How many rights should parents have when it comes to their children?
In many an abortion thread, we can see that many people believe women should have the right to terminate a fetus. Now, much of that justification is based on the fetus’s dependence on the mother’s physical body, but some is also based on her right not to be a mother. For example, in this thread, a hypothetical is proposed that would allow an “abortion” not to end with the death of the fetus. When asked if the mother should still have the option to terminate the non-dependent on her body fetus, Blalron replied:
{Note, I’m not trying to single anyone out, just to provide cites of comments within the SDMB world so I don’t have to provide them later.)
In the Dutch euthanasia thread, it comes back up as some argue that the parents do have a right to decide to end their child’s suffering, with necessary caveats, such as Ca3799’s post:
In a Pit thread about God in education, Liberal says
In reply to Diogenes the Cynic’s statement that
So, where should the parents’ rights stop and where should the child’s rights begin? If someone argued for, say, Blalron’s stance and argued against Liberal’s, is that inconsistent? Say I am opposed to infant euthanasia because parents shouldn’t have the right to destroy a child’s life; now say I am also opposed to Dio’s argument that a kid has a fundamental right to an education despite the fact that parents would then have the right to destroy a child’s life*. Is that combination of positions defensible? If a parent should be allowed to kill a child, even given very extreme and rigid circumstances, how far should those rights extend? If I argue that a fetus and a newborn have the right never to be killed but their parents can raise them any way they choose, am I being inconsistent? How about if I say they may not strike their child but they are permitted to feed them Ho-Hos?
Education can be a matter of life-and-death, especially if we include as “education” things like sex-ed, or “don’t mix bleach and ammonia.” Education certainly affects quality of life, health, and possibly happiness.
There are a lot of apple and orange comparisons here. But I’ll stick to the most glaring to me: Euthanasia and end of life issues apply to all age groups and are not parental rights issues. No parent could legally choose to end the life of a healthy child or a child whose future quality of life wasn’t already severely compromised.
To say this is about “a parent’s right to kill a child” is like saying that deciding heroic measures shouldn’t be taken to save a terminally ill spouse is about “a wife’s right to kill her husband.” It’s absurd.
Did I say that they could? And in the thread that I linked to and quoted from explicitly, there are parental rights issues. Did you read the thread?
Why is it absurd? The parents want the right, in accordance with their doctors’ advice, to kill their newborns. Not to allow them to die, but to kill them. If the wife wanted to give her terminally ill spouse an overdose of morphine, we would say that she wants to kill him, not deny heroic measures. You can argue for or against euthanasia (I, for example, am for it under specific limited circumstances), but it’s unreasonable to deny that euthanasia involves killing people.
It definitely involves killing people (which shouldn’t be confused with “murder”, by the way). I think euthanasia is a concept whose time has come. Unfortunately, our christian-influenced society forbids us to do the practical, kind thing because they don’t want mortal man to “do god’s work”. I think a parent has the right to make this decision with the doctor, free from religious intervention. I don’t think the government has any right to interfere, either.
Education, on the other hand, is not quite as cut and dried as euthanasia. We live in a country where different types of education reap different benefits; all of which are needed by our society. We have farmers, teachers, doctors, auto mechanics, dancers, waitresses, and on and on. Who’s to say what a person needs to know in order to be an honest, contributing factor in our society. And furthermore, who says a person really HAS to contribute to society? If you have a piece of land and grow your own food, you have the right to drop out as completely as possible (that whole tax argument is another thread). I feel that a parent also has the right to determine, for the first 17 years of a kid’s life, what kind of education that child needs. I would no more expect Liberal to hand his kid over to someone he felt was incompetent than I would hand my kid over to the KKK.
Personally, I prefer my child get a well-rounded education that will help him get the most out of this big, wild world. Another person may see no use for that, and teach the kid how to gut a fish instead.
But what if you hand your kid over to the KKK. Does the state have the right to intervene then. What if you just don’t teach him at all, then can the state intervene. How about if you work him like a dog all day and teach him nothing but falsehoods to keep him at home. Or teach him patently selfdestructive behavior. I would say that the state guarentees the kid the right to a certain level of education, and that the parent is responsible for seeing how this is done whether by homeschooling or whatever, but that the state must make sure that the parents are living up to this responsibility.
As for euthanasia, again I see that more as an issue of the parents responsibility then of their rights over the child. Since the kid is unable to look after his own health care, the parents are responsible for making medical decisions for him. In countries where euthanasia is legal, this should be included. But again, the state also guarentees the children a certain degree of safety, so that if the parents abuse thier responsibility by denying the child needed healthcare, its the states porogative to step in.
No. People do this every day and it’s perfectly legal. Perfectly insane, as well, but there’s no law stating you can’t teach your child to be a hateful racist. The “three Rs” can be covered to the state’s satisfaction fairly easily. If I understand the home schooling system, each state has its own laws; some of them involve little to no supervision over the curriculum.
In theory, of course I believe you’re right. But then you get to the old, “Where do you draw the line?” argument. I knew plenty, and I mean PLENTY of kids who grew up with little to no parental supervision, who were not pushed to go to school, whose parents did not even know if the kids were home at night. None of them grew up to be axe murderers. You have to prove that what someone is doing is harmful. Some things are easier to prove than others. The state has some say-so, but certainly can’t ensure that what goes on in every family is the June and Ward Cleaver version of life in America.
Yeah, well my uncle decided he didn’t think vaccinations were such a hot idea and refused to have his kids vaccinated. No jailtime, no real repercussions. I don’t think the kids were even kept out of school. This is a while ago, but … I guess the point I’m making is that if you go toe-to-toe with some of the bureaucrats on some of these issues of personal freedom, you’d be surprised how often the little guy wins. Of course, blatant abuse is another thing altogether.
Bad example on my part, I was trying to be overly clever by running with your KKK quote, but I suppose that if you want to teach your kid to be a racist, thats all right.
Here I disagree. I think we should (and do, in theory) garantee some minimum of schooling, regardless of whether being uneducated is harmful or not. They’re citizens and the right to an education is guarenteed to them not just because it might be harmful not to get one but because its something we think all people should be entitled to, even if their parents don’t want it. Of course this is in theory, I’m sure many folks manage to slip through the cracks, but anti-truancy laws and such are supposed to guarentee all kids get an education.
Yeah, I think the state usually turns a blind eye to the few parents who refuse to give thier kids vaccinations since if 99.9% of kids get them, the risk of the few unvaccinated cases catching anything are pretty small. That said, if an epidemic broke out, I think the state does have the power to vaccinate regardless of the parents desires.
There may have been some glancing allusions to parental rights which I missed. Please cite. I didn’t see anyone say anything about parents having the “right” to kill their child, and overall this was about what is medically and ethically appropriate. The quote you provided was about who is the appropriate person to make those decisions - the state or the family/physician. Nothing about anyone’s “right” to do anything.
I’m not arguing the word “kill”, I’m arguing the word “right”. I’m saying that the fundamental argument is essentially about what measures are appropriate end of life measures, not whether the parents have the “right” to kill their child. What you’re doing by saying this is about the “right” to kill your child is purposely confusing the issue to force it to fit into the parallel you want to draw between abortion and euthanasia.
Look, If society doesn’t broadly agree that euthanasia is or may be appropriate in a given infant’s situation - guess what? It’s never going to happen, no matter how much the parents want it. That’s because they have no “right” to kill their child. Because the issue is not at all like the right to abortion or the right to decide your child’s education - which are actually parental rights issues. (apples and oranges, like I said).
Oh, I’m not arguing the logic behind it, I’m just saying that the laws are so vague, and differ so much from state to state, that they might as well not have any laws at all. You can “home school” a kid in some states and go virtually unmonitored.
Here’s some food for thought and/or discussion: Is there a law that says you have to register your child’s existence? What if you just had a whole bunch of downhome births on your massive ranch in Montana, and no one even knew you were pregnant and then all of a sudden there’s this flock of kids with no birth certificates. Are you bound by law to register them with the government? What if you just didn’t? Are they going to take your kids away and throw you in jail?