FINING OF FATHERS

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31316, 11 March 1967, Page 3

FINING OF FATHERS

Illegitimacy Suggestion

"The Press” Special Service AUCKLAND, Mar. 10.

Every known father who was avoiding parental responsibility for an illegitimate child should be forced to pay a £5O fine, Dr. Margaret Liley said in Auckland yesterday. Dr. Liley, who is assistant to the director of medical services of the Plunket Society, D. N. C. Begg, supports the suggestion made by Dr. Begg in Dunedin this week that parents of illegitimate children should be compelled to accept more responsibility in providing a home for their children.

“People pay £2O to £25 in legal fees merely to adopt a baby,” Dr. Liley said. “The cost of outfitting a baby is quite large yet the parents pay nothing. The natural mother has lost working time, has put up with the inconvenience and perhaps lost her job. “It would be reasonable to implement legal procedures whereby every father of an illegitimate child is fined £50.” Deterrent Effect Dr. Liley feels such a fine would be a deterrent to persons light-heartedly embarking on a relationship resulting in an unwanted child. Her husband, Dr. A. W. Liley, who Is a senior research fellow at the post-graduate school of obstetrics and gynaecology at the University of Auckland, talks of illegitimate children as our “displaced persons.”

Present measures taken to cope with the babies after their birth were only stopgaps, he said. A child born of a casual relationship was the innocent party. Dr. Liley said the parents should realise it was not just a pity or a nuisance, but that it was stupid, callous, selfish and irresponsible, especially when contraception would have cost so little. Legal Position “The law prudently divides shortcomings in human behaviour and personality into two groups—crime where the safety and welfare of other people are endangered and sin where they are not. The latter category is left to the moralists,” Dr. Liley said. “But illegitimate parentage, which involves a completely innocent third party, would, seem to be very near to crime.

“However, United. States courts have already considered the right of an illegitimate child to sue his natural parents for bringing him into the world at a disadvantage.” One disadvantage in the application of legal or economic sanction against the parents could be the encouragement of criminal abortion.