Alabama has been an outlier in the US for allowing rapists to assert parental rights — child custody, visitation, etc. — over the offspring their assaults result in.
That particular bit of local charm slipped lawmakers’ minds when Alabama gleefully passed its new anti-abortion law, which provides no exception for cases of rape. The state legislature has since had to scramble to put some sort of provision into state law to deal with the presumed increased number of cases where women who are raped are forced to carry their baby to full term … and then potentially forced to associate with their rapists for the next couple of decades.
Scramble they did, and now Alabama will prevent that from happening. Kind of. Sometimes. Maybe. Their new “Jessi’s Law” only allows a court to terminate or restrict parental rights of rapists when there’s a conviction for first degree rape or incest.
Given the dramatic underreporting of rape, and the low numbers of convictions even when reported, that dependency on conviction makes it a minor comfort indeed.
And the limitation to first degree rape means second degree sexual assaults — which includes statutory rape — are excluded from the law. So when Mom’s skeevy boyfriend assaults and impregnates her 13-year-old daughter, he can still ask for parental rights for the baby (or, more likely, threaten to do so to get them to drop any possible charges).
Huzzah for family values!
Do you want to know more? Alabama Banned Abortions. Then Its Lawmakers Remembered Rapists Can Get Parental Rights. – Mother Jones