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Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Who’s the baby’s daddy?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Whew! DNA tests establish California photographer Larry Birkhead as the daddy of Anna Nicole Smith’s baby. Now America can move on to more important matters, like whether Sanjaya, one of the American Idol contestants, can sing. Your Thinking Right host, having never heard the lad carry a tune, or even try, has no opinion.
It’s the baby/daddy DNA search, however, that prompts today’s commentary.
Restoring the traditional two-parent family is another of the challenges conservatives face in trying to use government to reverse trends that are harmful to society. As noted here before, a nation that suffers an epidemic of out-of-wedlock births, as this one does with 70 percent of black babies, almost half the Hispanic and a quarter of the whites born into homes without a mother and a father present, is in trouble. It’s a nation of adults who can’t commit, who won’t be responsible, who have children carelessly or because they’re bored and find babies more adorable than puppies.
Government, along with Hollywood, the church, civil rights leaders and the middle class, all have a role in changing that. The Anna Nichole baby/daddy search offers direction.
When a pregnant woman presents herself for public assistance, she should be required to identify the male she suspects as having caused her pregancy. That accusation would be sufficient to obligate him, by law, to submit DNA samples. If he is, indeed, the responsible party, every dime the state spends on the baby should be on his tab, with the state willing to spend $5 to get $1 from him. The message to him is: You can’t cause children and walk away. If the first DNA test is negative, the woman carrying the baby would be obligated to name other candidates. The failure to establish the daddy’s identity would constitute child abuse.
Tough? Yes. But every child has a right to be born knowing his mother and father. And every child has a right to their financial support until he’s an adult, with the state enforcing their obligations to him.
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