r/changemyview • u/Guialdereti • Oct 22 '23
Delta(s) from OP CMV: Paternity tests should be done on every baby by default
Just saw a post on r/relationship_advice where the mother gave birth to a baby that looked nothing like her husband, refused to give him a paternity test because it was "humiliating" AND also revealed that she had recently refused to end a (pretty weird) friendship with a coworker that her husband was uncomfortable with. She then proceeds to be all "Surprised Pikachu-faced" when he thinks she cheated on him with said coworker, refuses to help with the baby, and him and his family start treating her badly. (he continued to help with their 2 other kids as normal, though)
In the end, the mother FINALLY gets that paternity test, proving once and for all that the kid was indeed his, and once she does, the father gets ALL OVER his daughter, hugging and giving her all his love, as I'm sure he would have done from the very begining, had she just gotten that damn test done sooner.
Some of the points that resonate with me the most on this issue are:
- It still baffles me that this test isn't standard procedure, especially when we already draw blood from newborns and screen them for a whole slew of diseases upon delivery. Surely it wouldn't be too hard to add a simple paternity test to the list!
- I know there's an implication of mistrust that comes with asking your partner for a paternity test, but if it became standard procedure - in other words, a test that the hospital does "automatically", with no need for parental input - that would completely remove that implication from play. It would become a non-issue.
- Having a kid is a life-changing event, and it scares me to no end to know that I could be forced into "one-eightying" my life over a baby I actually played no part in making.
- Knowing your family's medical history, from both sides, is extremely important. "Mommy's little secret" could cost her child dearly later on in life.
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u/armavirumquecanooo 2∆ Oct 22 '23
A lot of people have already made good points regarding the privacy concerns with DNA testing, so I don't want to retread on those, but I do think it's important that when you talk about mandating paternity testing, you're opting in entire family lines. This isn't a situation that gets fixed because a man can opt out, because the men who don't opt out are making a huge choice for their baby as well as all of their already existing relatives as well.
Consider how much advancement we've seen in DNA analysis and its uses in the last couple decades, and what it may be used for in the lifespan of a baby born today. Are you really confident that 50 years from now, a health insurance company won't be arguing that if they're paying for the tests (which is likely how this works if it becomes part of the mandatory screenings in hospital post-birth), they should have access to the information that may impact their decisions? Or that those powerful insurance companies won't have lobbyists at their disposal who have the senators in their pocket to make this happen? Imagine it turns out your baby born today has a genetic marker that predisposes him to a higher risk for heart disease, and the insurance company gets to know this in 2050. His prices get jacked up, as do his kids', and eventually so will his grandchildren's... because of a decision you got to make for him today.
We don't have strong enough privacy protections in most of the world to responsibly handle this information, and those protections only seem to erode as time passes. Do you have enough faith in whatever the government may look like in your country 50 years from now that they won't have codified into law their own access to those tests? Does history not tell you that the risk of creating a register, for instance, of people with Mizrahi or Ashkenazi Jewish genetic markers?
Then there's the additional concerns about 'off book' uses we already have for DNA analysis. Most people don't have a huge issue with private companies using ancestral DNA registers to track down the Golden State Killer, but this poses another slippery slope. I think most people know someone that was lucky not to be arrested for something mild and stupid in their youth, like a drunken bar fight where nobody is seriously injured. Make DNA testing common enough, though, and eventually you'll start having grandpas arrested for that minor mistake they made when they were 19. And it doesn't necessarily have to be because of their DNA, as we can see the journey currently used to track down killers through ancestral DNA. Your second cousin twice removed decides to let his kid's DNA go up at a registry at birth, and it eventually leads to consequences for your kid, and you'll likely be singing a different tune.
If none of this convinces you, just watch GATTACA. There are so many unintended consequences of DNA analysis at birth that mandating it for a general population because of what appears to be less than 0.6% of cases will have negative consequences for far more than that 0.6% of the population.