
Why, when it comes to sex, are people ready to storm the castle, but when it comes to economic liberty, many of those same people (even those who profess to be “conservative with libertarian tendencies”) have no problem whatsoever telling other people how to live their lives?
I gotta go with Joe on this one. It’s hard for us single ugly guys to get laid. A law that betters our chances is a good law.
If the state imposes no constraints on the use of artificially donated sperm, then there should be an equivalent lack of constraint on the use of naturally donated sperm.
If single and gay parenting is now part of modern lifestyle choices then shouldn’t some of the old attitudes about unwary natural sperm donors be reevaluated?
Seems to me this isn’t so bad. Looks like the legislature decided to make a legal defination before having one imposed by the courts.
Looks like it could be a stepping stone to stop breeding of embryos for cloning too. Again, in my opinion, good, but then I’m a pretty rabid pro-lifer and I live in Podunk, Indiana.
So let make sure I am getting this right. If you a are lesbian in a commited relationship ( or not ), no donated sperm baby for you . However, if you are barely 15, living in the projects, getting pregnant is fine since you did not use artificial means.
SO, I guess what we have here is an effort to make it illegal for lesbians and gays to have children.
One has to wonder after taking a look at Miller..
http://www.in.gov/legislative/senate_republicans/images/senator headshots for website/Millerheadshot.png
Is this law the only way she’ll get any in the whole state?
Not me.
‘Course who would be motiviated to contemplate such if it weren’t for the encroaching nanny state? No societal uber-blanket, no worries.
And let’s be careful to distinguish between the right to actually reproduce, which seems inalienable, with the right to murder, which obliterates helpless inalienability.
*SO, I guess what we have here is an effort to make it illegal for lesbians and gays to have children.*
Err, is that sarcasm ? If its not, I think you need to read the whole thing. There are clearly other considerations, which have been extrapolated quite well by many of the posters here. I can safely say the entire purpose of this law is not to keep lesbian couples from having baby’s.
It really saddens me that any law which in any way touches on sex is translated by far too many left leaning people as “aimed at gays”.
Wow, we actually sort of agree on something… I’m impressed.
Well, not necessarily. If you read the proposed legislation, it requires even married couples to meet certain standards:
The required information includes the fertility history of the parents, education and employment information, personality descriptions, verification of marital status, child care plans and criminal history checks. Description of the family lifestyle of the intended parents also is required, including participation in faith-based or church activities.
The legislation appears to affect some married couples, although the rough draft is unclear at times. Miller said the draft will be clarified before a vote.
The bill does not apply to assisted reproduction in which the child is the genetic child of both of the intended parents, for example, the sperm is from the father and the egg is from the mother. But married couples that need one or the other would still have to go through an assessment process and establish parentage in a court.
Now this is just silly. I don’t want children being born to racist parents, but I’d advocate like hell against a law that limited the reproduction options of people for living in ways that I don’t agree with. Should we have an income requirement for childbirth? Interestingly, states that penalize welfare recipients for having additional children see their abortion rates for low-income women go up—is that what we want? Coerced reproductive choices because of income? I don’t know what your views on abortion are, but that position isn’t particularly pro-life, is it? Allowing the government to exert control over how we reproduce—whether we choose not to or whether we utilize scientific advancements to help us out—sets us down a dangerous path.
No, it doesn’t. She can have a child whenever she wants—it just limits the ways in which she can legally get pregnant. She can do it the old-fashioned way, but this law would make it nearly impossible for her to access fertility treatment/sperm donation.
And as a final clarification, contrary to what some commentors have asserted, I wasn’t trying to argue that this bill is representative of a greater right-wing philosophy, or that most Republicans/libertarians/conservatives would inevitably support it. All I said in the post is that it’s representative of a greater anti-choice philosophy, which is about controling women’s bodies and our reproductive choices (I know a lot of people are gonna disagree with me on that. Not trying to start a fight or derail the thread here). I would imagine that most traditional small-government Republicans would be in opposition to this law, as it interferes with the most private of rights. It’s the extreme social conservatives who feel it’s their place to legislate their personal morality on the rest of us who will support it.
That said, it’s unconstitutional (see Skinner v. Oklahoma) and I doubt it’ll become law. Frightening, though, that it was even proposed.
Lesbians and gays can bear children? How does that work exactly?
And, please leave heterosexuals out of the argument they are neither lesbian or guy.
The concern here is not what the fine print of this legislation would ban or allow, it is what this would lead to in the future. The fact that lawmakers can be so unconcerned with personal freedoms, and so unconstrained by the intended role of government in this ‘free’ country to even suggest that the goverment should be involved in this should be a red flag. There is nothing that the state and national congress’ think is off limits to them. This applies to both sides of the isle.
I wonder what happens if you pass the fertility mustard and legally conceive, and then get a divorce before the baby arrives? Or shortly after? Or ever? This certainly paves the way for the government to decide whether or not you can divorce if children are involved. What if you had had some rocky points in your marriage, got counselling and now are seeking your permit to have a baby? Can they deny because your marriage is not solid enough?
And it seems logical that there should be a mandatory waiting period after marriage before you can seek infertility help. Got to make sure the marriage is gonna last, right? Or that you are not some lesbian that found a male friend and got married just to get fertility treatments and then divorce. All these things are applicable to the enforcement of the intent of this law…which is to “protect the children”.
Conservative Cat has a debunking of this interpretation of the law. Seems like some pundits just did not read closely enough?
http://www.conservativecat.com/mt/archives/2005/10/100505_trust_bu.html
Susan astutely points out:
NOW wants men to pay child support and alimony, but beyond that we’re supposed to keep our mouths shut and stay in our place.
Pluto’s Dad,
I read the debunking you reference and while it does seem to counter the interpretation of the law being bitched about here (by myself as well).
But, in the debunking they leave behind the question, what purpose does the bill serve then? What they say the bill truly intends to legislate is basically nothing. I can’t run off with some of my wifes eggs without her consent and use them in impregnating another woman? Is this really a big problem in Indiana?
Regardless of the ambiguous nature of this bill, I have a hard time believing that they have nothing more pertinent to be working on.
[insert appropriate apologies for late posting here]
The real ‘test’ of this, or indeed most, legislation is: the law of unintended consequences.
Were I to have my way, any/all regulation that impinged on the civil sphere (and I’d use ‘impinged’ here the same way the Fed uses the commerce clause) would be subject to honest efforts; of the writer’s most vigorous/vicious opponents; to twist, abuse, misdirect and otherwise profane the intent of the regulation. In that way, it could more clearly be seen, not only how the regulation ‘should’ be used, but how it might be.
I submit that ‘might be’ is a rather frightening phrase when applied to the regulation we contemplate here.
Imagine yourself the state assemblyman from, say, Kokomo.
You hear two phrases, which conger up two images:
“Turkey Baster Kid”
and
“Janet Reno”
Heck, yeah you’ll vote for it!
The vast majority of the bill addresses the problem of establishing legal parentage. If two people are having a child in which some of the genetic material comes from a third source, the third source has no right to the child under the proposed law.
The proposed law does NOT apply unless there is that third source for genetic material. In the case there is the third source, the intended parents of the child must provide a paper trail, and part of that paper trail is an assessment of the marriage, similar to what is now required for adoption.
The proposed law does not clearly state that the intended parents must be married, though that is strongly implied. It is just a draft committee proposal and I would not be surprised if it changes quite a bit before it hits the Senate floor. Bruce talked to Senator Miller’s staff, and they don’t understand the proposal either, which isn’t helping.
I’m whupped, Jeff, so maybe I’m not getting the point, but with regards to Bennett, can’t you make the distinction that Bennett takes his position because he believes abortion is murder, not because he doesn’t want to “impinge upon individual liberties?”
Even after reading most of the links, I can’t figure out what is the proposed law’s purpose, but I will say that after taking up foster parenting, my hands-off attitude toward government intrusion into parent-child relationships and reproductive rights has changed a bit. I’d definitely back a bill that allows forced sterilization after a woman births, abuses, and loses custody of three children spaced evenly over 10 years, like the mom of my last foster son. Which is all different from the situation in your post, but pertinent to the issue someone mentioned of societal costs due to crappy parenting.
Salt Lick
I can’t tell you how many times we process a woman for child neglect/abuse (got one yesterday with poor little 7 month old in a motel room, no food, no milk, severe rash and mom doing meth) to find out the woman already has 4 or 5 other kids already in the foster care system.
Jill
With respect to your allusions to a “all your uteri belong to us” Rightwinger Patriarchal Conspiracy… outside of the admitted overreach of restricting artificial methods of reproduction to married couples who jump through the same hoops as adopting couples … what is “frightening” to avoid the kind of horror of court cases where a child who is not genetically connected to his/her parents ends up being fought over in the courts by three or more people?
Contract law has been lagging on this because the contracts haven’t been worth the paper they’ve been written on.
The law used to only concern itself with paternity, but now MATERNITY needs to be established, too, with the rights and responsibilities clearly defined.
This proposed law is overreach and invasive, but unnecessary? Really?
That’s what happens when it’s revealed that the state agencies approved some adoptions via surrogate mothers that now look embarrassing to the agencies involved. Legislators have to *do* something!!!