Planned changes to South Australia’s Family Law Act will demonise dads in the courts and deprive more children of their right to a mother and father, some men’s groups say.

More children would be murdered if Labor and the Greens got their way with a bill now being debated, Men’s Health Australia and Dads4Kids said.

Men’s Health Australia spokesman Greg Andresen said the bill would raise already high levels of fatherlessness to record levels with untold impact.

“Virtually every major social pathology has been linked to fatherlessness: violent crime, drug and alcohol abuse, truancy, teen pregnancy, suicide – all correlate more strongly to fatherlessness than to any other single factor,” Mr Andresen said in a statement on Friday.

“The majority of prisoners, juvenile detention inmates, high-school dropouts, pregnant teenagers, adolescent murderers and rapists all come from fatherless homes.”

Mr Andresen said he believed the bill in its current form would “increase child homicide rates”.

In NSW, child homicide dropped by almost 50 per cent after the introduction in 2006 of family laws that are soon to be reversed, he said.

Mr Andresen said the planned changes would give an open license to mothers who want to fabricate allegations of violence and abuse as a way of removing fathers from their children’s lives.

Dads4Kids founder Warwick Marsh said the changes would make family violence “mean anything you want it to mean”.

“In other words, if any man was to raise his voice at his wife, he could be charged with family violence and put in jail,” Mr Marsh said.

He is calling on people to contact their state MPs and ask them to reject the new Family Law Amendment Bill 2011.

Source: SA family law changes will 'demonise dads' (http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/8293538/sa-family-law-changes-will-demonise-dads)