This guy seems like a bum of a father. He’s had nine kids with six different women and he’s reportedly neglected them financially. So a judge has ordered the guy to stop having kids until he can financially support his other children.
Obviously, the guy should stop having kids but a judge ordering it has obvious ramifications.
I’ve always been kind of a fan of the “creative” sentences of judges making people stand in front of the store they shoplifted from wearing a sign saying they shoplifted. But this gets into bad territory.
I can just imagine a judge telling a family to stop having children because of some environmental concern about their carbon footprint or something.
The Smoking Gun has the details:
Meet Corey Curtis.
The Wisconsin man, who has fathered nine children with six women, was ordered yesterday to cease procreating until he can support his numerous offspring.
At Curtis’s sentencing yesterday for bail jumping and failure to pay child support, Circuit Court Judge Tim Boyle told the 44-year-old Racine man that his frequent breeding was to be curbed as a condition of his three-year probation term.
Curtis owes about $90,000 total in back child support and interest to the mothers of his children. Pictured in the above mug shot, Curtis will have to wipe out that debt before he can add heir number ten, ruled Boyle.
December 5, 2012 at 5:02 am
On the one hand there is a slippery-slope issue here, but on the other hand a pure slippery-slope argument is a fallacy ("If ear-piercing is legal, we'll have to legalize female genital mutilation!"). On a third hand, presumably borrowed from a passerby, is the fact that people in this country actually use the slippery slope as an argument for things ("Since booze is legal and causes all these problems, let's legalize a whole bunch of other psychoactive chemicals!")—while a rational community could prevent this deadbeat from cursing any more children with his genes, without setting an unfortunate precedent, I don't think our community is mature enough not to use it as an excuse for tyranny.
December 5, 2012 at 7:32 am
Why in America is it that when a woman has an egg fertilized the fertilizer has no say whether the resulting creature lives or dies, but if the woman chooses life then the fertilizer is suddenly responsible? There is a disconnect here. In fairness, and in the name of equality, the man, since he can be made accountable, should have equal say in the life vs death choice of abortion. If both parents choose death, then abortion is the fate of the child. If either one chooses life, then that one takes full responsibility. To avoid conflict, refuse sex. The choice to engage in procreative acts is deemed consent to shared decisions. It takes two to make the child so two must consent to it's death. If both choose life, then support is enforcable. If one chooses life, then the child becomes exclusively theirs, and the other parent is removed so the child is as good as dead to them. Abstain from procreative acts or these fair, equitable principles apply.
December 5, 2012 at 7:46 am
When a woman consents to sex, she consents to conceiving and carrying any resulting organism if either one or both parents want the child. The act of copulation is deemed consent to keep the resulting creature alive unless both parents agree on a termination. Reproductive acts are considered as 9 month contiguous events with the copulation act merely an integral part, unseverable from the full reproductive event. Men become equal to women instead of their chattel and slaves. Men need sexual liberation. right now they have no rights.
December 5, 2012 at 1:34 pm
Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendel Holmes, late in the 1920s, ordered a mentally retarded girl sterilzed because she had been raped, instead of punishing the rapist and protecting the girl. Incidentally, in India, the government had 600 men sterilized without their consent. Needless to say there were political repercussions. The judge is fair in his decision that includes the ability to support the children before bringing the children into the world, which is the most important part of his decision.
December 5, 2012 at 1:40 pm
@Anon. 2:32AM. With the conception of a child, there are three persons in a decision to protect life. I am positive the unborn sovereign person through his innocent, rational soul will choose life. However, all sovereign beings may not choose to comit crime. Crime cannot be legalized. Abortion is a crime against God, humanity and the innocent child. Abortion is a crime against the virtue of JUSTICE, the virtue perfectly practiced by the newly conceived innocent virgin.
December 5, 2012 at 4:03 pm
So, women have a "right" to abort their child no matter what, but a man's right to engender a child can be taken away by a court? Does this mean if he impregnates another woman, she will be forced to have an abortion? Or is the judge saying he must be chaste? Obviously, the judge did not think this one out clearly. We don't have to argue a slippery slope to see the danger of this decision. It has dangerous implications for this very man and any women in his life.
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December 5, 2012 at 4:12 pm
And just how is the Judge going to enforce this order? Force a woman to abort? Force the man to be sterilized and then have the state pay for a reversal? Not well thought out, this one.
December 5, 2012 at 6:58 pm
As Anon @ 11:12 (12/5) pointed out, the ruling is meaningless unless there's a way to enforce it, and I don't see how anyone can–short of locking the guy up (alone) and making him work to pay his debts to the children he has already fathered (I'm twitching slightly at that last word, since the only "fathering" he's done consists of thoughtlessly donating the requisite genetic material). The only way to accomplish that is imprisonment, not that I'm opposed to that entirely, but I don't know that we have the prison space for all the deadbeat dads out there. Plus, it'll just give some of them extra motivation to try to force their girlfriends to have abortions "or else" to avoid having to spend the next several years in "deadbeat daddy camp."
I would agree that the ruling is not well thought out. I'm a little curious as to what the judge was thinking in terms of enforcement, or if this was his way of blowing off the whole case.
December 5, 2012 at 7:06 pm
Oh, and unfortunately, there are some bitter women out there who are only too quick to accuse their ex-es of being "deadbeat dads," even when those fathers are doing everything they can to be there for their kids. I swear there's a guidebook out there or something for bitter ex-wives to ruin their ex-husbands' lives, and women who will stop at nothing to avenge themselves against their ex-es won't hesitate to lie in order to get the latter thrown into jail.