[jakimfett]

Given that before birth, it's the woman's body, and after birth it's the child's body being tested, and there is no clear medical case for paternity testing being a life-saving operation somehow...

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...a mandatory test puts serious amounts of potential harm in the hands of a field that historically (and as demonstrated by some of the regrettable opinions expressed in this conversation thread), completely ignores the rights and consent of a woman and child while discussing how men might feel or believe about said topics.

Relationships are complex things, and blanket legislation will never respect the full consent of the individuals involved. Give the mother freedom to request a pre-birth paternity test, and the child to request the results once they hit their teens, with confidential results.

Anything past that is a relationship issue (does your spouse / child feel safe telling you the truth?), and any form of mandatory testing pre-birth would very much violate the bodily consent of the mother. Post-birth, if it's not a medically necessary operation, which paternity is not, it waits for when the kid is old enough to understand consent.

Consent is not a debate. Consent is about functional boundary. In this case, it is simple:

Not your body? Not your choice.

Enable (their) choice instead of trying to control women and children's bodies, please.

[hackerfromthefu]

You seem to have missed the point, you mention that the mother and the child should have freedom to request a paternity test .. but in the vast majority of cases the mother knows, it's the father that does not know. In all cases the child is the mothers child, where the father can be tricked/defrauded into the most expensive cost they will ever bear for the rest of their life, on the basis of a lie.

This is very obvious, completely unaddressed in your comment, and the rest of your argument is probably in bad faith.