Where Babies Come From

Assemblyman Gilbert Wilson introduced a bill in the New Jersey legislature a couple of weeks ago mandating DNA testing for all newborns. The mothers or their insurers (oh, joy! Another medical bill) would be required to pay for the test. Some public good would result from this, right? I mean, this is our legislature. They have our interests at heart. At very least, wealth would flow into the coffers of the DNA labs. Jobs would be created.

But then what? Suppose the baby's father was not who the mother said he was. This, after all, is the stated purpose of the bill, to reveal the truth before... before... what? The father comes to love the child? The family raises the child to maturity?

Saved from such a fate, the disappointed non-father gets to scold his wife or lover while she's still lying in her hospital bed nursing his non-baby. "Shirley, you slut! We're through! Never expect another penny from me!" And he spits on the baby and leaves. How is this useful?

Not to get all political on you, but it seems to me that the view of women embodied in this bill is that most of us are sly, deceitful creatures out to get everything we can from the men. These are the same straw women that the Republicans are said to be making war on. I don't know any women like that. We can make our own living now, raise our own children. Guys, if your woman offers you a child, it's a gift.

I read somewhere that in certain South Sea Island tribes a man who raised another man's child as his own considered himself the winner. He got the prize, the child. Babies are treasures. They're worth whatever they cost, whether they're your own, or adopted, or fathered by the milkman.

Kate Gallison