Every now and then this issue comes up, and the NOW people scream bloody murder.  This is a very complicated issue, with no easy answers.  But family law on this issue is one example of a society that has gone stark raving mad, turning age-old notions of justice inside out and upside down.   This is also related to the paternity fraud issue, which still hasn’t been addressed adequately by the courts and legislatures.

I think we need to start asking for legislation that protects fathers' rights when it comes to abortion. I support abortion only because I feel like I have no right to tell others what to do. If people so choose to live with the act of abortion, that is the weight they have to carry. But fathers have no say in it. Why? Because they do not have to grow the child for nine months and then give birth? Pregnancy is just nine months. Men should be able to have a voice for their child to possibly have 50, 80 or 100 more years of life.

Men must also realize that if the mother does not want the child but the father does, he must be the one to step up to the plate to raise the child and not just say, “It’s your baby, you raise it” to the mother.

via Fathers should have a say in abortion – Juneau Empire.

Often in these times, a big impediment to ongoing relationships of fathers and their children is the state’s intervention.

A Fragile Families study showed a majority of unmarried fathers were very involved with their infants and planned to stay that way. About 80 percent provided financial support to their child’s mother during pregnancy and planned to support the child. About half were romantically involved and living with the child’s mother at the time of birth; another 30 percent were dating but did not live together. Only 10 percent had little or no contact with their babies.

via Study: Majority of unwed dads involved with infants » Knoxville News Sentinel.

It would be interesting to know just how many people are in jail across the U.S. for failure to pay child support.

The incident in November started with McCoy's arrest after failing to pay child support. A sheriff's deputy told him to remove the gold grill attached to his teeth. But when McCoy, 31, told the deputy it was permanently attached, Lt. Tanya Mayhew stepped in. She put on a rubber glove, stuck her hand in his mouth and yanked out the gold jewelry grill cemented to his teeth

via Ripping grill off teeth of man in custody costs Metro $100,000 | tennessean.com | The Tennessean.

We’ve been seeing this coming.  It’s really a tragedy that so many families and children’s hearts are completely torn to pieces by the lack of commitment to marriage vows.

THE Rudd government is planning to roll back the controversial shared parenting law passed in the final term of the Howard government, enraging men’s groups, which say the laws have finally given them access to their children after separation.

The council says some men are approaching the court, asking for years-old parenting agreements to be modified so they can pay less child support. Under the Howard government reforms, men can pay less, in exchange for seeing their children more.

The submission says: “Parents are saying they don’t want money. They would be happy to forgo maintenance payments if it saves their child from having to spend half the week with a parent who does not really want to parent them, but whose main objective is to avoid child support.”

Who are these people to be judging the motivation of these men to file for more time with their children, saying that they only want to reduce their child support?

This is a real insult to all fathers.  There are plenty of examples of good dads, as well as bad dads.  The exact same thing can be said of moms.  We all are aware of both good moms and bad moms out there.  So what!  If a dad wants to spend time with his children, who is anyone to get in the way? The whole idea is preposterous, and it is high time that fathers stopped putting up with this nonsense, and stand up to these really evil people who denigrate men and fathers.

In my opinion, a mother who tries to diminish the relationship of a child and his or her father in any way is a bad mom.  An unfit mom.

In my opinion, if a mother is afraid to stand up to a man, then she is mentally imbalanced or incapacitated, or both, and so is an unfit mother.

via Shared parenting laws on way out | The Australian.

The case is among a growing number of custody disputes in Japan that involve one foreign parent. Japanese law allows only one parent to be a custodian — almost always the mother — leaving many divorced fathers without access to their children until they are grown.

While prosecutors have not pressed charges against Christopher Savoie, they haven’t yet dropped the case either, and an investigation is continuing, said police official Kiyonori Tanaka in the southern Japanese city of Yanagawa. They decided to release him on grounds that he was not a flight risk, he said.

As was reported earlier, Mr. Savoie had paid, as part of a divorce settlement, $800,000 to the mother of his children for her agreement not to move the children to Japan, yet, that is exactly what she did.  He was then granted custody by the U.S. courts, and an arrest warrant was issued for the mother.

via US man accused of grabbing own kids freed in Japan – Yahoo! News.

Very interesting interview.  The Japanese mother in this case who took the kids away to Japan, also ripped off the father, but he’s in jail.

Video – Breaking News Videos from CNN.com.

Received this notice from Stephen Baskerville:

My article, “Married to the State,” is published today in The American Conservative, online edition: http://www.amconmag.com/blog/married-to-the-state/.

A longer, scholarly version of this argument will be published in the January 2010 issue of The Family in America: A Journal of Public Policy.

TAC has published 3 previous articles of mine in their print edition:
“Fathers Into Felons”: http://www.amconmag.com/article/2005/may/23/00020/
“The Fathers’ War”: http://www.amconmag.com/article/2005/oct/24/00017/
“Violence Against Families”: http://stephenbaskerville.net/Violence_Against_Families.pdf

Stephen

******************************

Married to the State

How government colonizes the family

By Stephen Baskerville

In 1947, with the baby boom in its infancy and few disposed to hearing of family crisis, Harvard sociologist Carle Zimmerman saw the long-term reality: the family had been deteriorating since the Renaissance and was nearing the point of no return. Whenever the family shows signs of dysfunction, Zimmerman observed, “the state helps to break it up.” During the 19th century, “law piled on law, and government agency upon government agency” until by 1900 “the state had become master of the family.” The result, he wrote in Family and Civilization, was that “the family is now truly the agent, the slave, the handmaiden of the state.”

To read the rest, go to: http://www.amconmag.com/blog/married-to-the-state/.

************************************************

Stephen Baskerville, PhD
Associate Professor of Government
Patrick Henry College
1 Patrick Henry Circle
Purcellville, Virginia 20132

From Turner Publishing:

Taken Into Custody: The War Against Fatherhood, Marriage, and the Family

Taken Into Custody: The War Against Fathers, Marriage, and the Family
STEPHEN BASKERVILLE, PhD

“This book is a tremendous and much-needed report on how family courts and government policies are harming children.” — Phyllis Schlafly, President, Eagle Forum

Order today at Amazon’s special price of $16.47 (regular price $24.95).

For more than 80 articles and studies in mainstream publications on the abuses of the divorce industry, see www.stephenbaskerville.net.

Baskerville has been writing and speaking on the subject of family law, and it’s discrimination against fathers for many years. It is always interesting to see how many prescient researchers and writers over the years have foreseen the destruction of the family, yet the destruction continues apace.
One of the biggest issues that I’ve ever noticed is that most fathers, when ending up in a divorce hearing, simply don’t understand that they are no longer the head of a family, if they ever were. Now,all the talk about children’s rights takes it further. When you talk children’s rights outside the context of parental or family rights, then you are talking about the state supplanting the parent, period.

The initiative is run by Advocacy for La Plata, a Women’s Resource Center program headquartered above United Blood Services in Bodo Industrial Park. If sometimes these men feel like the blood is being squeezed out of them, at this meeting they know they’re not alone. Not all estranged fathers, after all, are deadbeat dads.

The words are there… but the fact that such a program is run out of a Women’s Resource Center says all you need to hear.  These people just want conformity.  Maintaining a relationship with children is only important in so far as it promotes prompt child support payments.  That is also the only context in which the idea of “rights” comes up.  There is a problem in all of this, and that problem is that family law, especially with regard to custody and child support, doesn’t take into account basic human realities about men and fathers.  Women will never get this.

via Durango Herald News, Dads get help in this family program.

IMAGINE IT being argued that citizens be denied the right to go where they please because the freedom to travel also benefits hijackers and terrorists! Would anyone give a moment’s thought to abolishing the liberties of the vast majority on the basis that a few wicked people will inevitably benefit from these freedoms? Anyone stupid enough to make such a proposal would be laughed into oblivion, writes JOHN WATERS

I always hate that people have to add such phrases as “except in cases of severe abuse…” or whatever, in order to qualify the demands for equal access.  This is nonsense, but it shows how effective the campaign to label all fathers as potential batterers.  This has happened because there has been, and continues to grow, a flourishing industry of professionals in the domestic violence cabal.  These same people have managed to pretty much make a mockery of any notion of justice in family courts, pretty much world wide.

via Unmarried fathers just want equality – The Irish Times – Fri, Sep 11, 2009.

Richard Thomas had sole custody of his two teenage sons for two years until the day in 2007 when they visited their mother and never returned.

Today, Thomas’ sons are in foster care while he fights to regain custody. His battle began when his boys were visiting their mother and she decided to drop them off at a police station with instructions to say they had run away from home. The police believed their story and contacted the Department of Children and Family Services, Thomas said.

What is wrong in all this business, is that a father has to prove his worth to meddling bureaucrats.  There should be an assumption of fitness.  The burden of proof should always lie with the person making an accusation of unfitness.  But investigating parents, just to be sure, is wrong.  This suspiciousness leads to a very unfriendly atmosphere and eventually will lead to the destruction of the nuclear family.  I believe there is a growing body of people in the U.S. who think that this is a good thing.

via Vigil promotes shared parent visitation rights :: The SouthtownStar :: News.