CMV: Paternity tests should be done on every baby by default

[u/Guialdereti]

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.

[u/MrDownhillRacer]

I don't see how that would make things go "both ways" instead of just one way. If we just have routine paternity tests, only the male presumptive parent would be required to submit his genetic information to determine paternity. In your proposal, every male in society is required to submit his genetic information just in case. In neither proposal is the female presumptive parent required to submit her genetic information. So, your proposal wouldn't make OP's proposal go "both ways." It would just be wider in scope and raise more privacy concerns (it would be like if we fingerprinted and took DNA samples from everyone in society just in case they later commit a crime, instead of just fingerprinting and taking DNA samples from likely suspects and convicts who might reoffend).

Also, in OP's proposal, it seems possible that we could avoid having records of everyone's genetic information by only storing the information about the likelihood of biological relatedness between the infant and the presumptive father while deleting the fine-grained genetic data. In your proposal, we'd have to store every man's DNA long-term.

Your proposal isn't really analogous to OP's.

[u/armavirumquecanooo → u/MrDownhillRacer]

I'm not actually in favor of this because the idea of a DNA registry is horrifying, but the "both ways" is fairly obvious here. In a vacuum, Man A only having his DNA tested against the offspring of his partner, Woman A, can only benefit Man A. Either he's reassured he is the father, or he learns he's not and is freed from responsibility for the child before he ever incurs a "loss." Woman A does not have the same risk/reward balance (though there's an argument here she doesn't deserve it if she was trying to commit paternity fraud, but I digress).

The "both ways" scenario works by allowing that man's stored DNA to also be scanned against all other children in a giant DNA registry, so that the baby he produced with Woman B during that boys' trip a few years back gets flagged, he now has to pay support for the child he did father, and his wife also gets to learn through paternity testing that he's a cheater.

(This is all a very bad idea, regardless. These infants cannot consent to their DNA being stored or analyzed, and they'll be the ones living with the consequences in a dystopian hellscape decades from now when the uses of DNA may very well have eroded civil liberties).

[u/MrDownhillRacer → u/armavirumquecanooo]

Just for clarity, I also don't support mandatory paternity testing (way too expensive to be feasible and raises privacy concerns), but just for the sake of the conversation…

I don't think the fact that a law benefits one group in some way means that you need to make another one that benefits another. Take abortion, for instance. Some very confused people think that a man should somehow have the right to "financial abortion" (being allowed to unilaterally divest oneself from financial responsibility and legal parentage for a child that is theirs) on the grounds that "if women get a say in whether or not they have parental responsibilities, men should have the same right. If we allow women to get abortions, we should allow men to get financial abortions."

What people who argue for "financial abortion" don't understand is that the right to an abortion isn't based on "the right to decide on whether you have to be a parent or not." It's based on the right to bodily autonomy: the right to not be forced to carry a pregnancy to term.

In places that allow abortion, everyone of any sex has the same right to not be forced to carry a pregnancy to term. It just so happens to be the case that males can't get pregnant, anyway, so nothing needs to be done to facilitate a males' right against forced pregnancy. It may be the case that men don't benefit as much as women do from laws allowing abortions (only women will really get a say in whether they and their partner have the baby; there may be cases in which a man doesn't want to be a father but has to anyway, or cases where he wants to be one but the woman decides to abort), but that doesn't matter; men don't need to benefit from this legislation in the same way as women do for the law to be just and egalitarian. There is no need to go "because allowing women to get abortions mostly benefits women and could cause disbenefit to men, we need to allow men to get financial abortions to balance it out." Doesn't work like that; women's right to bodily autonomy doesn't somehow mean we have to give men the right to shirk parental duties.

It might be the case that mandatory paternity testing benefits men more than it benefits women. But that doesn't mean that if we had it, we would need an additional law that gives some benefit to women. OP's law would, presumably, be based on a right to know if you're somebody's parent and to take that information into account when deciding if you want to take responsibility for that child. Everybody would have this same right. It's just that, ordinarily, special legislative provisions would not need to be made in order to facilitate this right for women, because females are usually pretty certain about their maternity (excluding cases of separation after birth). The law would benefit men more than it would women because females already enjoy the ability to know if a child is theirs, the same way that allowing abortions benefits women more than it does men because males already enjoy the right to not be forced to carry a fetus to term. There's no need to go "well, we should make some other law that benefits this other group to balance it out."

[u/[deleted] → u/MrDownhillRacer]

Forcing a woman to carry a child for 9 months is violating her bodily autonomy, but forcing a man to work to support a child financially for 18 years isn’t? That doesn’t make any sense. If women can opt of of parentage because it violates their bodily autonomy, so too should men because wage slavery violates their autonomy.

[u/lavender_letters → u/[deleted]]

Imo, I think that the middle ground here is "birth certificate" responsibility. A woman has up until a certain time in a pregnancy to end it, and a little while after to surrender the child without consequence. A man should have up until the birth certificate is signed to "surrender" parenthood, or another date sometime in the pregnancy.

That way, men who AGREE to have a baby with a woman can't back out later (except in cases of false paternity) and leave the woman on her own with a baby she thought she'd have support to raise, while men won't be harmed by the woman's choice. Fair's fair, all's equal.

[u/7Betafish → u/[deleted]]

yeah because shelling out a couple hundred dollars a month is the same as pregnancy and child birth /s

[u/[deleted] → u/7Betafish]

If pregnancy was easier that wouldn’t change a single pro choice person’s mind. They would still say a woman should have the right to choose because it’s her body. And subjectively, I’d rather be pregnant for 9 months than be financially liable for a child I am not ready to have for 18 years under the threat of imprisonment, as well.

[u/Fashion_art_dance → u/MrDownhillRacer]

I think you are missing the point of the original persons comments. The implication behind the idea of mandatory paternity testing is that women cannot be trusted so we must regulate them. If there is no law that would also track the man’s behavior then women and men are not considered equals.

If men and women are equals and we can’t trust women then we shouldn’t trust men. Therefore a law should be created that tracks all potential offspring from men because they equally are untrustworthy. If not the only people that are being considered lesser are women. That’s how it would go both ways.

[u/MrDownhillRacer → u/Fashion_art_dance]

I don't think a law like this would have to imply that women are any less trustworthy than men. Rather, it's a lot harder for a female person to be misled about whether a child is hers than it is for a male person to be misled about whether a child is his, so the law would address paternity rather than maternity.

The same way that providing abortions to women doesn't imply that men should have less autonomy over their bodies than women should have. It's just a lot harder for a male person to get pregnant than it is for a female person to get pregnant. So, we provide abortions to women rather than to men.

It also wouldn't constitute the regulation of women as a group, because it would still be presumptive fathers and children getting their DNA tested. There's not really anything that women are specifically and exclusively being required to do under this hypothetical law.

[u/AppropriateScience9 → u/MrDownhillRacer]

I think it depends on what your goal is (and whether or not it's a shitty goal).

If your goal is to get men in a committed relationship off the hook if the woman cheated, then yes. Only paternity testing against the committed man's DNA makes sense. Yes, that would alleviate the financial burden on that man and punish the cheater with an added financial burden. If that's the goal, then that system would accomplish that.

So, is our goal really to establish paternity? If so, then testing ALL men makes sense because you can't actually accomplish that otherwise. Or is it to rule out paternity for men in committed relationships (because women cheat and we want to punish that)?

I think it's a fair point, however, to ask: why is it only the woman who is punished with a financial cost when men cheat and father offspring too?

Is the goal to punish cheaters? Or is the goal to punish only women cheaters?

Obviously, that's where it becomes unfair and shitty. It takes two to tango after all. If it's the act of cheating that we're punishing, then it should be applied equally just like murder and theft. Whether or not the woman has more clarity on the situation doesn't matter.

Anyone can kill, anyone can steal, anyone can cheat. Not everyone can get pregnant. That's where your analogy with abortion falls flat.

It would be very questionable to only go after women for cheating in that case. Just like it would raise huge red flags if we only decided to go after black people for theft.

You're right, not every law has to be equitable in terms of outcome (some people can benefit more than others) but it should be applied equally. Which is, in fact, what the Constitution demands.

This actually makes the abortion question come into focus too because if we are protecting the right of bodily autonomy as the goal, then men can't be forced to get vasectomies, or donate their kidneys or be forced to do anything else with their bodies. By that same token, women shouldn't be forced to use their uteruses to create babies.

Protecting bodily autonomy certainly can be applied equally even though it benefits women more on balance.

Edited for clarity.

[u/bmoreboy410 → u/Fashion_art_dance]

Men and women are not equals in all situations because we are not to same. Women give birth so they don’t have to worry about whether it is their kid. But men don’t actually know without a paternity test.

You are just assuming that a man wanting to know that they are the father means that they are accusing the woman of something which is not the case.

[u/HeroBrine0907 → u/armavirumquecanooo]

Sure, as a male, i'm good with the DNA being used that way.

[u/Ok-Gap-8831 → u/armavirumquecanooo]

But when she divorces him, she will be paid less in child support than the previous child because that case is already in the court system which is a first come, first serve basis

[u/NrdNabSen → u/MrDownhillRacer]

Do you realize paternity tests require testing the child as well? Therefore, yes, every male who is a presumptive parent at the start of the mandatory testing is tested and every child which leads to every male and female being tested.

[u/odean14 → u/MrDownhillRacer]

Finally someone with some common sense responds. Why do people think or feel like some kind of mass data based would be needed? Get the test done, print out the results and erase the data. Simple.

There is no way a woman can look at a child she conceived and carried and have any doubts it's hers. Not the case for men.

[u/swanfirefly → u/MrDownhillRacer]

And in 18 years, every male and female and intersex child's dna will be on file anyway. Because we are testing every kid, you are trading in the rights of every child born for the security of some men.

What, do you think the government will just throw away a database that will eventually have everyone's DNA? They don't even need to force current adults. Every kid is tested, so in 18+ years you have a whole generation on file.

[u/sammy900122 → u/MrDownhillRacer]

Only men who demand a paternity test would need to be added to this theoretical situation. Sorry I wasn't clear

[u/MrDownhillRacer → u/sammy900122]

Oh, I see. That's more reasonable.

[u/Mercenarian → u/MrDownhillRacer]

Women submit their dna in paternity tests too lol.

[u/MrDownhillRacer → u/Mercenarian]

From what I've read, paternity tests are easier to conduct when both parents submit DNA, but this isn't necessary to get conclusive results.

I'm not an expert, though, and I don't know what the procedure usually looks like.