Bill seeks to fill in paternity blanks
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 01/26/05
If a state lawmaker gets his way, unmarried women who give birth in Georgia will face a question from hospital staff: Who's the daddy?
Rep. Ben Bridges (R-Cleveland) on Tuesday introduced the Baby's Right to Know Act, which would require hospitals to ask the question. Bridges said his goal is to give children access to their full medical history by identifying the biological father and getting his name on the birth certificate. It would not legally require the new mother to name the man.
"This law does not punish the mother. It simply states that the hospital is required to ask who the father is," Bridges said of House Bill 4. "My main reason is a child gets up later in years and they go for a physical and the doctor asks for their family history and it might be crucial to know that family history."
Bridges said his research found that some hospitals don't ask an unmarried mother to identify the father.
In Georgia, nearly 53,000 babies were born to unmarried women in 2003, 37 percent of all babies born that year, according to state records. It's unknown how many of those babies don't have a father listed on their birth certificate.
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