Corey Curtis, 44, is a Wisconsin man who is the subject of a novel court order. Racine County Circuit Court Judge Tim Boyle ordered Curtis to stop having children after he sired nine children and is already $100,000 in arrears for child support. Six different women had children with Curtis who said that he will now agree to stop producing children.
The judge lamented that he could not order Curtis sterilized, but he did have support under state law to order him to stop having children until he can show he can support them. A controversial 2001 Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling upheld the power of a judge to order a defendant, as a condition of probation, to not procreate again unless he can show he can financially support the child.
The earlier case was State v. Oakley, No. 99-3328-CR (Wis. July 20, 2001) which just happened to involve a man with the same number of children. David Oakley was convicted of refusing to pay court-ordered support for seven of his nine children. A sharply divided Wisconsin Supreme Court voted 4-3 to uphold the ban of procreation over Oakley’s objections. The court found his conduct to constitute “ongoing victimization of his children” and a “disregard for the law.” The court noted that the alternative to the ban would have been a six-year prison sentence which would have had the same effect. The dissenting justices cited the fundamental “right to have children is a basic human right and an aspect of the fundamental liberty which the Constitution jealously guards for all Americans,.” This right is recognized by the Supreme Court in Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U.S. 535, 541 (1942). The dissent noted that “unless he wins the lottery, he will likely never be able to” meet the probation conditions and have additional children.
In the current case, defense attorney Robert Peterson objected to the probation condition. For his part, Curtis (who has shown no sense of personal restraint or responsibility) dismissed the order as a judge acting without thinking: “Judges, they make rulings,” Curtis said, “they make them kind of hastily. So, if that’s what he feels one of my conditions should be then I’m going to abide by it.” That is good of him.
The question is whether it is appropriate for court’s to order a person not to procreate or whether the court should confine its orders to sending people to jail when they fail to support their children. What do you think?
Source: NBC
Malisha, are you saying that the man is nothing more than the sperm doner?
What Nick said.
Bettykath, I, too, have often wondered about putting someone like this in jail/prison for not providing for his children. In this case, I’m pretty sure that it wouldn’t make much difference because he’s apparently not married to any of his ‘baby momas’. However, if you have, let’s say a divorce situation and the man has three kids by his ex-wife and is behind on the support, how does jailing/inprisoning him help out? He can’t earn a living while locked up and, after all, lack of support is supposed to be the reason for taking away his liberty. Seems to me like it’s another case of legal vengence as opposed to justice.
Gary T:
“They become fundamental in the society that enacts them. And that is supposed to be the society we live in, here in America.”
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You’ve got your history wrong even if you don’t subscribe to Natural Law Theory. When enacted, all fundamental rights were subject to restrictions based on reason and need. And that is the society we live in.
You might recall the words of Madison (who, after all, wrote the Bill of Rights) concerning the usefulness of those 10 amendments. Madison dismissed the bills of rights as so many “parchment barriers” whose “inefficacy” was repeatedly demonstrated “on those occasions when [their] control is most needed.” (James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, 17 Oct. 1788).
The Founders were no Pollyannas about men or their governments.
Mespo:
Well, now you are reduced to arguing history, instead of fundamental rights.
As I said, we have little to talk about.
Mespo:
I guess you didn’t read what I plainly wrote – I don’t HAVE absolutist view of individual rights, not in any Natural Rights sense.
They become fundamental in the society that enacts them. And that is supposed to be the society we live in, here in America.
So, that is the starting point from where I argue my point.
Unless of course you don’t even think we have those rights either.
Then of course, we have little to talk about.
Gary T:
“Really.
So what is your point?
Because fundamental ideals are corrupted and violated every day we shouldn’t have them?”
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My point was that none of the Founders subscribed to your absolutist view of individual rights. Thus the only place these “fundamental ideals” exist is in your head.
That’s just stupid. No man has a right to father children. Women may have rights to MOTHER children including giving BIRTH to them but no father has or can be deprived of that right. He may have a right to have sex with a woman who wants to have sex with HIM, but the rest of it is not his business. Once he has had sex with a woman and she has had a child and he is the father, all the rights and responsibilities that flow from that are involved in a whole different set of laws and this judge has no jurisdiction over them. The judge is a fool and I hope his genes are not going to pass through any more generations.
Mespo:
Really.
So what is your point?
Because fundamental ideals are corrupted and violated every day we shouldn’t have them?
Do you think I don’t recognize that in practice “might makes right”?
Of course I do, but just because we must fight to keep those ideals viable and effective, doesn’t mean that we should just give up the whole concept and striving for them.
You probably have reflexively put me in the Natural Rights camp, where there are supposedly some metaphysical rights that people always have, even when their heads are being chopped off.
That is a load of wishful thinking bulsht – we have the individual rights that collective has concluded we should have, and depending on what society that is, the individual is intrinsically valued that much more or less.
However, the idealists that came up with these constitutionally based fundamental rights had the backing of society and their convictions when they enacted them into law. And it was with a great loss of life and risk that it managed to get that way.
It is the ever present pressure of people who want control over other people that cause the effective loss of those rights, and the lazy, lackadaisical and resignatory attitudes of people who think it is all a crock anyway who encourage and abet the loss of those rights.
The starting point in keeping those rights, are to recognize what they are supposed to be, at least in theory. Then we can recognize when they are being taken away in fact, despite all the rhetoric that they are intact.
That recognition is the legal basis to fight to keep them intact.
Gary T:
“The rights in the constitution are fundamental, that’s what makes them rights; a ‘balancing act’ undermines the whole concepts of a right, and that incremental erosion of our rights in practice comes from your view that rights can be compromised.”
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Oh, grow up, Gary. Rights are no more absolute than anything else human. Try speaking about US troop movements during wartime or assembling at the bank to rob it or associating with terrorists to aid them in plying their trade. You’ll see just how legal your view is then.
Yours is the thinking of the child who fails to realize that anything capable of providing freedom is just as susceptible to taking it away. Read Jeremy Bentham and Edmund Burke and see that rights aren’t inalienable absolutes but derive from custom and the social contract. The natural state of affairs is the law of the jungle. Rights derive from reason and their is little divine about them except getting us out of that jungle. As such they are subject to reason and reasonable restraints upon them when overriding state interests so demand. That is the essence of the social contract.
The champion of individual freedom himself explained that, “”All… natural rights may be abridged or regulated in [their] exercise by law.”
— Thomas Jefferson: Opinion on Residence Bill, 1790.
He is anti chinese communist and thus against the one child policy.
bailiff, whack his pee-pee
Stupidity is on both sides of the britches and bench…..
Mespo:
The rights in the constitution are fundamental, that’s what makes them rights; a ‘balancing act’ undermines the whole concepts of a right, and that incremental erosion of our rights in practice comes from your view that rights can be compromised.
And yes, people should not be imprisoned for failure to pay child support, or failure to pay any civil money obligation, that is the equivalent of debtors prison, which was outlawed a long time ago, and what fundamentally distinguishes a civil liability versus a criminal liability.
EastBroadway:
It is the socialist who says, your familial interactions and obligations are everybody’s business, and the government’s business as well.
A person who does not support his kids should suffer the penalty of losing his parental rights to them. But alternately if that parent is supporting them, then his parental rights should be enforced.
It is a dangerous presumption to statutorily create a monied obligation from one person to another, for no other reason than they are biologically related, under penalty of imprisonment.
GaryT…. This PIG’s Rights stop where it causes me and other Tax payers to have to support his kids….. Otherwise, Soylent Green him and his kids, and feed them to the wild life……
He has a pro life license plate which says: Pork em if ya got em.