Children are mothers’ babies but Fathers maybe- Court ruling that shocked Kenyans.
A court ruling has caught the attention of Kenyans after siding with a mother who left the hospital with a different man from the one who was taking care of her.
Sylvanus Manuel Walutsachi had sued st. Mary’s mission hospital at Kisumu court of appeal after allowing discharge of his woman and the baby to another man.
The court stated that, the woman has a right to free association hence whatever she did is justifiable.
The court ruled,”I agree that if a man takes the woman he loves to a hospital labour ward for she is heavy with child, while happily believing himself the father, but upon the child making a landing, the woman by subterfuge eludes him, and leaves the hospital in the company of another man, a shadowy rival, judges may empathize with the deceived first man, but cannot in law agree with him that the hospital should compensate him for not detaining the woman, till the man who brought her in should claim and discharge her.“
The ruling added,”Adult she is, a free moral agent (though the man may protest the word ‘moral’) and in a free country she is perfectly free to associate with and as in this case, be discharged from hospital in the company of whomever she please.”
The court further stated that its ruling is based on facts and not sympathy.
The court also sides with the mother after the declaring the baby belonged to a different man.
The court stated,”Thus, while the emotional anguish the appellant had to endure by reason of those events evokes sympathy, courts of law deal not in that currency. It must cut to the core that the woman in this case 3 declared the other man, one Echesa, as the child’s father, and not the appellant but, are not the hearts of men, and of women, deceptive above all things?
The court added,”It dawns on the appellant, alas too painfully, too late, there is no lie in the words, spoken usually in jest, that children are mothers babies, but fathers may-bes. And in the circumstance of this case, no remedy lies in law, least of all against the hospital.”
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