Widow's new bid for baby
Herald Sun, Victoria, Australia, Patrick O'Neil, April 27, 2005
SEVEN years after the death of her husband a young widow is fighting a landmark legal battle to use his sperm to conceive their baby.
The woman's husband, then 29, died in a motorcycle accident in Melbourne in 1998.
Within 24 hours of his death the woman, known only as AB, won a Supreme Court order authorising the removal and storage of her husband's semen.
The order was believed to be the first of its type in Australia.
But the court blocked her from using the sperm and it has been stored under the provisions of the Infertility Treatment Act 1995 ever since.
Victorian law bans insemination with the sperm of a dead man.
Now 36, AB is approaching the end of her fertility and believes it is now or never if she wants to have her husband's baby.
AB and her husband were childhood sweethearts and had been married for about 10 years before his death. The couple had no children.
Doctors have confirmed the sperm is fertile.
AB's lawyers said she had continued her battle to have her husband's baby but legal restrictions, until recently, blocked further steps.
This is the first time the matter has reached court since 1998.
The Victorian Attorney-General is fighting the woman's request to have the child.
AB's lawyers have asked the court to revoke a law passed on July 13, 1998, blocking use of the sperm without a court order.
The law was passed after the court allowed AB to have her husband's sperm removed.
AB hopes to conceive using intracytoplasmic sperm injection -- a method of IVF where a single sperm is injected into her ova outside her body, forming an embryo. The embryo would then be returned to AB's uterus.
Lawyer Carmen Currie, for AB, said amendments to the Infertility Treatment Act 1995 in 2001 and 2003 allowed AB to undertake the common IVF procedure with her husband's sperm.
"This procedure that our client wants done was previously banned," Ms Currie said. "There is now nothing in the law that should prohibit her type of treatment."
Pamela Tate, SC, for the Attorney-General, argued the procedure should not be allowed because AB's husband was not able to give his consent.
"There is no evidence he consented to the posthumous conception," Ms Tate said.
"One could not presume from marriage or duration of marriage that meant consent."
Ms Tate said it was an offence for anyone to use the sperm of a dead man without that consent.
After learning of her husband's death, AB flew from her interstate home and went to the Coroner's Court, where his body had been taken.
AB decided she wanted to have his semen removed and soon after won the right in court.
In 1998, she told the Herald Sun her marriage was extremely close.
"The relationship between my husband and myself was intensely personal and private," she said at the time.
The case, before Justice Kim Hargrave, continues today.
Scotland's National Newspaper
96% of women are liars, honest
5,000 women polled
Half the women said that if they became pregnant by another man but wanted to stay with their partner, they would lie about the baby's real father.
Forty-two per cent would lie about contraception in order to get pregnant, no matter the wishes of their partner.
Canada's largest
national newspaper
Mommy's little secret
The article contains info about children's identity fraud at The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
December 14, 2002.
Includes interview with employees of Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Ontario, Canada who admit they deny children's identity information to husbands/male partners of mothers who want to hide the real identity of their child because they had an affair. The U.N. Convention on the Rights of The Child specifically supports a child's human right to have a relationship with both his/her biological parents. In addition, this article is proof that The Hospital for Sick Children ("Sick Kids") supports paternity fraud.
Further "Sick Kids" supports a mother's rights only, which they view, supersedes 3 other people's rights, namely, the rights of the biological father, the rights of the mother's male partner/husband and the child's identity rights.
One in 25 fathers 'not the daddy'
Up to one in 25 dads could unknowingly be raising another man's child, UK health researchers estimate.
Increasing use of genetic testing for medical and legal reasons means Read More ..uples are discovering the biological proof of who fathered the child.
The Liverpool John Moores University team reached its estimate based on research findings published between 1950 and 2004.
The study appears in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
Biological father
Professor Mark Bellis and his team said that the implications of so-called
paternal discrepancy were huge and largely ignored, even though the
incidence was increasing.
In the US, the number of paternity tests increased from 142,000 in 1991 to 310,490 in 2001.
Adulterous woman ordered to pay husband £177,000 in 'moral damages'
The Daily Mail, UK
18th February 2009
An adulterous Spanish woman who conceived three children with her lover has been ordered to pay £177,000 in 'moral damages' to her husband.
The cuckolded man had believed that the three children were his until a DNA test eventually proved they were fathered by another man.
The husband, who along with the other man cannot be named for legal reasons to protect the children's identities, suspected his second wife may have been unfaithful in 2001.
Biology, not heart, provokes women's infidelity
Sydney Morning Herald, Australia
January 15, 2009
BEAUTIFUL women who have affairs can now blame it on their sex hormones.
Women with higher levels of oestradiol, a form of oestrogen, not only look and feel more attractive, they are also more likely to cheat on their partners, a new study has found.
One-night-stands are not what interest these flirtatious females, who tend to have bigger breasts, relatively small waists and symmetrical faces as a result of their high levels of oestradiol.
Rather, they adopt a strategy of serial monogamy, say the researchers, led by Kristina Durante of the University of Texas.
Paternity fraud: Is it or should it be a criminal offence under the Criminal Code of Canada?
You be the judge.
Who Knows Father Best?
Feminist organizations including the National Organization of Women (NOW) has objected to legislation that requires the courts to vacate paternity judgments against men who arent, in fact, the father.
Think about that. NOW wants some man, any man, to make child support payments. The woman who doesnt even know who the father is, should not be held responsible for her actions, is a sweet, loving, blameless mother who seeks only to care for her child and if naming some schmuck as father who never saw her before in his life helps her provide for the innocent babe, well then, that's fine.
Innocence is no excuse. Pay up. Read More ..
ABC
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
TV PROGRAM TRANSCRIPT
Broadcast: November 22, 2004
Who's Your Daddy?
Last year, more than 3,000 DNA paternity tests were commissioned by Australian men, and in almost a quarter of those cases, the test revealed that not only had their partners been unfaithful, but the children they thought were theirs had been sired by someone else. Read More ..
DNA: Why the truth can hurt
The Sunday Times
Australia
March 27, 2005
IT sounded too good to be true and it was.
The fairytale that saw Federal Health Minister Tony Abbott reunited with the son he thought he had given up for adoption 27 years ago, ABC sound-recordist Daniel O'Connor, ended this week when DNA tests confirmed another man had fathered Mr O'Connor.
The revelations were devastating for all involved, not least Mr O'Connor.
Still reeling from the emotional reunion with his mother, Kathy Donnelly, and Mr Abbott a few months ago, a simple test of truth has thrown the trio into disarray a situation familiar to thousands of other Australians.
Paternity testing in Australia is a burgeoning industry.
The simplicity of the test cells are collected from a mouth swab grossly underestimates the seriousness of the situation.
Fathers May Get Money Back in Paternity Fraud Cases
18 March, 2005
FindLaw, Australia
Proposed new laws will make it easier for fathers to recover child maintenance payments if DNA testing reveals that they are not the child's father.
The Family Law Amendment Bill 2005 allows people who wrongly believed they were the parent of a child to recover any child maintenance paid or property transferred under an order of a court under the Family Law Act 1975 .
"The bill is intended to make it easier for people who find themselves in this position to take recovery action without the need to initiate separate proceedings for an order from a court of civil jurisdiction, such as a State, Local or Magistrates court," Attorney-General Philip Ruddock said.
Men wage battle on 'paternity fraud'
USA TODAY, by Martin Kasindorf, December 12, 2002
An acid sense of betrayal has been gnawing at Damon Adams since a DNA test showed that he is not the father of a 10-year-old girl born during his former marriage.
"Something changes in your heart," says Adams, 51, a dentist in Traverse City, Mich. "When she walks through the door, you're seeing the product of an affair."
But Michigan courts have spurned the DNA results Adams offered in his motions to stop paying $23,000 a year in child support. Now, Adams is lobbying the state Legislature for relief and joining other men in a national movement against what they call "paternity fraud." Read More ..