Sex History Law Looks Set to Be Dumped
 

submitted by gekkogecko
By Jane Sutton

MIAMI (Reuters) - A Florida law requiring some women to advertise their
sexual
history in newspapers before placing children for adoption looks set to be
struck from the statute books in the face of widespread opposition.

Dubbed the "Scarlet Letter Law" by critics, the 2001 law applies to women who
do not know who fathered the children they want to put up for adoption.

It requires them to try to find the father by running newspaper ads in cities
where conception might have occurred, listing their names and
descriptions, the
children's names, the names and descriptions of men they had sex with and the
dates they had sex.

Florida's Fourth District Court of Appeal in West Palm Beach will hear oral
arguments challenging the law's constitutionality on Thursday. In an unusual
move, the state attorney general's office notified the appeals court on
Dec. 30
that it would neither file briefs nor make any defense of the law.

The decision was made before current Attorney General Charles Crist took
office, his spokeswoman said, and the assistant attorney general who handled
the case was away on vacation and could not be reached for comment.

"It speaks loudly though that the attorney general's office doesn't believe
this statute is worth defending," said plaintiffs' attorney Charlotte Danciu.

Danciu, a family law attorney who has handled more than 2,000 adoptions, will
argue at the hearing that the statute violates privacy provisions of the
Florida and U.S. Constitutions.

"Traditionally, your right to have privacy in your bedroom and your right to
keep your sexual history private is an absolute right," Danciu said.

"One can scarcely conceive a more egregious intrusion than such forced
disclosure of one's sexual relations in the mass media," the American Civil
Liberties Union said in a friend-of-the-court brief opposing the law.

The law was passed to protect men's parental rights and to assure adoptive
parents the adoption would not be challenged afterward by men who belatedly
learned they fathered children.

The appeals court has already ruled the law cannot be applied to women
who got
pregnant when raped.

The four plaintiffs in Thursday's appeal include a girl who had sex with
several classmates and conceived at age 13, and two "substance abusers"
who had
sex with dealers and other users but do not know who fathered their healthy
children, Danciu said. The fourth, a former foster child struggling to take
care of herself, "has no idea who the father is of seven men that she slept
with," Danciu said.

Adoption proponents say the law defeats the aim of persuading women to
give up
unwanted children for adoption rather than undergo abortion or abandon the
children.

Dozens of the ads have appeared in Florida newspapers. Danciu estimates 30 of
her clients have had abortions rather than do so.

"One told me she would have killed herself" if she had to run such an ad,
Danciu said.

The ad requirement was a small part of a broad 106-page adoption bill and
drew
little notice when it zipped through the state legislature in 2001.

Democratic state Sen. Walter "Skip" Campbell was one of the chief sponsors of
the bill. He didn't write it but "took all the heat" when the ads attracted
national ridicule and is sponsoring a revised version that "does away
with that
silly provision," he said.

It would create a confidential paternity registry allowing men who might have
fathered children to record their interest in preserving their parental
rights.
If a woman they named as a sex partner put up a child for adoption, they
would
be notified and given a limited time to contest the adoption.

Modeled after laws in New York, Minnesota and Texas, it has strong
support from
adoption lawyers, child advocates, religious groups, and other interested
parties consulted by Florida legislators. Lawmakers expect it to pass easily
when the legislature convenes in March.

"I think it will be one of the first bills passed and signed by the
governor,"
Campbell
said.