Re: New Jersey Judge Blocks Dad From Delivery Room
4. the father in this case, the father/Plaintiff asks the court to rely on the proposition that “certainly the plaintiff-father has a right to be alerted and involved at the birth of his child” and that immediate and irreparable harm will follow if the sought relief is denied. But in his demands he mentions not one statute, case law or controlling authority stating that there is even such a thing at the right to be alerted and involved at the birth of his child.
If I go for a judge asking for something through a lawyer, the first thing I would do is point to/quote or present legal arguments that support my point of view. In this case the father presents nothing but his "temper tantrum WANT WANT WANT" reasoning as to why he should be allowed to be present at birth.
5. According to the supreme court of the US, it is an "undue burden to require of a woman to give spousal notification before an abortion", so how can this so-called father to be (in this case) think it is not an undue burden to require this pregnant lady to notify him when she is laying in frigging labor. How should she do that? Does she have to call him when the water breaks and she is doubled up in pain from labor pains? Wait doctor before you bring this child into this world because I have to text/call my estranged jerk of an ex-boyfriend so that he can have his non-existent rights as a father of a child that is not even born?
6. The Supreme Court took notice that during the pregnancy “the mother who carries a child to full term is subject to anxieties, to physical constraints, to pain that only she must bear.” Casey, supra, 505 U.S. at 852,112 S. Ct. at 2807, 120 L. Ed. at 2d 699 (opinion of the court).
While recognizing the state’s interest in child-rearing, the court noted its limits on women who elect to carry a child: her suffering is too intimate and personal for the State to insist, without more, upon its own vision of the woman's role, however dominant that vision has been in the course of our history and our culture. The destiny of the woman must be shaped to a large extent on her own conception of her spiritual imperatives and her place in society.
[Id. at 852, 112 S. Ct. at 2807, 120 L. Ed. 2d at 699 (emphasis added).]
And if a state, with all it's legal standing and legal powers does not have that right, then why should that father?
and on and on and on are the legal ground why this father has no right to demand what he wants.
The mother has only demanded that she has privacy in the delivery room, she (according to the court document) testified that his name would be included in the hospital visitors list. This mother has made nothing more than a reasonable demand.
The whole issue is that this is a case where someone who has legal rights (the mother) is being unfairly targeted/sued by someone who does not have legal nor moral rights to request being present at birth.
There is the legally guaranteed right of privacy but on top of that there is also the fact that patients have laws that grant those patients a right of privacy through the doctor patient privilege but also the licensor-licensee relationship between the woman and the hospital.
Through this businessrelationship the New Jersey Supreme Court has recognized that by:
a hospital room is clearly not a public hall which anyone in the building is free to use as needed. Thus, at least for certain purposes, a hospital room is fully under the control of the medical staff;
yet for other purposes it is “the patient's room".
[State v. Stott, 171 N.J. 343, (2002) (quoting People v. Brown, 88 Cal. App. 3d 283, 291 (Cal. Ct. App. 1979)).]
Also under federal laws the patient has guaranteed rights to privacy.
In short the court concludes this:
Flowing from all these findings, the court further finds that requiring the mother to notify the father that she has gone into labor and or require his physical presence would be an undue burden on her. There can be no question that any mother is under immense physical and psychological pain during labor, and for the State to interfere with her interest in privacy during this critical time would contradict the State’s own interest in protecting the potentiality of human life. The order the father seeks would invade her sphere of privacy and force the mother to provide details of her medical condition to a person she does not desire to share that information with. Thus the court finds that the mother’s constitutionally protected interests before the child is born far outweigh the State’s and father’s interests during the delivery period.
https://www.judiciary.state.nj.us/trial_court_opinions/Plotnick-v-DeLuccia.pdf
And I could not have stated it any better.