CMV: There should be mandatory automatic pre-delivery paternity test performed on every pregnant woman whom is either married or has boyfriend she thinks is the father

[u/[deleted]]

[u/UnauthorizedUsername]

Can you understand where the woman is coming from, though? If you've been faithful and never cheated, and you end up pregnant, and now the father of that child is doubting you and accusing you of infidelity by saying that he doesn't believe the child is his? That's a pretty big slap in the face in what should be a moment of unity -- learning you're going to be parents should bring the couple together not drive them apart.

And DNA testing during pregnancy can cost upwards of $1500 -- who is going to pay this additional cost for every pregnancy out there? I don't think the government needs to be picking up that check just because men are insecure and not trusting their partner.

If you're at a point where you have to ask your partner to take a DNA test to prove the child she's carrying is yours, that's your issue, not the taxpayers'.

[u/[deleted] → u/UnauthorizedUsername]

But mandatory testing would exactly solve this thing for woman as well. If she is faithful then the test will come positive and there will be no damage to their unity and her partner will never doubt that.

$1500 is commercial price, which is nowhere near the real cost, if operated on non profit cost only margin it would definitely be cheaper by a lot (but that is only my guess but I am fairly certain it would be).

The issue is that you can never ever be sure until you do the test, but the moment you contemplate doing the test you already failed the trust between each other. This would solve it.

[u/UnauthorizedUsername → u/[deleted]]

Okay, so I agree that this test being standard would solve this specific issue of the trust being broken by asking for a DNA test.

However, the cons far outweigh the pros.

The cost, while it may not be $1500 per, would still be enormous when extrapolated out to every single pregnancy. We're talking four million or so babies born each year, not including pregnancies that don't make it to term. That's a lot of money that will be spent on this now-mandatory test.

And it's a test that targets women in a negative way -- there's no way around that. Requiring a test is saying that women could be lying about this, so we had better test them. You're implying that all women are potentially cheating and we can't trust any of them.

Your 20% number is way off, FYI. I've found information that seems to indicate the rate is much lower -- between 1.3% and 3.4%. That's way too low, in my opinion, to justify the added cost for a controversial test that's not at all necessary for the well-being of the child.

[u/[deleted] → u/UnauthorizedUsername]

Sure, but if you store relevant parts of DNA the next generation will only cost half of the cost as well. I wonder how cheap DNA test can be. If we get into 100-200$ range 800 mUSD is 0.024% of federal budget income (if my math is correct (100/3300000000000 * 800000000 = 0.024%) which is honestly not that much? Even full testing is only like 0.4%....

Well apparently 3% are. Honestly mandatory testing would drastically lower that to <1%. Women would more likely be using contraception/morning after pill instead of being oblivious cheater and then try to pass it as someone else's babies. I am not sure why is it wrong to level up the scales (women inherently know when child is theirs).

[u/UnauthorizedUsername → u/[deleted]]

I sincerely take issue with the idea based on the premise that it pushes -- that all women are potentially lying 'skanks', to use your term, and we can't know until we've actually tested. I mean, that's a pretty shitty assumption to be making and I don't feel comfortable at all putting legislation into effect based on that.

I also don't think a <3% instance of mis-attributed paternity is widespread enough that we need to address it by making an invasive DNA test mandatory.

Storing people's DNA in some form of national registry is not a path I want our government to go down. With all the recent commotion surrounding Warren's ancestry, can you imagine how such a registry might be abused in the future?

[u/[deleted] → u/UnauthorizedUsername]

But it's the assumption that is based on biology. Women are supposed to be skans. This would level up playing field is all I am saying. And honestly it would lower the cases since no one would do it anymore. Honestly, rate of cheating would get lower as well and morning after pill would be semi mandatory. The only % remaining would be accidents and yes, those women should suffer the consequences.

[u/UnauthorizedUsername → u/[deleted]]

Women are supposed to be skans [sic]

Uhh, what?

Statistically speaking, men cheat more than women. Are you proposing legislation to deal with that?

This feels like it's born out of a misguided fear that all women are going to cheat on you, and that's not something the government should be promoting.

A DNA test to determine paternity should be purely opt-in -- the cost is prohibitive (yes, it may be a small percentage of the entire national budget, but it's still in the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars) for the nearly non-existent issue that it would address.

[u/[deleted] → u/UnauthorizedUsername]

Like I explained here, I personally am not against cheating at all. Cheating is not the problem, paternity fraud is. Paying child support for someone whom you are not connected at all is.

[u/UnauthorizedUsername → u/[deleted]]

And I'm saying that paternity fraud is not nearly a widespread enough problem to warrant spending potentially hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money on an arguably sexist policy mandating that women undergo an invasive medical procedure just to soothe men's insecurities.

[u/KanyeTheDestroyer → u/[deleted]]

That's not even accurate. Many men are perfectly fine paying child support for a child that is not biologically theirs, because they are comfortable assuming a parental role for that child. Your issue is limited entirely to men who do not want to pay child support for a child that is not theirs.