Parentage not paternity: Ghana’s proposed compulsory paternity testing bill sparks fears of discrimination against mothers (1)

Introduction
A legislative proposal currently advancing through Ghana's policy space seeks to mandate compulsory paternity testing for all children born in healthcare facilities, alongside the criminalisation of what its proponents call “paternity fraud.” Its stated objectives: securing biological certainty, protecting paternal interests, and deterring deception or fraud, indeed hold an immediate and superficial appeal to many. After all, few would argue that truth has no place in law.

Law, however, does not pursue truth in the abstract. It demands truth through a disciplined framework of rules, principles, and consequences that must uphold fairness, coherence, and impartiality. When rigorously tested against these essential standards, the proposed bill reveals a weak foundation.

What is presented as a neutral mechanism for legal certainty in fact injects suspicion directly into the core of the legal system, discriminatorily targeting mothers and enforced by the coercive power of criminal punishment. And in the next few paragraphs, I shall demonstrate why this proposed bill, if it ever materialises in the manner proposed by its proponents, would pose a grave danger not only to mothers, but to families and to the country at large.

I shall show, first, that it is built on a false and legally indefensible premise that a biological mismatch is evidence of fraud, thereby collapsing the vital distinction between innocent mistake, scientific anomaly, and deliberate deception.

Second, I shall expose the irrational selectivity of a regime that interrogates only paternity while leaving maternity unquestioned, revealing not a pursuit of truth, but a design that structurally targets mothers.

Third, I shall demonstrate that Ghanaian law has long settled the question of parentage under Section 32 of the Evidence Act, 1975 (NRCD 323), Sections 40 to 42 of the Children's Act, 1998 (Act 560 as amended), and Section 47 (1) (f) of the Courts Act, 1993 (Act 459 as amended), providing a coherent, child-centered legal framework that renders compulsory testing unnecessary and jurisprudentially disruptive.

Fourth, I shall show that the proposed bill would be economically indefensible. As a private member's bill that it would be, it cannot draw on the Consolidated Fund and would therefore be structurally incapable of State financing; yet even to contemplate public funding would mean diverting scarce national resources into a regime of universal suspicion.

If, on the other hand, the burden is shifted to families, the absurdity would then be complete: parents already grappling with hospital and postnatal expenses would be compelled to pay for tests they neither need nor desire, all to satisfy a baseless presumption of distrust.

The result is the systematic compulsion of mothers and families to fund their own vindication at birth, exposing the complete economic and moral bankruptcy of the proposed bill.

Finally, I shall establish that, as a matter of criminal law, the bill is fundamentally incoherent, for it seeks to punish outcomes rather than proven fault, a relic of the ancient trial by ordeal, where an adverse result alone was treated as proof of guilt.

In truth, what is presented as a “Paternity Fraud” bill could be more accurately named a “Proof of Fidelity at Birth” bill, a scheme that presumes doubt, manufactures distrust, and compels mothers to prove their sexual exclusivity at the very threshold of life, death, and birth.

A useful analogy, drawn from human experience rather than law, may be found in the narrative of Joseph in the Christian scriptures. Confronted with what appeared to be a clear biological impossibility, he initially drew a rational and socially consistent inference that Mary's pregnancy signified infidelity, warranting quiet dissolution of the relationship to avoid public shame. That inference was later displaced by further disclosure, revealing that the initial appearance did not exhaust the truth of the circumstances.

Joseph's inference was reasonable on the facts available, but incomplete. Likewise, a legal system that treats every DNA-based paternity exclusion as conclusive evidence of deception risks converting partial biological truth into definitive criminal and moral judgment.

This paper thus serves as a caution to the proponents and drafters of the proposed bill: not every biological exclusion is the product of fraud, and not every mismatch reflects wrongdoing. To criminalize all exclusions is to collapse the distinction between error, circumstance, and intent; a logic inconsistent with both legal principle and deeper moral intuition.

Source: Her Ladyship Justice Sedinam Awo Kwadam (Mrs.)

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