Introduction
I have also read Justice Kwadam’s recent viral opinion piece online, and Her Ladyship makes a convincing case against Ghana’s proposed compulsory paternity testing bill. Her concerns about criminal liability, gender discrimination, and the dignity of mothers are serious, well-argued, and deserve genuine respect.
This response does not dismiss them. It builds upon them by identifying where her analysis is strongest, where it overreaches, and the space where a scientifically grounded, legally coherent, and more just alternative can be constructed. That alternative is what this piece defends. Proponents ought to proceed with due caution and incorporate all material points raised by Ghanaians.
I. Where Justice Kwadam is right and where she overreaches
The learned judge’s most compelling argument is her criminal law critique. She is correct that a DNA test establishes biological linkage and nothing more. It cannot speak to intention, knowledge, or motive. A mother who genuinely believed a man was the biological father of her child, only for science to later reveal otherwise, has not committed fraud. Fraud requires deliberate deception. Mistake does not. To collapse that distinction, to treat a laboratory mismatch as automatic proof of criminal intent, is to return to the logic of the medieval trial by ordeal, where an adverse outcome was itself treated as divine judgment of guilt.
On this point, her argument is sound, and any legislative framework that imposes criminal liability on the mere fact of a paternity mismatch, without proof of intent, is indefensible under modern criminal jurisprudence.
However, Justice Kwadam makes a foundational error that undermines the rest of her analysis: she treats the question of verification and the question of criminalisation as the same question. They are not. One may fully support the former while firmly rejecting the latter. Her entire argument against the proposed bill is constructed as though the only possible reason to verify paternity is to punish someone. That is incorrect. Perhaps some of A Plus’s submissions influenced her thinking. I say this because I initially felt the same.
I later realised that the case for compulsory biological parentage registration does not rest on suspicion towards mothers. It rests on the rights of children, the integrity of legal identity, and the demonstrable, real-world harm caused by decades of legally enforced biological uncertainty, harm that Justice Kwadam’s own courtroom experience has documented.
II. The anachronism of Section 32: a presumption designed for another century
The learned justice defends Section 32 of the Evidence Act, 1975 (NRCD 323) as a “coherent, child-centred legal framework” that secures identity “from the first breath of life.” This defence sounds pleasing, but it is indefensible in the genomic era. Section 32 was designed for a time when Ghana had a limited understanding and use of DNA, when certainty about biological parentage was simply unattainable and legal presumption was the only practical substitute. The law, wisely for its time, made a necessity into a virtue: where the truth cannot be known, presume the most socially stable outcome. That was sound legal pragmatism in 1975. In 2026, the necessity no longer exists. The presumption is no longer a substitute for truth. It has become, in many cases, a legal mechanism for suppressing it.
The damage this presumption has caused to Ghanaian families is not theoretical. It is a lived experience:
– Men have been legally bound, financially and emotionally, to children who are not biologically theirs, often for decades and without knowledge or consent.
– Children have been denied knowledge of their true biological heritage, including critical medical history, genetic predispositions to hereditary diseases, and organ compatibility information relevant to transplant medicine.
– Inheritance disputes have arisen that courts have struggled to resolve equitably, long after the parties involved have died.
– Psychological trauma has been inflicted upon both men and children when the biological truth eventually emerges.
Justice Kwadam acknowledges, in her own article, that she encountered a case in her court where a DNA test returned no biological linkage with either parent, a case of hospital baby-switching. She uses this to argue against the proposed bill. But she draws the wrong conclusion from her own experience. That case is not an argument against verification. It is a powerful argument for earlier, compulsory verification before years of legal, emotional, and financial investment have been made in a relationship that biological reality does not support.
The presumption in Section 32 does not protect families. For many families, it has been a legally enforced blindfold. Removing that blindfold is not an act of aggression against mothers. It is an act of justice towards children.
III. The scientific framework: pre-birth and at-birth verification as a public health measure
Justice Kwadam frames the entire debate around postnatal testing at the maternity ward, which allows her to invoke the imagery of an exhausted mother being subjected to interrogation at the moment of maximum vulnerability. That imagery disappears under the proposal advanced here.
Non-Invasive Prenatal Paternity Testing (NIPP Testing)
NIPP testing is an established, clinically validated procedure already available in some private facilities in Ghana and across sub-Saharan Africa. According to the American Pregnancy Association, NIPP works as follows: DNA is collected from the mother via a simple blood draw, and DNA is collected from the possible father using a cheek swab. Both samples are then sent to the laboratory for analysis. The test analyses free-floating foetal DNA from the mother’s plasma and compares it to the mother’s own DNA profile. Once the foetus’s profile is determined, it is compared to the possible father’s, and paternity can be determined.
Results are generally returned within one week. If the man tested is not the biological father, the report shows a 0% probability of paternity. If he is the biological father, the report shows a 99% or greater probability of paternity.
The main limitation is that if a woman is carrying twins, prenatal paternity testing is not possible, since there is free-floating DNA from both foetuses in the mother’s bloodstream, and current technology does not permit the laboratory to isolate each foetus’s profile separately.
At-birth registration as mandatory verification
Where pre-birth testing has not occurred, a simple buccal swab from the newborn and both parents is required at the point of birth registration, as is currently done for BCG vaccination and birth certificate issuance. This is a civil, administrative process integrated into the existing work of the Ghana Health Service and the Births and Deaths Registry.
This is not, and must not be framed as, a test of the mother’s sexual fidelity. It is a biological registration of parentage, equivalent in function and clinical neutrality to recording the newborn’s blood type, conducting a heel-prick metabolic screen, or administering a hearing test. All of these are routine at birth. None of them is treated as aan accusation
The stigma Justice Kwadam describes is a function of social interpretation, not scientific necessity. It is precisely the kind of stigma that normalisation through routine antenatal and birth registration integration will, over time, dissolve. HIV testing in antenatal care was once deeply stigmatised. Today, it is routine, accepted, and rightly regarded as a cornerstone of maternal and child health. Biological parentage registration can follow the same path.
IV. Separating verification from criminalisation
Justice Kwadam’s criminal law argument is her strongest, and it deserves direct engagement rather than deflection. She is right that mens rea, guilty intent, is the foundation of criminal liability. She is right that a biological mismatch, by itself, proves nothing about a person’s state of mind at the time of conception. She is right that heteropaternal superfecundation, while rare, demonstrates that DNA mismatches can occur in the complete absence of any deception.
My disagreement lies in her assumption that the only possible purpose of paternity verification is criminal punishment. This is a false equivalence. Biological truth has independent legal, medical, and human value entirely apart from any question of liability. A child whose biological parentage is accurately recorded at birth has better access to:
1. Accurate genetic medical history, including hereditary disease screening and organ compatibility information.
2. Legally secure inheritance rights grounded in biological reality rather than legal fiction.
3. Protection from the psychological trauma of discovering, in adulthood, that a foundational assumption about their identity was legally constructed and biologically false.
4. The right to know their parents, enshrined in Article 7 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Ghana ratified in 1990.
The correct legislative design decouples verification from criminalisation entirely. A mismatch revealed by pre-birth or at-birth testing triggers only the updating of parentage records and the establishment of appropriate maintenance and custody obligations. It does not trigger automatic criminal liability. Criminal liability, where it is to exist at all, must require separate proof of deliberate, knowing deception, established through ordinary evidential standards in a court of law. These are two entirely separate legal instruments and must be legislated as such.
V. The UNCRC and the state’s positive obligation
Justice Kwadam invokes the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child as support for the existing presumption-based system, arguing that the bill subordinates the child’s interest in immediate legal identity to biological certainty. This is a selective reading of an instrument that, when read in full, cuts in a significantly different direction.
Article 7 of the UNCRC provides that every child has the right, as far as possible, to know and be cared for by their parents.
Article 7(1) reads: “The child shall be registered immediately after birth and shall have the right from birth to a name, the right to acquire a nationality and, as far as possible, the right to know and be cared for by his or her parents.”
Article 8 protects the child’s right to identity, including nationality, name, and family relations. A legal system that preserves fictional legal fatherhood through a statutory presumption in the face of biological evidence to the contrary cannot claim full compliance with Articles 7 and 8. It prioritises administrative convenience over the child’s most fundamental right: the right to know who they actually are.
Where scientific means exist to fulfil the state’s obligation to ensure a child knows their parents from birth, the state’s failure to use them is itself a failure to uphold the child’s right to identity. Compulsory verification ensures that no child is left with a legally constructed identity that biological evidence later contradicts.
VI. The economic and administrative argument
Justice Kwadam’s economic argument is compelling if one imagines paternity verification as a standalone, separately funded, bureaucratically complex national testing regime. It loses force once testing is understood as an integration into existing antenatal and birth registration infrastructure.
Ghana’s antenatal care system already involves multiple maternal blood draws per pregnancy: malaria screening, sickle cell testing, HIV testing, hepatitis B screening, blood grouping, and increasingly, non-invasive prenatal testing for chromosomal anomalies. Each of these tests uses blood already drawn at the same appointment. Adding cfDNA-based parentage analysis to an existing sample adds marginal cost, not transformative cost.
Furthermore, the social and economic costs of disputed paternity litigation, court proceedings, maintenance disputes, fraudulent inheritance claims, and the psychological health consequences of identity disruption are substantial, largely unquantified in the Ghanaian context, but demonstrably real. A modest investment in accurate parentage registration at birth is, in economic terms, insurance against these far higher future costs.
As for the constitutional concern about private member bills and the Consolidated Fund, this becomes a state function funded through the Ministry of Health’s maternal and child health budget, not a new separate levy. The process is no more financially burdensome than compulsory immunisation or compulsory birth registration.
VII. Closing the asymmetry
Again, Justice Kwadam identifies a genuine asymmetry in the proposed bill’s architecture: it scrutinises paternity while leaving maternity unquestioned. She rightly notes that maternity, though presumed certain in most cases, is not beyond the reach of institutional error. Her own court case of hospital baby-switching is evidence enough.
This proposal closes that asymmetry completely. Biological parentage registration, conducted as a medical procedure on both parents and the newborn, verifies both maternity and paternity simultaneously. It is not a test of female fidelity. It is a test of biological parentage, applied equally, without presumption, and without accusation.
This is the framework that Justice Kwadam herself calls for at the close of her article when she asks: “If circumstances ever justified verifying parentage at the time of birth, could we, as a nation, propose a process that is less discriminatory, more sensitive, more legally sound, and fundamentally just?”
The answer is yes. And this is that process.
VIII. Safeguards and enforcement
Compulsory does not mean coercive or punitive. The legislation must include safeguards: strict data protection protocols, confidential handling of results, and mandatory counselling for both parents. If a parent refuses testing, the child is registered with “parentage pending” status and the matter is referred to the family court for determination. Refusal does not constitute a criminal offence.
IX. Prudence and truth are not enemies
The question before Ghanaians is not whether the law should pursue truth. It is whether the law should deliberately avoid it when the means to establish it are safe, reliable, and readily available. Justice Kwadam is right that a system which begins with suspicion and imposes criminal liability without proof of intent is unjust. That is why this proposal separates verification from criminalisation entirely.
The answer to a flawed bill is not to retain a 1975 presumption in a 2026 genomic reality. The answer is a compulsory, scientifically grounded, legally coherent system that secures a child’s true biological identity from the first breath of life, without accusation and without stigma.
To avoid misconception, “Parentage Registration Act” is a more accurate title than “Paternity Test Bill.” It reflects the civil, universal, and child-centred nature of the reform.
Section 32 of the Evidence Act served Ghana well at the time for which it was designed. That time has passed. The 21st century has placed in Ghana’s hands tools for which earlier generations of lawmakers would have been profoundly grateful: tools that can secure, from the first breath of life, a child’s true biological identity, without accusation, without criminalisation, and without the shadow of deception that has darkened too many Ghanaian families for too long.
Conclusion
Ghana must stand as a country that chooses progress over convenience, and truth over comfort. Development is not only about roads, hospitals, and GDP figures. It is also about the unseen architecture of justice and identity that holds a society together. A nation cannot plan for its future when the most basic facts of its present are left to presumption and chance.
Behind every statistic is a child wondering who they are, a man questioning a lifetime of sacrifice, and a mother carrying the weight of silence. We now have the tools to end that silence without shame and without blame, and to secure every child’s identity from the first breath of life.
Compulsory parentage registration is not about suspicion. It is about certainty, dignity, and responsibility. It is about building a Ghana where no father carries a burden that is not his, where no child grows up questioning the foundation of who they are, and where our health and justice systems rest on a foundation of accuracy.
That is the Ghana we owe to the next generation.
God bless our homeland, Ghana.
Rustum Gameli Senorgbe
Broadcast Journalist & Development Enthusiast.
Volta Premier FM (Ho Technical University)
The views expressed are personal and do not reflect the position of any institution.
DISCLAIMER: The Views, Comments, Opinions, Contributions and Statements made by Readers and Contributors on this platform do not necessarily represent the views or policy of Multimedia Group Limited.
DISCLAIMER: The Views, Comments, Opinions, Contributions and Statements made by Readers and Contributors on this platform do not necessarily represent the views or policy of Multimedia Group Limited.
Source: www.myjoyonline.com