JACKSON, Miss. — Here’s the state’s plan to help discourage older men from having sex with teenagers: starting next month, doctors and midwives will have to take samples of umbilical cord blood from babies born to some girls under the age of 16.
Those samples will then be analyzed to help ID the dads through the state’s DNA database. If it’s found that there is a more than three-year age gap, those dads can be charged with statutory rape. Attorney General Jim Hood helped to draft the new law, and says he hopes it will deter men over the age of 21 from having sex with young girls. Opponents say it will not do much to reduce teen pregnancies, because few such pregnancies involve young girls and much older men.
