10pm - do you know where your sperm is?

These are extracts from US legislation connected with paternity issues. I offer them not as a comment on the American legal system but rather as examples of just where the hell this world might be going. We have here in UK already had admissions by a mother that she recovered the condom after sex with her boy-friend and impregnated herself.

Either intent to have sexual intercourse or an intent to impregnate a woman will result in child support liability. Can a man escape this liability if he has neither the intent to have sexual intercourse nor the intent to make a baby? The answer is no. So long as a man engages in an intimate sexual act resulting in his depositing of his sperm with a woman who then becomes pregnant, he is liable for child support.

In State of Louisiana v. Frisard, 694 So. 2d 1032 (La. Ct. App. 1997), the mother and father of the child for whom support was sought met in a hospital while the father was visiting an ill relative. The mother was a nurse's aid who has access to a variety of medical equipment. The mother offered to perform oral sex on the father, and, in the words of the father, "as ... any male would, I did not refuse[.]" The mother had the father wear a condom. The mother then removed the condom from the father, and unknown to the father, she inseminated herself with the father's sperm using a syringe.

The Louisiana court, noting that the probability of paternity was 99.9994%, held the father's testimony that he "had some sort of sexual contact with the plaintiff around the time frame of alleged conception, although he denied that they had sexual intercourse" was sufficient to prove paternity. 694 So. 2d at 1036. This fact of paternity obliges a father to support his child. 694 So. 2d at 1034. In essence, because the father intentionally engaged in a sexual act resulting in his deposit of sperm with the mother, he is liable for child support.

Another case reaching the same result on facts that are, quite frankly, bizarre is S.F. v. Alabama ex rel. T.M. In that case, the father testified that he went to a party at the mother's house. He had been drinking for several hours before he arrived, and had in fact gotten sick on the way to her house. At the mother's house, the father continued to drink, and the last think he remembered was getting sick again and his brother putting him in bed at the mother's house. The next morning, the father awoke in that same bed with only his shirt on. The father did not remember having sex with the mother, and he did not knowingly and purposely have sex with her.

The father's brother testified as to the same facts. A friend of both the mother testified as to the same facts, plus the fact that about two months after the party, the mother said she had sex with the father while he was "passed out" and that it saved her a trip to the sperm bank. Another friend testified that the mother had said she had sex with the father, "and he wasn't even aware of it."

A physician testified that it is possible for a man who is intoxicated to the point of losing consciousness may nevertheless have an erection and ejaculate; they are not conscious, voluntary activities.

The father argued that because he did not have sex voluntarily with the mother, he was not liable for child support. The court disposed of the argument, comparing it to the arguments made in L. Pamela P. v. Frank S.: the wrongful conduct of the mother in causing conception did not obviate the father's support obligation. The court also compared the father's argument to the arguments put forth in the statutory rape cases, concluding that the "rape" of the father could not preclude a finding of liability for support.

The dissent would have held the father liable for child support, but would have deviated from the presumptive child support guidelines because "the mother's sexual conduct was reprehensible and is a misdemeanor. Because of the mother's inappropriate conduct, the trial court should have deviated from the guidelines."