So, a judge in Newfoundland has declared that a child has two fathers, either one of whom might be the child’s actual father (“Local polyamorous group applauds Newfoundland and Labrador court decision on three-parent family,” June 14).
Which of them actually is the child’s father could have been ascertained by a test the judge could have ordered. The judge chose instead to become a “judicial pioneer” honouring a modern fad. His actual ruling flies in the face of reason, according to which it is not in anyone’s best interest to owe anyone more than he must, or for him to owe anything to more persons than he must.
Any child not a clone must owe his life to two parents. (A clone would owe his or her life not only to him or her from whom he was cloned, but also to a perhaps considerable technical intervention by technicians probably paid for that, which is not, in my judgment, a “loving” way for a human to originate.) It is not in his best interest that he owe the beginning, or the continuation of his life to more than these insofar as they are acting as parents. He ought not thus to “owe his childhood” to more than the two persons necessary to his being their child.
Colin Burke
Port au Port
