Court Asserts Man's Right to Procreate

Link : http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=583&ncid=583&e=11&u=/nm/20040930/od_nm/crime_procreation_dc

COLUMBUS, Ohio (Reuters) - The Ohio Supreme Court asserted a man's "right to procreate" on Wednesday and ruled that a father of seven could not be threatened with jail for skipping child support if he fathered more children.



Five of seven judges agreed the 2002 sentence meted out to Sean Talty was "overbroad" by threatening him with a year in jail if he fathered another child.


Talty, 32, has seven children by five different women and was $38,000 behind in child support payments.


"(The sentence) restricts Talty's right to procreate without providing a mechanism by which the prohibition can be lifted if the relevant conduct (providing child support) should change," Chief Justice Thomas Moyer wrote for the majority.


Moyer dismissed prosecutors' argument that Talty had been given a break because if he had been sent to prison on the original felony convictions for failure to pay child support for three of his children he would not have been allowed conjugal visits.


In a similar case upheld by Wisconsin's Supreme Court in 2001, a man was ordered not to have any more children if he failed to support the children he already had.