WAR ON MEN: Biological Father Loses Custody Battle To Adoptive Parents. “The court said the father could not rely on the Indian Child Welfare Act for relief because he never had legal or physical custody at the time of adoption proceedings, which were initiated by the birth mother without his knowledge. . . . The South Carolina Supreme Court ruled last year for the biological father, Dusten Brown, who had sought custody after Veronica’s birth. He is a registered member of the Cherokee Nation and is raising the child in Oklahoma.”

The issue is complicated by federal Indian law, but the fact that a mother can unilaterally adopt out a child without the father’s consent, even when the father wants custody, is evidence that when people talk about reproductive rights, they’re really talking about women’s reproductive rights.

UPDATE: Reader Bart Hall writes: “Glenn, as an adoptive father I must disagree. The bio-father texted a relinquishment. Sloppy, but not ‘war on men’. We hired four separate attorneys: for ourselves, the birth-mother, the birth-father, and the baby herself. It cost a bit more, but all the paperwork was perfect, and the judge loved it. Nevertheless, the birth-father did not give a rat’s rump about that kid, either during the pregnancy or for a couple of years afterwards. To pull a child out of a loving home on the basis of 1% Indian blood (I have more than that myself) when the child never had anything to do with any tribe or reservation would have been pure power politics and entirely abusive. That poor kid has been through enough bullshit already. This had nothing to do with ‘war on men’ — the birth father was nothing more than a sperm donor.”

Would we accept a text-relinquishment from a mother? But a fair point. Note however, that a father who is “nothing more than a sperm donor” can still be on the hook for 18 years of child support.