Right to breed?

Great Debates
61

It has never been suggested that this be a punishment for criminals. That would be a different proposal. While in theory I would be more comfortable with sterilizing child molestors and rapists, I cringe when I imagine the real world applications. You don’t have to look to far to see governents who manufacture charges against their people.

In fact, we have to look no further than the good old USA. Look at what is happening with the LA police. They are now throwing out hundreds and possibly thousands of convictions becuase the police lied, planted evidence and otherwise caused people to be jailed for crimes they were innocent of.

Allowing the government to control reproduction scares me. Anyway, this thread has never been about preventing convicted criminals from having children. It is about YOU having to ask for persmission to have children. It is about ME having to ask for permission to have children. It is about EVERY law abiding citizen asking for permission from our government to do something that is already their right to do.

Andros…

:: Breathing Deeply ::

:: Exhaling ::
ahhh…

Good advice is good advice no matter who it comes from. Hopefully with my head a little less cluttered with emotion, here is my reply:

How so? Are you going to claim that since you pay taxes and taxes help support welfare that therefore you have the right to “approve” of any future children? Who asked you to be responsible for my child? I reject out of hand that we have any civic responsibility to support people on welfare. This may be a burden you see as just, but I see it as another infringement on my rights.

Nope. Partly, but not entirely. I see this as a stepping stne to be abused very badly by a government. I also have Religous objections to this. I was not trying to insult you with the comments on whether or not you believe in a god. I was only trying to point out that there was a large gulf between what an atheist, agnostic, Muslim, Jew or a Christian would find acceptable.

You say that your beliefs are not my business, but yet you want to impose a test on me to judge whether or not I am fit to have children. I would offer that if you want to hold yourself up as a judge for the Country, then yes, your personal beliefs are relevant.

This is a little off topic, but all I could think about is a pro-Second Amendment person saying…

“What part of Infringed don’t you understand… :)”

Anyway, we the people does not mean that a majority justifies anything. I have seen you say this, so I won’t re-argue this point. However, you still seem to push to take away an individuals right for no reason.

You have a misunderstanding of our Constitution. You also do not understand what a Right is, or where it comes from. Allow me to digress from the OP and address this tangent for a moment.

A dictionary means nothing when defining what a right is. Let’s check out the Declaration of Independence.

A right exists. It is not granted. You can ignore it or acknowledge it, but that does not change the fact that it exists.

Let’s check in with the Preamble to the Bill of Rights.

You see, the Constitution establishes and LIMITS the government. it does not establish the government and then tell us what we can do. The Bill of Rights is ENUMERATING our rights, not granted them. It is only specifically acknowledging them.

Let’s take a look at the 9th Amendment

I just want to make it clear that we are given NO RIGHTS by our government. The government exists to protect out rights, not give them.
I hope you have a relaxing weekend. If I got a little bent out of shape, it was probably because this tic really pissed me off. I didn’t mean to turn it into a personal attack.

62

[[Citizens in a democracy often vote for laws that are potentially oppressive when the ‘good guys’ are in office, because they trust them not to abuse the power. They never consider what might happen if the ‘bad guys’ get elected.]]

Bad guys could get elected and make any good laws bad, or enact more bad laws. I don’t think this is sound reasoning, though I often hear it.

As for China, I believe they are making the decision to survive. Does anyone realize the kinds of population problems they endure, and does anyone here know what it’s like to live without many of the amenities we have? They will never progress, and indeed may all end up starving if they don’t do something drastic about their population. It is not up to us to instruct them in birth control policies.

Re: adoption… Some of you are appalled at the idea of enacting laws requiring parenting classes or enforced birth control for women who give birth to multiple children who are born suffering from drug withdrawal or with congenital syphilis. I hope that you are strongly active, then, in fighting the laws that make it so difficult and restrictive to adopt. After all, all adoptive parents INTEND to have their children and raise them. Only a little more than half of biological parents can say that.

63

First of all, the ‘bad guys’ can’t change any law they want, because of a little thing called the constitution. My point was that if you want to scrap the constitution in favor of majority rule, then you’d better hope that the majority never votes for the bad guys. For instance, like they did when they elected the Nazi party in Germany in a democratic election.

As for China, I don’t suppose you know that their experiment in oppressing their citizens made NO DIFFERENCE? The birthrate in China has dropped, at almost exactly the same rate as it has dropped in all the eastern countries, including all the ones that don’t stomp all over their citizen’s rights. India’s birthrate, for instance, dropped by exactly the same amount as China’s.

64

Quote:

“We have postulated a hypothetical safe, reversible, effective birth control mechanism for men, cher. Yes, I KNOW it doesn’t exist at this time. Use your imagination. PRETEND we had such a thing. THINK!”

I believe that everyone who has replied to your thread has been doing at least as much thinking as you. It’s complicated, because your propositions keep changing as someone addresses the problems. For example, you and Andros brought up Norplant, I and others addressed the essential sexism in that proposal and now the proposal changes.

I think the last thing I have to say about this is that it fails as a thought experiment because at least one of the premises is not only false, it is impossible: There is no way that unbiased criteria for “good” parenting could be created because it is not in human nature to be unbiased. If we could make such vast sweeping changes in America that racism, sexism, ageism, homophobia, religious bias, and economic bias could be eliminated, then we probably wouldn’t need the program you have proposed. But until those biases are eliminated, then any parenting criteria created is doomed to reflect them.

Secondly, sterilizing people (however “humanely” or reversibly) against their will is wrong, fundamentally, because it punishes people for crimes they have not committed. Not to mention that the practical result would be a black market in the reversing process, similar to the former market in illegal abortions. You can bet your life that there wouldn’t be very many forcibly sterilized rich people, either, just as their weren’t very many more powerful families in China that were held to the one child policy.

Now, as a concession to you, I think that if your magic sterilization process were possible, it might humanely be used as an option for sentencing those already convicted of abuse. It could be used as an incentive for them to go through rehabilitation programs that would allow them to “earn” their children back, while preventing more from being born. Alternatively, with harder cases, it could be used as the price of freedom–get sterilized or stay incarcerated. However, sterilization isn’t going to prevent child molestation or child abuse. It just prevents more children from being born to habitual abusers.

I hesitate even in this, though, because, again it would require superhuman discretion on the parts of judges to administer it fairly.

Okay, I’ll stop now. I think you will get more out of this, though, if you will quit accusing people of not understanding your thought experiment and acutally consider our responses. It is just possible that some of your premises need work. Even a thought experiment has to take reality into account.

65

My take on this is that nothing matters but the children. They have no choice. They do not (and cannot) consent. They are not volunteers.

I believe in letting people take whatever risks they want to, including the risk of pregnancy whenever they screw, but having taken them on, I believe in holding them responsible for the results. I believe that it would benefit society if irresponsiblity were a crime. I don’t think you can preempt an irresponsible act, but I damn sure think you can punish one.

I also do not support forcing people, who are doing nothing more than minding their own business and trying to live their own lives, into subsidising the irresponsibility or bad fortune of others. Those who lament that our society would not voluntarily support charity for genuine cases of misfortune, I think, try to have it both ways. I think they don’t realize that the very guarantees they want for mitigating risks incentivize the risks. I think that if the society were of the mind set, “Well, I know that if I blow this, no one will bail me out,” it would be a whole different world from the society that is of the mind set, “Well, if I screw this up, somebody will help me.”

Everything about it is wrong. The expectation of help for unilateral decisions. The needlessness for caution or deliberation. The elimination of failure as an option.

I see the parent child relation as a sort of unary contract. I know of nothing more coercive than producing a child. For this coercion, the parent is in a debt. No, the parents don’t owe anything to society. But they owe something to the kids. And I believe they owe it until the children are adults.

I think responsible parenting ought to be enforced. The criterion to determine whether parents are fit, it seems to me is whether they are securing the rights of their children. If their children are not being abused or neglected, if they are being fed, clothed, and housed, if they are not misled, if they are protected from harm, then the parents don’t owe anything to society.

Thus, a farmer might raise his son by teaching him to farm. The son, when he is old enought to think about such things, might eventually say, “Father, Mother, I don’t want to be a farmer. I want to be a musician.” And then the father and the mother must decide whether or not they want to fulfill their son’s wish. Such a thing is not a matter for anyone but the parents to decide. The child, when he is an adult, may provide his own education and make his own choices if he does not like what his parents did for him.

I despise the arbitrary criteria that nanny government uses in interfering with families because it is invariably stupid. These busy-body bureaucracies apply cookie-cutter tests to a very atomistic enterprise. Every family has a different set of needs. Sure, some families share some of the same needs as other families, but families are not paper doll cutouts, nor are they society’s drones.

You can grow up in abject poverty, as I did, and yet remember your childhood as the happiest time in your life. You can remember the warmth and the love. The things you remember most fondly are things that The State cannot measure.

66

I have a hypothetical question.

(For sake of getting this question answered, I will temporarily believe that there is a safe, 100% effective, reversible method of birth control that works for men and women.)

Two ordinary Catholics meet, fall in love, and marry. They want a family. They fail the parenting tests. They are anti-birth-control. What do we do to them? Do we forcibly give them Norplant, to prevent them from conceiving? They’re not bad people–they just didn’t quite meet the standards. They can meet the standards, given a bit of time. But what to do in the meantime?

Just a funky hypothetical. I myself have no answer to this one.

Changing my sig, because Wally said to, and I really like Wally, and I’ll do anything he says, anytime he says to.

67

I only got past Freedom’s post disagreeing with me…

Freedom, what don’t you agree with? You have left me confused and baffled…please tell me where I am wrong…

68

:slight_smile:

I only thought the word “ridiculous” was a bad choice.

It sort of couches one of the most reprehensible acts that a government can do in words that make it sound laughable. We should be crying at a proposal like this.

In all honesty, I completely agree with you. I was just spring boarding off your post. Sorry about the confusion.

69

Andros said:

K, then what do we base good parenting on? This only opens the doors to injecting any class of morals in our society. There is no way that anything like this can be done.

BTW, my parents started off as good parents and became worse throughout the years. My mother was a good mom, but later her life became hell and she made my life hell for it. So what’s to be done about this scenario? Cool then I can sue the makers of this test and the government for enforcing it because they OBVIOUSLY missed something in “The Good Parent” test.

Oh and for what it’s worth, I am adopted and they figured I was going to a good home…

70

cher3,

Well said…better than me :slight_smile:

71

Thanks for clarifying that for me Freedom…

72

The holocaust was ridiculous.
That is how I see using the word “ridiculous” in here. I wasn’t trying to correct you, I was only trying to raise the bar of how wrong this plan was.

73

[[I believe in letting people take whatever risks they want to, including the risk of pregnancy whenever they screw, but having taken them on, I believe in holding them responsible for the results. I believe that it would benefit society if irresponsiblity were a crime. I don’t think you can preempt an irresponsible act, but I damn sure think you can punish one.]]

By making em raise the kids? Yeah, that’ll teach em. I can’t think of a better punishment.
Jill
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74

Felice,

Just continuing on the thought experiment theme…all children are reversibly sterilized at birth by the implantion of nanomachines and then would need to “make the grade” in order to be “fertility re-enabled.”

Establishing the criteria for a “good” proto-parent seems unreachable. I’m wondering if it would be easier to describe the “bad” mile markers. Could there be any automatic “parent disqualifiers?” Such as:

Certain genetic disorders (would a diabetic be “okayed” while a Huntington’s carrier is blackballed?)

Are violent felons automatically disqualified? How about non-violent felons?

And, could the nanomachines be reactivated if they abused any children they did have, developed alcoholism, displayed Munchhausen’s Syndrome, or voted Reform party?

Rather than trying to qualify what is “good,” could there be a minimum threshold established where everything below which is automatically “bad”?

I know…establishing “bad” automatically establishes “good” in the other direction. What I’m asking is: Are there any circumstances where the capability to have children should be denied automatically?

75

How about if a parent advocates an Orwelian system to control reproduction in the world?

Could we stop them from breeding to prevent them from passing on the insanity?

76

I don’t think poor Felice intended quite so sinister an outcome from the question in her OP. :slight_smile: Actually, all she mentioned was a mandatory course in parenting, right?

How about this?: What should the course include and how would you determine whether an applicant passed or failed?

77

No course. No pass or fail.

However I do think that High School should have mandatory education on the Constitution and the definition of:

Freedom
Liberty
Privacy
Family
Personal Choice
Personal Responsibility.
I do not want anyone in my life. It is impossible to have 100% independence when you live in a country with this many people, but a proposal like this purely totalitarian.

78

I don’t mean to go off subject here, but don’t schools already have such courses as the ones you’ve listed? I didn’t go to school here.

And would it be a terrible idea to have a child development class or some such at, say, high school level? Or do they already?

79

Hi, I’m new to this site, but this topic caught my attention.

I find the idea of people deciding what constitutes the right parent very disturbing. The important question IS what is the description of this parent, and that should not be sidestepped. The fact is that any definition of what makes a good parent will ultimately find exceptions to that rule that are working out well. For example lets take the statement, “Every good parent wants what is best for their child”. We can all agree to that, but we may disagree as to what this means in practice. I feel that brestfeeding is the best way to feed a child (and I have the scientific proof to back me :)), however many parents are doing a good job of parenting even if their method of feeding is from my and the American Academy of pediatricians POV is “not the best”.

Also by taking away a child from someone who fails the “test” you are denying them the best teacher of how to parent…their child.

I didn’t think I would be a good parent, I thought I probably would not ahve children as my parents were abusive and I worried that I would be unable to shake off their example. However my children’s births kicked in some powerful hormones, this and my ability to question my parents method of bringing me up, allowed me to find and begin listening to that deep buried :wink: maternal instinct and I know I’m a far better Mum than I ever thought I would be.

I’d contend with you that what we say or feel we will parent like is very rarely what we actually end up doing, and that the ONLY way to determine a good parent is to allow them to parent and see if they can… it would be nice if you could tell before and prevent children suffering, but it just wouldn’t work…

80

(‘Good’ to be defined at a later date and time.)

EEK!

Every time I hear …to be defined later …
I cringe.

Let’s set up an obviously ‘good’ law.
“All children must receive an adequate level of education before leaving school”

Now ten, twenty or thirty years down the line, someone ELSE can define adequate.

NEVER allow secondary legislation.
Define EVERYTHING important upfront.

sl