Are Children Property?
The courts seem to think so. This court anyway:
The state Court of Appeals opinion, filed July 26, reverses the earlier decision by state District Judge John Pope in Valencia County to terminate the parental rights of Edgewood resident Mark Huddleston.
Not in so many words, but it seems that the needs of the child have little or no bearing on this argument which could just as easily be over a car as a kid.
Children need love, guidance, (discipline, if you prefer), and stability. This child has that from his two adoptive parents who care enough to fight this.
( As an aside: love, guidance and stability can be offered by any adult, whether a single or a couple, hetero or homo, or even a group family. Love and stability or dysfunction and abuse, are not exclusive to any particular arrangement.)
The natural father, while it seems to that he tried fairly quickly to gain custody, seems also to care more about winning than about what is best for the boy. After two years the bonds between the child and the adoptive parents must be pretty well made, and strong. To break them now, and place him in the care of someone who, to the child, is a stranger, seems uncaring if not callous. The court seems not to care either way. It seems to only care about the law as an algebraic equation to be solved for ‘X’, whatever or whoever ‘X’ might be. Solomon is missing in action.
In this case, the child should be the winner, not the biological father, not the adoptive parents, not the court and least of all the attorneys. But it looks like the opposite will occur. The court will make a logical decision, the adoptive parents will lose a child they love, the biological father will gain a tax deduction, the child will lose, and the attorneys will get fatter bank accounts.
So far as I know, one can not have rights to other people. You can have rights to property, like land and livestock, but not to people. Children are not toasters or other chattel. Rights to, or over, people is called slavery. Children are not slaves to be argued over in a market or courtroom. Children are young, developing persons that need nurturing, not pets that need feeding, walking and the occasional chew-toy.
Whatever the reasons for the biological father losing custody in the first place, at this point the child is in a caring stable home, and that should take precedence over whatever claims others may think they have, or the court thinks the law demands. And if the law says otherwise, the law is wrong.
Children are not property.
August 8th, 2006 at 11:10 am
Without disagreeing with your argument, I want to ask you how it might change if the child had originally been removed from the biological father via illegal means.
August 8th, 2006 at 6:58 pm
Good question. I do not think there is a blanket answer.
As a general rule, I dislike situational ethics, but some situations can make otherwise wrongful actions, if not right, at least less wrongful.
Stealing to feed your starving children is a classic example.
So how and why was the child removed is the situation needed. Was it by a mother in the face of a court order? Or by a child predator for his own sick reasons. Or something in-between.
This is why I also dislike mandatory rulings in the law, that leave no discreation to judges or juries, (FIJA and nullification not withstanding). While discretion can be misused and abused, those cases where it is need I believe more than make up for the few idiocies that occur.
So all I can answer is a rather cop-out-ish, “it depends” and that the folks at the scene have to make that decision.
Trying to prejudge every possible scenario is a useless exercise that if indulged in would leave more tragedy in it’s wake than not.