Parental Rights

Ever since Warren Grantham told members of Congress earlier this month that parents, not schools, should decide when and how their children learn about sex, he has been taking major heat. He's been branded as an intolerant, anti-gay, conservative radical opposed to dispensing life-saving information to youths. But the St. Paul, Minn., father of two thinks that he is closer to heartland values than his critics. "The thing that drives me more than anything else is the welfare of my children, and all children," Grantham said.

Unwed fathers are usually "unknown, unavailable, or simply uninterested," the Supreme Court observed a decade ago in a custody-case decision. Not Edward McNamara. He says he did everything he could during the last seven years to seek a relationship with his daughter, Katie, who was born in 1981 to a San Diego woman with whom McNamara had a brief affair. The mother gave up Katie for adoption without his consent and the California courts cut off McNamara's rights as a parent.

Why would a person take someone else's child out of state for an abortion? Here are three real-life cases from one week at a local abortion clinic. A foreign exchange student came to the clinic with her sponsor family, but in Pennsylvania, only the legal guardian can accompany the teen-ager and listen to a state-mandated speech about abortion alternatives, a requirement for parental consent. A twentyish woman accompanied her 15-year-old pregnant sister. Each exhibited visible bruises.

The convicted abusive mother doesn't want her four children growing up hating her, her lawyer said. So Adrian "Angel" Haymaier, serving 15 to 34 years in jail for torturing her 4-year-old son in 1993, protested a court order terminating her parental rights. She filed an appeal with the state Superior Court. Haymaier, 36, formerly of Port Richmond, said she wanted to see her children, even if it's in a prison setting. But the appeals court said the kids, now living in foster homes, were "in need of, and desire, stability and consistency in their lives and, as the evidence establishes, Haymaier is unable to provide such.

NEWARK, N.J. - A sharply split New Jersey Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld a parental rights law that a couple claimed discriminates against infertile women. New Jersey law holds that an infertile man whose wife is artificially inseminated with his permission is the baby's father. But it doesn't give parental rights to an infertile woman whose husband's sperm is used to impregnate another woman, even if the wife gives permission. The Camden County couple used a surrogate, identified as A.F., to carry their child.

An unmarried man has a constitutional right to try to prove that he gave his sperm to a female friend only after being promised that he could help raise their child, according to a ruling made final yesterday by the Supreme Court. Linden Crouch of Ashland, Ore., who says she made no such promise, has refused to let Kevin N. McIntyre participate in rearing their child. Without comment, the justices cleared the way for McIntyre to seek to prove at a trial that he is entitled to participate in the life of a child conceived by the artificial insemination of Crouch.

After 14 years of separation from her son, the homeless woman says she now wants to make a home for him. But it's too late. The state Superior Court says Alice Arnold's history of "disregard of her parental duties . . . demonstates that she has not shown a willingness and capacity to assume her parental responsibilities. " The court said Arnold's teen son, Michael, has been living in a "stable, safe, caring" foster home since 1981, and his best interests "are effectively served by the termination of her parental rights.

With only 12 words, the Supreme Court yesterday brought happiness to an Oregon couple and sorrow to an unwed father in California, and ended their long struggle over 7-year-old Katie Moses. For Katie's biological father, Edward McNamara of LaHabra, Calif., the court's dismissal of his appeal was a sad ending to his seven-year quest to become part of Katie's life. But Robert and Pamela Moses, the Oregon couple who adopted Katie shortly after she was born in 1981 to an unmarried woman who did not want her, "are simply overjoyed," said the couple's lawyer, Lee Selvig.

Representatives of the teachers' union in the Octorara school district returned to the bargaining table Thursday armed with a proposal that could derail a contract settlement. Teachers are proposing that an existing school board policy that allows the teaching of values, attitudes and sex education be inserted verbatim into their contract. Robert Brown, chief negotiator and spokesman for the union, said the teachers came up with the idea in an attempt to "guarantee academic freedom" in district schools.

Three board members in the Owen J. Roberts School District are seeking a new policy that would permit parents to withdraw their children from classes they find offensive. The issue of parental rights was debated in recent months in the Octorara district, also in Chester County. That proposal, however, while allowing parents to withdraw their children from classes, also attempted to limit topics taught in school. It was labeled censorship and an assault on academic freedom by residents and teachers there.

As police continue to investigate Monday's shootings in a Delaware courthouse, court documents suggest a wider conspiracy in the death of Christine Belford, who police say was gunned down by her ex-father-in-law as a result of a long-running child custody dispute. Belford, 39, had gone to New Castle County Court in Wilmington for a child-support hearing when she and a friend were shot dead by Thomas Matusiewicz, 68, who exchanged fire with Capitol Police before taking his own life.

NEWARK, N.J. - A sharply split New Jersey Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld a parental rights law that a couple claimed discriminates against infertile women. New Jersey law holds that an infertile man whose wife is artificially inseminated with his permission is the baby's father. But it doesn't give parental rights to an infertile woman whose husband's sperm is used to impregnate another woman, even if the wife gives permission. The Camden County couple used a surrogate, identified as A.F., to carry their child.

The tragic death of 6-year-old Khalil Wimes can inform efforts to improve Philadelphia's child-welfare system. The case showed that judges end up making life-and-death decisions about child placement without sufficient information; that parents with long histories with the city's Department of Human Services can regain custody of children as easily as one-time offenders; and, most obviously, that neighbors and others who should serve as the first line...

MINNEAPOLIS - The mother of an 11-year-old boy whose father abandoned him in Minnesota in July has come forward saying that she wants to be part of the discussions about her child's future. Katik Porter, 38, hasn't seen her son in nearly a decade, but she has contacted child-protection services and asked to be part of court proceedings about his custody, Dakota County Attorney James Backstrom said. The boy's placement will be up to child-protection services and courts, and the process could take months.

Question: My daughter is 24, one semester away from her degree, and pregnant. She went into deep denial for almost seven months. At 27 weeks, she came to me with her suspicion. There were no options but to have this baby. She has stated emphatically that she does not want to keep the baby. I am very sad and wish she would not do this, but I have committed myself to supporting her. Father is not involved, and she has very negative feelings about him. He will sign off his parental rights immediately.

L.A. SUPERIOR Court Judge Mitchell Beckloff yesterday gave Michael Jackson's mother permanent custody of his children, but MJ's former dermatologist, Dr. Arnold Klein, surprised the court with an objection and showed he had a little skin in the game. The custody ruling came after a few tense moments in which Mark Vincent Kaplan, an attorney for Klein, raised nonspecific objections to the custody arrangements. Kaplan said they were based on Klein's long-term relationship with MJ and his children.

The Soviet government couldn't stop him. The KGB couldn't silence him. And years of imprisonment didn't break his will. But a chance encounter with a troubled young stranger who claimed to hear the word of God cost him his life. That bitter irony yesterday hung heavily with friends and associates of Michail Makarenko, the 75-year-old Soviet dissident who was fatally beaten with a rock at a New Jersey Turnpike rest stop early Thursday. Brian K. White, 26, of Humble, Texas, allegedly told state police that God told him to attack Makarenko after he tried to sell the elderly man religious CDs. White, a singer of Christian hip-hop, was barely verbal yesterday at a Burlington County Superior Court hearing, where he appeared on closed-circuit video.

Imagine sitting down with a mother and explaining that her child has been taken away and she can never see the child again. She cannot have information about where the child is, if the child is healthy, or even if the child is alive. For a parent, losing a child in this way is inconceivable. We would take life imprisonment, the loss of our limbs, the destruction of our homes, before we would give up our child. But colleagues of mine have had this conversation with mothers in our office, conversations that leave the mother in shock and even the lawyer in tears.

AGAIN, Tattle must scream: "STOP THE PRESSES!" Believe it or not, the mariage between Michael Jackson and his incubator, Debbie Rowe, was "arranged. " Get outta here. Yup. In the custody battle between Jackson and Rowe, TMZ.com obtained a copy of yesterday's ruling from a California Court of Appeal, rejecting the King of Bahrain Pop's claim that Rowe gave up her parental rights. But the interesting part is this passage from the trial judge: "It was an arranged deal from the beginning . . . This was not a mom and dad saying, 'Hey, let's have a family that we're going to raise.

Even as he represented a 20-year-old mother whose sole crime appears to have been poverty, attorney Gerald McOscar was secretly rooting against his client, supporting a judge's decision to tear her 3-year-old from her forever. Then he rushed to trash his client in the newspaper ("Saving foster children from good intent," June 28). McOscar's position, which supports the destruction of his own client's family, is rooted in misunderstandings of the recent history of child welfare and how that system really works.