December 21, 2016 by Robert Franklin, Esq, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization
It’s hard to know how much of this is true, but, whatever the case, it raises real issues about paternity fraud and the need for laws regarding same (Huffington Post, 12/19/16).
It seems a woman, who is three months pregnant is advertising her urine for sale on Craigslist for the purpose of, well, whatever use anyone might want to put it to.
“Whether you are using it for your own amusement such as a prank, or to blackmail the ceo of where ever who you are having an affair with I DONT CARE AT ALL this is an absolutely no questions asked type of deal tell me what you need I provide it for monetary exchange. I will not overcharge for the urine test but I will not be low balled either do not contact me if you are going to be cheap and difficult.”
The going rate is $20 for one test or $35 for two if the buyer is travelling over 60 miles. The advertisement has subsequently been taken down, perhaps because it openly encourages fraud, but prior to the takedown, the woman claimed to have made $200 per day doing something she’d have been doing anyway. Have other women taken notice? I’d be surprised if they haven’t. In fact, HuffPo says this has been well-known for at least three years.
Women selling positive pregnancy tests has been a thing since at least 2013. The tests are sometimes used to prank people or even to trick unsuspecting men into marriage.
Or they could be used by female military personnel to avoid overseas deployment. Whatever the case, there should certainly be laws against the use of false positive pregnancy tests to trick men into marriage, avoid military service or any other fraudulent purpose. Of course men should always ascertain whether a woman who claims to be pregnant actually is, but the reality is that, when it comes to pretty much anything relating to children, men have a way of taking women’s word.
Lawyer and former FBI agent Dale Carson told WJAX that it’s not illegal to sell urine to produce positive pregnancy tests, but the purchaser who uses it to dupe someone else could be guilty of fraud.
“This is the kind of thing that makes legislators go ‘we need to pass a law that says you can’t do this,’” Carson said.
My opinion is that those laws shouldn’t stand alone, but be part of an overarching prohibition on paternity fraud. That is, we should impose on women a legal burden of informing all potential fathers when a pregnancy occurs. We should require every woman to honestly disclose to every possible father when she learns she’s pregnant. That would give each possible dad the opportunity to ascertain whether he’s actually the father or not. In so doing, he’d be informed of his paternity early enough to do what he needs to do to establish his parental rights, bond with his child and take up all the duties of fatherhood.
Of course only five states have anything that even approximates the above. They hold mothers civilly liable for false paternity, but they impose no a priori requirement that women inform men about a child they fathered. The only thing those laws do is make her repay child support falsely obtained through fraud perpetrated against a non-father.
It would be a simple matter to outlaw the type of fraud that was, in all probability, perpetrated by the customers of the woman described by the Huffington Post under the rubric of other broader laws on paternity fraud.
This being the Huffington Post, readers won’t be surprised to learn that, in the article’s telling, the only victims of the woman’s scam are – who else? – women. How so?
Whether that happens or not, some OB-GYNs think the trend insults women who really do want to become pregnant. Drs. Yvonne Bohn, Allison Hill and Alane Park condemned the practice of selling positive pregnancy tests back in 2014 in a HuffPost blog:
“This disturbing new trend is not only outrageous and crude; it’s an abuse of one of the most poignant moments in a woman’s life. It is an insult to all those women who so dearly want to become pregnant. And it’s an injustice to those who would be presented these false positive tests.”
To say the least, I can’t see how faking a pregnancy is “an abuse of one of the most poignant moments in a woman’s life.” After all, if that’s how a woman feels about faking a pregnancy, it would seem that the best thing for her to do would be to not fake a pregnancy. Somehow, Drs. Bohn, Hill and Park seem to think that the mere availability for sale of a pregnant woman’s urine imposes on non-pregnant women the obligation of committing fraud. Needless to say, it does no such thing, but the zeitgeist seems to dictate that, if we are to oppose anything at all, we must find a way – whether real or not, whether sensible or not – in which it redounds to the detriment of women.
Here’s a radical notion: oppose pregnancy fraud and paternity fraud because they’re moral wrongs with the potential to seriously injure numerous innocent people even though those people may not be female.
But somehow I suspect that’s too extreme an idea for the likes of the Huffington Post to grasp.
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