Inmates’ Suit to Father Children

In response to “Death Row Inmates File Suit to Father Children,” Dec. 31:

The procreative rights lawsuit of 14 killers on San Quentin’s Death Row provides the most egregious example in recent memory of the true status of children.

The demand for genetic immortality (the condemned evidently aren’t suing to adopt) is implied; the related “desperation” of “some (of the inmates’) parents . . . for a grandchild” is specifically cited. Yet, typical of the larger dysfunctional society, there’s total welfare. Behind their depraved indifference, of course, is massive ignorance and denial. Even now they’re unable or unwilling to fully confront the subversion of their own violence-defined lives by violent, alcoholic, abandoning fathers, their betrayal by physically and/or emotionally absent fathers who, replaying experiences two generations old, rejected them as inconveniences or treated them like chattel.

The cumulative social costs of the failure to champion children’s rights as morally equal to reproductive rights continue to escalate.

When do we get a clue? To fatherless American adolescents everywhere, gangbanger and executive alike: Ask not what a child can do for you, ask what you can do for a fellow complex, demanding human being in a long-term human commitment. First for the sake of the child and then the community get a (self-examined) life before making one. Don’t plan on bailing out early.

DALE M. HAYNES

San Diego