Parental Rights

The following are three very different cases of parental rights. I'm not talking about the kind of parental rights that the radical religious right is pushing for. While they say it's all about parental rights, it's really a very dangerous piece of legislation that would effectively gut children's welfare services across the nation. This is simply about who the law considers a parent and what rights one has as a parent and whether or not those rights override the rights of the child.

The first case involves unmarried teenage parents. The mother is an adult and the father is a 17 year old minor. The child in question was found unresponsive and, upon arrival at the hospital, was found to be suffering from shaken baby syndrome so severe that she will never recover and will be a vegetable all of her life, kept alive by tubes and machines. The 17 year old father was arrested and charged with child abuse. The mother wants to remove her daughter from the life support, saying that she believes her daughter is already with God. The father has sued for custody of the girl and her twin sister so that he can keep her on life support and get her all the treatment she needs to get better, even though there is very little chance that will ever happen. But his attorney says that he's not trying to keep her alive so that he doesn't have to face murder charges instead of just child abuse charges. There's all kinds of legal issues here since the parents aren't married, the father is a minor, the parents want different medical treatment for their daughter and the father is charged with causing her injuries. But the real question is, what is in the best interests of this child?

Unfortunately, the answer to that is too often based on emotional issues rather than more practical issues. Those who believe that we must do everything we can to keep someone breathing will say to keep her on life support. But as a nurse aide, I have seen people who are, for all intents and purposes, totally dependent on others for every aspect of their care and are unable to communicate their needs. They may be able to follow simply commands like "open your mouth" when they're being fed, but that's about the extent of their ability to interact with the outside world. These people, even with aggressive passive exercises end up with muscles that contract into the fetal position. This makes them susceptible to skin breakdown, which makes them susceptible to infections. Attempts to clean elbows and knees and fingers that are contracted can be very painful, but needs to be done in order to prevent skin breakdown. They're also prone to pressure ulcers from being unable to move on their own. While they are repositioned every two hours, when someone is contracted, there are only a limited number of positions you can put them in. The areas in contact with mattresses and pillows are going to be prone to pressure ulcers. Fingernails have to be cut frequently, causing pain as contracted fingers are straightened. But not doing so means that fingernails dig into the skin and eventually break open the skin. When someone lacks even the ability to swallow, they need to go on a feeding tube, which causes a whole new set of problems. And if they don't even have the ability to breathe on their own, there are even more complications, particularly with respiratory illnesses like pneumonia.

The point is that this 6 month old baby will spend the rest of her "life" totally dependent on others for even the simplest tasks. If the child is still capable of feeling pain, she will feel a lot of it over her lifetime if kept on life support, especially if she has a breathing tube. She will be on a lot of medications in an attempt to ease any pain she might be feeling, but this will in turn lessen any "interaction" she is capable of with the outside world. She'll never learn to speak or read or ride a bike or go on a first date. She'll just lie in bed and be turned from side to side every two hours for the rest of her life. That's not living— it's merely existing. In this instance, I believe the mother has the best interests of her daughter in mind when asking the courts to remove the life support. And I think the child's court appointed guardian should request that the life support be terminated as well. The father is, in my humble opinion, only trying to save his own behind from having to face murder charges. Even if he is innocent of those charges, I don't believe that it is in the little girl's best interests to keep her on life support.

The second case deals with an issue that's become more common place: a mother gives up a child for adoption and the father comes back later on and says "That's my kid!" and takes the child from the only parents s/he's ever known. And unfortunately, in many cases, the father wins because far too many courts still follow the guidelines that blood is the strongest tie. While there are those who say that this case is different because the father made his wishes known to the mother before she gave birth, I would strongly disagree. Here's why.

There are several well-known legal facts that everyone engaging in sexual intercourse is aware of. (Or should be aware of at least.)

1. Every act of intercourse may result in a pregnancy.
   
2. If a pregnancy results, the woman and the woman alone gets to decide whether that pregnancy continues or is terminated.
3. If a child is born of that pregnancy, the man is financially liable for child support if the mother chooses to keep the baby.
   

The first rule is a law of nature. No birth control is 100% efficient and the woman may be lying to you if she says she can't have kids or is on the pill. While there are days when a woman is more fertile than others, sperm can live in the human body for a while, so even if she's "past" the days when she's supposedly fertile, there's still a chance.

The second rule is common sense. She is the one who is pregnant and she is the one who is taking all the physical risks and she is the one whose body is undergoing such drastic changes. Therefore, since she is taking all the risks, and since it is her body, she is the one who gets to decide what happens to her body.

The third is common sense as well: the man helped create the baby and therefore has to help pay for raising the baby. Far too many men want to enjoy the sex, let the woman take the risks and then not support any child that may result.

But here's the important part that's often overlooked by "men's rights" advocates (who say they should get a say in whether a woman has an abortion or not). If a man does not want to abide by these three rules (well, two really since the first one you can't really do anything about), then the man need only keep his zipper zipped. No one is holding a gun to his head saying, "Have sex with this woman!" If he does not want to take the risk of finding himself dealing with a pregnancy in which he has no say or paying for a child he does not want, then the solution is quite simple: don't have sex! If you choose to have sex, then you tacitly agree to abide by those rules.

In this particular case, while the mother probably should take into account the father's wishes when it came to adoption, I don't think it should be required. There is no "bond" between the father and the baby other than the one the father may create in his own heart/mind. And after the child has been with the adoptive parents for more than a year, during which the most important bond the child will make has already occurred and that bond is between the adoptive parents and the child, if the father truly loves the child, he won't seek to break that bond because doing so creates a whole bunch of emotional and mental health issues for the child. If there's evidence the child is being abused by the adoptive parents, that's a whole other matter. But it's a matter of ego to say "That's my child and I have a right to raise him/her" simply because one is the sperm donor. A parent should always take the best interests of the child into account. And in this case, breaking the bond that child has with the adoptive parents will cause serious harm to that child. Again, the man made his choice when he had sex with the woman.

The final case deals with a mother who, while giving birth to her triplets, experienced a brain injury that left her severely disabled. What actually caused the brain injury is not clear, but the case was settled out of court for about $7 million. The mother is unable to move or speak on her own and requires round-the-clock care. But her parents insist she is still "there", able to answer questions with blinks and with the ability to laugh and know who is speaking to her and what is being said. Her parents also insist that her ex-husband, the children's father, is denying their daughter her rights as a mother to see and visit with her kids.

There are several issues to deal with in this case as well. For one thing, the woman's parents moved her 2500 miles away from her children, who are still living in Los Angeles where they were born. The woman's parents lived in South Carolina so they took her there for rehab. So to expect the father to fly three children out for visitations every month or to subject their daughter to the trauma of flying in her condition is, in my humble opinion, unreasonable. The parents of the woman in large part created the problem because they moved her 2500 miles away.

Second, if, as the ex-husband asserts, the parents have denied him access to her medical files and/or denied him the ability to see, even through video tape, that his ex-wife is making progress or is "still there", then I would have to agree with him that taking young children to see a woman who can't even acknowledge them in any way that the father has proof of, would be a traumatic incident for the kids, especially very young kids who don't like to go to "strangers" and who would be unable to understand why "mommy" doesn't answer or try to hold them.

However, if what the parents say is true, and the woman is capable of understanding what's going on around her and interacting, even if on a very limited level, with her environment and with other people, then she most definitely has a right to see her children. Now, it may be that for right now, it would be in the best interest of the kids if she "saw" them through videos or pictures. But as time goes on and they get older and able to understand more about the situation, I think the woman has every right to see her children in person IF the children want to see her. And I think that's important. I think the kids need to be given that choice when they're old enough to understand.