JOHN BOULAIS has taken care of his son, Tuan Anh Nguyen, ever since the woman who gave birth to Nguyen abandoned the child after her relationship with Boulais ended. When Nguyen was almost six, Boulais brought him from Vietnam to Texas, where Nguyen became a permanent resident and lived until now. The Immigration and Naturalization Service decided that Nguyen, having pleaded guilty to a felony in 1992, should be sent back to Vietnam.
The INS can deport only people who are not citizens. Many Americans were born abroad, but as long as their mothers are U.S. citizens, or their U.S. citizen fathers were married to their mothers, they are automatically citizens. This rule keeps Americans from feeling constrained in travelling by worries that their children born abroad would not have citizenship.
Boulais, an American citizen, was not married to his son's mother, and thus he is not "legitimately" Nguyen's father. Until the INS threatened his son, Boulais did not attempt to prove fatherhood legally. So Sunday may have been the last Father's Day Nguyen could spend with the only person he has always known as a parent, because a majority of the Supreme Court has decided that being a father isn't as good as being a mother.
As we have come to expect from the Supreme Court, only the slimmest majority holds this opinion. Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justices Kennedy, Stevens, Scalia and Thomas have upheld a law that requires unwed fathers to acknowledge paternity formally before their child is 18, while demanding nothing from unwed mothers. This is what happened in the case of Nguyen and Boulais v. INS, which was handed down June 11.
Writing for those five justices, Kennedy declares, "[A]t the moment of birth - a critical event in the statutory scheme and in the whole tradition of citizenship law - the mother's knowledge of the child and the fact of parenthood have been established in a way not guaranteed in the case of the unwed father."
However, the University of Virginia's hospital's errors have shown us that even biological motherhood lacks perfect assurance. As Justice O'Connor notes in her dissent, the INS does not require women to prove biological motherhood to get their children citizenship. Nor do we treat biology as all-important. The woman given a child she did not give birth to did not wish to exchange it for her biological child. She had raised the child she was given, and that girl was her daughter, regardless of biology.
With current reproductive technology, a baby may have several people involved in his or her existence: a sperm donor, an egg donor, a surrogate mother and the person or couple who actually raises the child. Only the last of these needs recognition as the parents. They are the ones whom teachers see asking questions at PTA meetings, coaches see cheering at games, commencement speakers see desperately adjusting video cameras at graduations. Whatever the physical bonds of anyone else involved in bringing the child to life, they provide the equipment of love and discipline for children to become ready for the responsibilities of adulthood. A man parenting a boy for his whole life deserves to be called his father.
Kennedy also asserts that the statute works "to ensure that the child and the citizen parent have some demonstrated opportunity or potential to develop not just a relationship that is recognized, as a formal matter, by the law, but one which consists of the real, everyday ties that provide a connection between child and citizen parent and, in turn, the United States."
By Kennedy's line of reasoning, filling out a form claiming paternity constitutes potential to develop a relationship. He doesn't say why a few minutes with a pen would be so effective. People who give up their children fill out just as many forms.
Nguyen's biological mother, on the other hand, has done nothing of the sort. Yet by the current rules, a woman behaving like Nguyen's mother is more of a parent than Boulais. She was present for the birth, and that makes her a mother, regardless of her absence ever since.
A great joy and burden of maturity consists in using one's own powers to care for another who is weaker, whether the person receiving the care is an ill senior citizen or a healthy infant. Indeed, many people say they did not become true adults until they became parents and assumed those responsibilities. Despite stereotypes, men possess both the will and skill to take on this role. If the Court wants to uphold equality between the sexes, and if Congress wants citizens to connect with their children, they cannot impose greater burdens on men who wish to be caretakers.
Boulais has proven through DNA tests that he is Nguyen's father by blood. More importantly, he has proven by decades of support that he is Nguyen's father by love.
(Pallavi Guniganti is a Cavalier Daily columnist. She can be reached at pguniganti@cavalierdaily.com)
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