Whisky Tango Foxtrot?!

[kandrathe]

I step out for a few days and this place gets all reproductive.  Sheesh.  I have 2 points that would have made better sense had I made them earlier, but here goes anyway:
In the context of Doc's original post (abdication of male parental fiscal responsibility on the basis of choice, argued under equal protection clause) and combining with Occhi's comment on adoption, would a change in the system similar to what the lawsuit seeks allow for an "adoption of child support," e.g., kindly older couple with not to many years left, no kids of their own don't want to adopt, but want to help those who need it paired with young mother whose baby's-daddy decided to split (analogue to open adoption through private "broker").

Just something interesting that came to mind.  Seems like a very awkward process, but something that might evolve.
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Your post reminded me of a situation with some friends or ours who were trying to adopt through the US system, rather than do the usual overseas adoption. I saw first hand why couples would want to choose to adopt a foreign child rather than try to work through our system. The most important point was that our system has a very unclear break, so that a couple might have a child with them for many months or years while legal wrangling occurs only to have the adoption unravel. This happened 4 times with our friends, after they have accepted babies and cared for them for many months only to see them taken away and returned to their birth parents.

In one case, it was extremely sad since the father wanted deperately to keep his son, but he did not earn enough money to pay for daycare and provide a living for his family. The mother had been committed long term to a mental institution. The case draggged out for two years, until he finally found a way to care for the boy while he was at work. It may have been a happy ending for the father and the boy (even though in extreme poverty), but very sad for our friends who had raised the boy for 2 years from infancy.