Around +5, +0.5 or so iirc.
Strongly Disagree.
My parents are well inside the gray area for this issue. I think that it was morally wrong for them to have me on account of moderate physical and very severe mental problems on my mom’s side, as well as my dad’s age, but it would be more wrong to have an outside entity forcing its perception of morality upon them. I guess I am the product of the lesser of two evils.
-6.something on both axes
Strongly disagree
I see two main underlying principles in this question:
To a lesser extent, it also touches on:
3. Should government be allowed to restrict the freedom of individuals to protect them from their own stupidity?
In cases 1 and 3, I think government should have these rights, but if and only if the restrictions are in reasonable proportion to the problems adressed, and if and only if the restrictions don’t place an unreasonable burden on individuals. So, I’m all for seatbelt laws, helmet laws, and laws about mandatory lifesaving equipment in boats. I’d support mandatory (and governement sponsored) prenatal care and health checks for children, as well. Not being allowed to have children comes in the “unreasonable burden on indiviuals” category, and thus fails.
As for 2, I want government to have both a right and a duty to restrict parents’ freedom if it’s neccessary to protect children from serious harm. So, obligatory education is fine. And in extreme cases government should be able to take the children from the parents, to be raised by others. But strong interference should only be allowed if we’re very, very sure that it’s in the child’s best interest. I admit I don’t know much about inheritable diseases, but I strongly doubt there are cases where outsiders can be really sure that a couple will have children who’d be better off if they’d never been born. That’s a decision I’m willing to let the parents take, but I’m not willing to give it to the government.
In one kind of situation, I’d say government has a right - even a duty - to prevent someone from procreating. It’s the situation Pyrrhonist described, ie. people who’re so mentally retarded that they can’t make this kind of descicions for themselves. I’ll also support birth control for such people if they are likely to have completely healthy children. The case Lissa described is one where I might support forced birth control. It would be cruel to allow someone who is mentally the equivalent of a child to go through the physical burden of pregnancy and birth, and then the mental suffering of not being allowed to raise a wanted child. And it would be cruel to the child to let it be raised by seriously retarded parents.
My stance in this issue has nothing to do with expenses, though. My tax money is wasted in lots of ways, and I’m not willing to restrict someone’s freedom that drastically just to save a tiny fraction of a percent on some health and welfare budgets.
<veering off on a somewhat related tangent>
If I read John Mace, xtisme, and Lissa correctly, you see a significant difference between situations/countries where the costs of raising a disabled child is covered (mainly) by tax money, and situations/countries where it’s covered in other ways. Is that right?
I don’t see this difference as important at all. A seriously disabled person will cost society something. Taxes are merely one way of distributing the expenses, but even if you do away with taxes, the costs don’t disappear. If there’s health insurance, the cost will be covered by the other insured people. If there’s little or no welfare, society will carry the cost partly by having disabled persons living under bridges, begging on the streets, committing crimes, and partly by family members taking care of them (thus being less able to contribute to other aspects of society).
7.15/-2.15
Disagree.
Ought not: yes. Prohibited from: no.
Ought to be able to demand society help them conceive and raise children where they’re unable due to entirely foreseeable problems relating to their disability: no.
Well, here we go again - the moment something is paid for by taxation everyone seemingly wants a say on a case by case basis, from which roads get repaired to which people get to have a baby. The idea of democratically electing a government to govern seems to be curiously old-fashioned in these parts.
Like I said, anyone can have a seriously disabled child. Those advocating either ‘should not’ or ‘should not be allowed’ seem to be appealing to some notional probabilistic threshold above which the risk is considered too great, and furthermore assuming that the person with the disability will simply not secure employment necessary to raise a child (disabled or not) without said taxation. This, I feel, is outright discrimination. We might all, through our genes, negligence or outright bad luck, bear and raise a child who is somehow a drain on the state. I might just as well object to your reproduction because your brother went to prison.
John:
Again, we must balance the costs and benefits to society of each policy. I would say that wearing a seatbelt or helmet is a mere inconvenience, unworthy of a petulant libertarian tantrum, which prevents a great deal of death, suffering and unnecessary medical care. Disallowing reproduction to the disabled is not a mere inconvenience for them, it is a drastic and life-changing punishment for something that might engender more medical care and suffering. As for sibling/parent-child marriage, I always thought the genetic risks were vastly overblown - I always thought that the mental health of the spouses rather than the physical health of the offspring was the greater concern. Be that as it may, so long as genuine informed consent was present, I’m not too bothered - this debate being pretty peripheral to #31 of course.
Economic Left/Right: -4.50
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.67,
I Strongly Disagree. This was one of the questions that required the least thought for me. Even if the “seriously disabled people” is more clearly defined, my answer doesn’t change. It’s a large invasion of privacy, and though it’s a bit far-fetched, I don’t like the idea of the government practicing eugenics on the people it’s supposed to represent. Barring specific types of people from reproducing shouldn’t be allowed.
I’ll allow the government into the bedroom, so to speak, in the following circumstances: rape, violence/abuse, statutory rape (the laws we have about it have problems but I think it has to exist in some form), incest and polygamy. I think that’s everything, anyway. I just see no good reason to legalize the last two, and I don’t see the conflict with the position I’ve taken, which is that the wrong in this case is barring specific types of people from reproducing.
Shouldn’t the burden be on you to justify its illegality, since they do not harm third parties? (I am against polygamy, as well, due to legal and tax complications, not due to social inertia.)
For me, no, not really. As I said, I firmly support social welfare programs. The potential cost to the system was just a small factor in this issue I thought worth mentioning. Even if the potential parents were rich, I’d still have the same basic concerns-- the human suffering potentially involved.
It’s certainly true that reproductive rights are a much beigger deal than the right to “not wear a seatbelt”. But you can draw the two much closer together that you might think. Although traffic accidents are a major cause of death and injury, the odds of being killed or severly disabled in an accident are still quite small. There are certain genetic defects that are highly probable and easily preventable. A perfect example is Tay-Sachs Disease. Parents who are both carriers have a 1 in 4 chance of having a child who will have the disease and die in early childhood. In vitro fertilization techniques can screen for the defect. At what point does it become “too inconvenient” to require that parents, if they know they are carriers, use this screening technique? They are not being asked to forego reproduction.
Aye, there’s the rub - I would actually advocate some coercive element in asking sufferers of a particularly risky condition to seriously consider embryo screening (or, at least, provide a portion of carrot to go with such a stick.)
In some cases they would be. The screening technique requires that “defective” embryoes be discarded. Many people would consider that to be murder, and would have to refrain from using any such screeing method.
And just FYI, I’m definitely playing devil’s advocate here. But I do want to point out that this issue is much more complex than most posters are implying. And as technology improves, it will be MUCH more of an issue.
I know John - indeed the last two paragraphs of my OP addressed pretty much what you diabolically advocate so. (I would advocate ignoring the entreaties of those who consider it ‘murder’ just as I would ignore similar suggestions to ban antiseptic.)
Debaser picks Strongly Disagree.
One interesting take on this would be the serious inheritable disability of sterility. I have heard the argument made (IRL, not on the SDMB) that all of the fertility treatments and IVF procedures are a bad thing. Some people feel that if you aren’t able to have children naturally, then you shouldn’t be having them at all. Maybe this could be a subject for debate?
I, of course, do not agree with this philosophy. To me, the same logic could be used to not cure cancer or AIDS.
This all strikes a close chord with me. My step brother and his wife are both parapalegic due to seperate accidents which occured in thier youth, before they met. They used modern science and medicine to have a baby, born of his sperm and her egg, carried to term by her womb. They certainly have serious disabilities which prevent them from attempting to have a baby naturally. But, so what? I don’t see the point of modern science and medicine if we don’t use it to improve our lives.
My nephew is a very healthy seven year old boy now.
Oh, and welcome back, SentientMeat. I’m glad to see this string of threads will continue.
I think the current reasons for their illegality are good enough, and I was attempting to deal with the law as it exists now.
i personally think that mandatory seat belt laws are much more defensible than helmet laws or government-enforced sterility. while i don’t buy SentientMeat’s inconvenience argument (for the same reason he doesn’t buy that disabled people with inheritable conditions shouldn’t reproduce–the line drawn must inherently be arbitrary), i do think there are reasons for seat belt laws that go beyond the safety of the person wearing the restraint.
a friend of mine got into an accident about a year ago. he was hit from the side, and a seatbelt was not needed to prevent him from going through the windshield. the force of the accident, though not at a terribly high speed, was enough to cause some CDs that were on his seat to fly into the side window, breaking it. had he not been wearing a seat belt, he would’ve likely been thrown from the driver’s seat and been completely unable to control his car. he was wearing one, and he was able to stop the car before charging off the road and doing more damage.
basically, i think as long as one can demonstrate that when someone wears a seat belt, there is a decreased chance of harm to others, mandatory seat belt laws are justifiable. laws that prevent someone from harming someone else are always justifiable when the burden placed on the individual is reasonably tailored to the possible and preventable risk involved, much like drunk-driving laws are easily defensible in even a libertarian society.
My husband has a convertible and when I ride in it I occasionally get struck by flying rocks. Usually they are quite small, but it happens.
How often do motorcyclists get hit by rocks, how often are they impaired or distracted by it, and how often would a helmet prevent that? I’m just curious.
I don’t think anyone said they personally want to sit in judgement on each and every case. Does not your conception of democratically elected government allow for democratically supported laws?
I’m not sure this is strictly true. I agree that many disabilities are hard to predict. But the question specifically targets inheritable disabilities. Is it really true that everyone has an equal likelyhood of producing children with these disabilities?
This is closer.
But these are not all equally likely, nor do they represent equal amounts of culpability. Are you really saying that treating a person who steals on purpose differently than a person who accidentally shoplifts is discrimination?
Except that prison is not an inheritable condition. So, it clearly does not apply to the question at hand. I understand that this objection was more likely aimed at the “able to provide for” argument (which you may note I did not address). But I think this misses the point of the question. It does not say that we should only allow people to reporduce who can prove they will be capable of providing for the offspring. It simply says that we might want to select against inheritable disabilities.
Ok, but here you are the one drawing a line at some probabilistic level. Your earlier post seemed to suggest that this is discrimination. Perhaps you were conflating this and the “provide for” argument?
Just so you can’t say that I have forgotten our long running morality debate:
I thought we were concerned with medically provable / observable suffering as the standard. Now you are saying that denial of the opportunity to parent qualifies? At the expense of demonstrably medical suffering? Do you still not see how suffering is useless standard for building moral systems? Your don’t even be able to use it in a consistent fashion, and you’ve definately come the closest that I’ve seen.
I said that anyone can, *ie.*the probability is non-zero (including the non-zero probability of a screening producing an erroneous response through incompetence). It may well be very small compared to the notional threshold.
I am saying that denying parenthood only to those who already have a disability is discriminatory. Again, I don’t know where you see any espousal of “equal likelihood” in my position.
Predeliction towards criminality may have some inheritable element (at least insofar as parental neglectfulness might also have some), but I agree that this is straying off my point; that targetting only certain people with a “should not (be allowed to) reproduce” is an arbitrary and quasi-eugenic game to play.
Screening embryos is not denying reprodction. As I said in my OP:
Useless? That, I feel, is an unnecessarily overstated and emotive descriptor. We must all find the morality we think most reasonable given that gray areas are so easily contrived in such a complex consideration.
Well, I strive for consistency, and note that I am the one who is putting his head above the parapet here - it is so much easier to attack another’s proposal than to defend one’s own, especially in such a hellishly difficult field. Alternative moralities simply seem to me to require some indifference towards suffering which I find abhorrent (although I accept that suffering will never be eradicated and its definition requires some arbitrary threshold to be agreed upon).
I’m going to take the position of someone who agrees with the proposal. I would like to note, that I do not, in fact, endorse any such proposal. But in the interest of debate, and in order to illuminate what I think are more important principles, I am going to try and take the other side.
Fair enough. You are not saying equal liklihood. But you do seem to be saying that the difference in liklihood is not important enough to warrant treating the situations differently. It seems like you are saying that since preventing known risk factors will not elliminate the risk, that addressing the risk factors is discriminatory. This seems too strong a conclusion.
Right, but I think you are confusing other things in this part of your analysis. The question specifically mentions inheritable disabilities. We are not talking about denying reproduction to those who have been injured in an accident, for instance. But those born with an elevated risk of producing disabled babies are another matter. I think there is something qualitatively different. I’m willing to agree that we would not want to include every disability with any inheritable risk at all.
But surely not in specifically limited cases. If we limit the cases we are discussing to those with serious chances of producing profoundly disabled babies, surely the arbitraryness is significantly reduced.
Think about your medically demostrable suffering standard. No matter what you do, you will not ever come up with a way to measure all suffering that you might consider suffering. Even if you could, you would still have to draw a line somewhere which would entail some form of arbitrariness. This issue is no different. That it “smacks of eugenics” is not a sufficient reason to discount it outright. Some level of disability, some level of inheritable risk, and some level of force could be agreed on, probably by most of us. For instance, if we knew that a particular couple had a 75% chance of producing profoundly disabled offspring you seem to indicate that embryo screening is not out of the question.
However, how would you enforce such screening? How would you prevent this couple from simply going off and reporducing at will? Would you not have to institute more henious controls on an inherently private activity in order to ensure that everyone screened their zygotes? And what would you do with such a couple who managed to evade whatever controls you erected?
As I indicated above, it would, however, require invasive laws to ensure that screening occured. Also, I would argue that sterilization does not deny reproduction except in the biological sense. Anyone so sterilized would still be elligible to adopt, for instance. Unless you want to argue that specific biological reproduction is far and away the most important aspect of parenting vis a vie suffering.
Just to be clear, I think this part of the discussion is much more interesting. But I don’t want to hijack this thread. I’m more than happy to stick to those portions of the “suffering” principle which specifically apply to the question in the OP. Let me know, and I’ll let you have the last word on these remaining questions.
Yes, but you always have to include that “genuine” measure in there. The problem with this is that people can genuinely suffer for all sorts of reasons which are not amenable to external remedies or even verification. As I said before, for instance, it is quite possible to imagine a particular psyche which would be so upset by paying high taxes that they might pass your suffering threshold. You suggested that this means they need psycological help.
Do you have any proof of this?
Agreed. But you wish to raise medically provable suffering to the level of an end in itself. That is to the ultimate arbitor of morallity. Suffereing is not useless in forming a complete moral system. It is, however, useless as a starting point. 
Agreed, again. And let me say that you are very very consistent indeed. You are also very brave, erudite, and well spoken about these beliefs. If our discussion could be decided on bravery alone, you would have won long ago.
Some do, some don’t. I understand entirly your desire to put suffering near the top of any moral system. I agree. I simply think it cannot go above certain other imperitives. Liberty and justice among them.