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(* =
among peasants : syringes in there watching without trepidation or more idiomatically, less legally informed folks should worry about being caught procreating with a turkey baster instead of doing the nasty)
A woman who used a turkey baster to impregnate herself is on the losing side of a legal battle over parental rights.
The Virginia Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that the child's biological father is more than a sperm donor and is entitled to be a part of his son's life.
The case hinged on an informal agreement between two longtime friends: a woman who wanted to get pregnant and a man willing to supply the sperm to make it happen. According to court filings, Joyce Rosemary Bruce impregnated herself with a turkey baster, believing that Robert Preston Boardwine would not have any parental rights — including a say in the boy's education and other decisions — because they did not have intercourse.
The appeals court said she was wrong.
"The path to fatherhood may have been unconventional," the court said, but it doesn't remove Boardwine's parental rights.
It began with Bruce's desire to have a child to raise on her own. She turned to her friend Boardwine, who agreed after some trepidation to provide the sperm. They discussed a written contract but never signed one.
Boardwine would stop by Bruce's home and give her a plastic container of his sperm.
"Bruce used an ordinary turkey baster to inseminate herself," the court said. "No other person was involved. They did not go to a doctor's office or to a medical facility."
Given the penchant for some folks conferring personhood on unborn things, representatives of the turkey baster, designated
et vir but unavailable for comment, were understood to have contacted a lawyer before the holiday seasons made it too difficult to determine the poor baster
locus in quo and
in loco parentis.
Apparently, from a contract perspective, the other two parties, Robert and Joyce were in ocus poenitentiae, pulling out earlier than expected. So for both parties, it's less caveat emptor and more caveat sperma accipientis.
The cognates should hopefully deter you from using Google's Latin translator. And yes, all this Latin means I am a fan of Rumpole of the Bailey and "She who must be obeyed", not dissimilar to Mother Nature with whom it's not nice to fool with margarine.
And on other issues of Earth Mother natural birth in law and order, one of my favorite Miami Vice episodes was this one from season four:
No. in series 80, No. in season 12, Title "The Cows of October", Directed by Vern Gillum, Written by Ed Zuckerman, Original air date February 5, 1988, Production code 63510
The Vice Squad becomes involved in a bidding war between an American beef company and a Latin-American drug cartel over a supply of rare, high-quality cattle sperm.
Also consider yourselves lucky I wasn't asked to do the diary for tomorrow since it's
National Talk Like Shakespeare Day.
Volo te felicem terra hodie nationalibus!
April 22nd
National Earth Day
National Girl Scout Leaders Day
National Jelly Bean Day
Mothers Day and Father Day are coming up, and needless to say they are simply two of the many different celebratory "days" designed to get us to buy more gift stuff. I will of course take my mother somewhere for dinner and purchase her a gift - whether she remembers any of my kindnesses is debatable. How will you be spending such holidays, since I now have discovered that 30 December is Niece's Day.
Google's Earth Day Quiz: What animal are you? As expected, I am a
Pangolin:
pangolins in the Fifth Element?