NCJ Number
173876
Journal
Journal of Juvenile Law Volume: 18 (1997) Issue: Dated: Pages: 1-33
Date Published
1997
Length
33 pages
Annotation
This analysis of gender-neutral laws on statutory rape concludes that they may have a surprising impact on longstanding presumptions regarding the legitimacy of children born to a marriage and on both the privacy rights and constitutional search-and-seizure protections of third-party infants.
Abstract
Such a law raises the issue of whether the courts will compel a pregnant woman or her infant to submit to blood or DNA tests to determine its paternity if the woman had consensual but unlawful sexual intercourse with a male under age 18 who is not her husband. One example is the California law that took effect in January 1994 to make statutory rape gender neutral, instead of defining statutory rape as intercourse with a female under age 18 who is not the wife of the perpetrator. Numerous State supreme court and United States Supreme Court decisions have focused on different aspects of the issues raised by gender neutrality of laws on statutory rape. However, family issues are so fraught with complexity that they are not always well suited to satisfactory resolution in an adversary judicial proceeding. A legislative forum is the best place to resolve these issues to produce more practical and acceptable accommodations to the conflicting rights of institutions and individuals. When the conclusive presumption of legitimacy of a child born in a marriage comes into direct conflict with the government's legitimate interest in prosecuting unlawful sexual intercourse offenders, the underlying social policies of the paternity presumption should prevail. Therefore, the California Penal Code should be amended to reflect this goal. Footnotes