Posted on 05/05/2016 1:21:15 PM PDT by Morgana
Governor Snyder signed the Rape Survivor Child Custody Act into law on May 3. The new law helps prevent a rapist from gaining custody of a child. The law was included in a larger package of bills addressing domestic violence that Governor Snyder also signed.
Right to Life of Michigan President Barbara Listing said, “Half of women who become pregnant through rape don’t have abortions and most of those women decide to keep their child. Michigan was not doing enough to protect women from their attackers in those circumstances.”
Under old state law a parent whose child was conceived through sexual assault had to secure a conviction in order to terminate the attacker’s parental rights. Rape convictions can be difficult to obtain because the evidence standard is “beyond a reasonable doubt.” The new law changes that evidence standard for child custody hearings to “clear and convincing,” the same standard in custody hearings applied to child abuse accusations.
The change received overwhelming bipartisan support in the Michigan Legislature. The Senate passed it unanimously and the House passed the final version 105-3.
Throughout 2015 Right to Life of Michigan aired television ads as part of the compassion project. The ads directly addressed the issue of rape and abortion through the stories of four women. One of those women, Shauna, was forced to choose between pursuing charges against her attacker and protecting custody of her daughter.
Keep up with the latest pro-life news and information on Twitter.
Right to Life of Michigan and prolife legislators began working on the Rape Survivor Child Custody Act after learning about this weakness in the court system.
Listing said, “A child deserves love and protection, not to be used as a bargaining chip for rapists to threaten their mothers and escape prosecution.”
Shauna’s story, which inspired the Rape Survivor Child Custody Act, can be seen on Right to Life of Michigan’s website here.
Why, oh why would there be a need for another fracking law?
Link did not come up sorry.
Fracking is in west virginia, In Michigan they don’t want the muslim rapefugees getting custody of the babies they create.
Why don’t they just execute the rapist?
You know we used to in America. Pre Kinsey.
why am I scared of the law of unintended consequences. will we see a rash of rape charges upon men who seek custody from women that should not have custody because of drug use or other reasons...I don’t like the idea of rapists gaining access to children they create but I can see this law creating more problems then it solves
This Michigan rape law is based on 10th Amendment-protected state powers.
On the other hand, if the feds made a rape law in the name of civil rights, a good vote winner, and claimed their law trumped this state law because of the Supremacy Clause (6.2) then the feds would be wrong. This is because the states have never amended the Constitution to give the feds the specific power to make such a law.
”From the accepted doctrine that the United States is a government of delegated powers, it follows that those not expressly granted, or reasonably to be implied from such as are conferred, are reserved to the states, or to the people. To forestall any suggestion to the contrary, the Tenth Amendment was adopted. The same proposition, otherwise stated, is that powers not granted are prohibited [emphasis added].” —United States v. Butler, 1936.
Insights, corrections welcome.
“This bill would allow a rape survivor who becomes pregnant from assault to petition the family court to terminate the parental custody and parenting time (aka “visitation”) of her assailant under a “clear and convincing” evidence standard and without the necessity of a criminal conviction. Current law provides for the termination of parental rights of a man who impregnates a woman via sexual assault if he is convicted of felony rape. Unfortunately, felony rape convictions are difficult to obtain and require a legal standard of “beyond a reasonable doubt.”
legal description: “Clear and convincing proof means that the evidence presented by a party during the trial must be highly and substantially more probable to be true than not and the trier of fact must have a firm belief or conviction in its factuality.”
This sounds tricky.
A man is accused of rape, resulting in pregnancy. But there is not enough evidence to convict him of rape. But the judge decides he *probably* raped her, so even if the man claimed their sex was consensual, he can be denied custody.
This is a terrible idea. Any woman who wants to get the man out of her life simply has to accuse him of rape. No conviction needed.
If there is a conviction, the rapist should have zero rights.
“Why don’t they just execute the rapist?”
Because false accusations of homicide are exceedingly rare. In rape, they are shockingly common.
That has to be unconstitutional in the Obama world!
100% of rapists deny it...how’s that stat for you....
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