The rights of a biological father of a child conceived through rape

Abstract

It is unfortunate that, under current legislation, a rapist father can acquire the same rights as any other ordinary father. The law gives power to the court to determine what rights should be awarded to the parents, keeping in mind the best interest of the child. Legislation, however, varies and not all countries or states regulate parental rights the same. The author in this research delved into several legislations, contrasting the rights and protections awarded to the rapist, the victim and rape-conceived child. It is a generally conceived idea that victims of rape would not choose to carry their pregnancy to term and consequently raise their child. It is believed that the victim would hate the child growing inside of her and perceive it as the “devil’s spawn”. However, it can be seen from various studies enacted in different years that this is not the case and in fact many victims do choose to raise their child. It is also believed that a rapist would not sue for parental rights but in fact, due to the lack of legislation protecting victims and their rape-conceived child, perpetrators are often using this lack of legislation to threaten and manipulate the victims into dropping the charges against them in return for them not pursuing parental rights. The American Rape Survivor Child Custody Act provides us with some data which highlights that every 6.6 minutes someone is raped leading to an estimate of 25,000 women being impregnated by their perpetrator. It will be seen in this research that many states in America have adopted new legislation allowing for the termination of parental rights, however, most of them require a conviction which, from studies can be seen that it is hard to achieve since 98% of victims do not see their rapist convicted.