Is sometimes reasonable to believe there is only one possibility
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Maury
easjr1991 — 10 years ago(June 16, 2015 03:18 PM)
This is something that always happens on the show. A woman comes on. She says that a man is the father. The man says he is not the father. The DNA test proves that he is not the father. The woman comes back with another man. We often criticize such women (if they are telling the truth and they are not making up fake stories to get a free trip and be on TV) saying that they cannot be so sure of who the father is if they slept with more than one man.
But sometimes there is a reason why a woman who sleeps with more than one man is sure that one of them is the father.
Let's say that Alice has sex with Bob on January 1. She then has with Rob on January 8. On February 1, she goes to her OB-GYN, and learns that she is pregnant. The OB-GYN determines that she had conceived between January 7 and 10. Since Alice had sex on Janaury 8, she assumes that Rob is the father. She calls Rob and tells him. But when Rob learns that she slept with Bob a week earlier, he begins to deny paternity. Alice is angry that Rob would do such a thing because she knows she is the father, citing her OB-GYN saying that she got pregnant around the time they slept together. When the baby is born, both Bob and Rob are given a DNA test. Rob is not the father, much to the shock of Alice. Bob is the father. Her OB-GYN explains that a woman will not always get pregnant immediately after having sex. Sperm can live for up to a week before ovulation. An egg can only live for 1-2 days. Since Alice had sex with Bob first, and had Rob around the time she ovulated and conceived, it would have been impossible for Rob to be the father because Bob's sperm had already made it to Alice's Fallopian tube.
I've known that pregnancy does not happen immediately and that sperm can live for days before ovulation, for quite some time. Nonetheless, even with this knowledge, I've imagined that it's reasonable to be confused if there's only two possible fathers. But when it comes to three or more, you should not make any judgements until the DNA results come back.