The Ethics of States Raising Kids

Great Debates
1

From an article referenced in the OP of the other States Raising Kids thread:

[quote]
Trying to give troubled mothers an alternative to dumping their babies in trash bins and bathroom stalls, the Georgia House voted 153-15 Friday to allow women to leave newborns at a hospital.[/qute]

If this is what we’re reaping now, we must have planted one hellatious mystery seed from Pandora’s box.

Shall we give child molestors an alternative to kidnapping and murdering their prey by allowing them to molest children in state supported playgrounds?

This is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard of. I am reminded of a speech by Hillary Clinton, in which she mentioned a struggling single mother whose newborn infant had messed up her opportunity to finish her education, and then cited her as an example of why we need more federal assistance for unwed moms.

We’ve all gone crazy lately. Crazy crazy crazy crazy crazy.

2

So what’s your position, Libertarian. Do we prosecute the mother and then let the state raise the kid anyway? Put the mother and child in some kind of lockup? What?
This is a very difficult question. Most people truly care about children, and want what’s best for them. And I certainly don’t think anyone’s advocating this;
“Shall we give child molestors an alternative to kidnapping and murdering their prey by allowing them to molest children in state supported playgrounds?”
Peace,
mangeorge

I only know two things;
I know what I need to know
And
I know what I want to know
Mangeorge, 2000

3

Well, of course you should prosecute the mother. She’s a criminal, isn’t she? Well, at least she was a criminal, but that was before those Georgia nitwits made abandoning babies legal.

:rolleyes:

Rather than discourage irresponsible parenting, they are now giving people who are not criminally psychotic, and who otherwise would take on the responsibility they chose for themselves when they had sex, the state sanctioned option of abandoning their children! Keep an eye out for abandoned baby statistics in Georgia over the next few months.

4

But what about the statistics for dead abandoned babies? :mad:
Peace,
mangeorge

5

I imagine they will be unchanged. Why should a girl who pops out a baby in the bathroom at her prom rush it to the hospital to give it away.

And spare me how she might reason this or that. If she could reason, she wouldn’t have the dilemma.

6

I can see where a woman, faced with the choice between tossing a baby into a dumpster and facing murder charges or taking the baby to a hospital and walking away scott-free, might choose the latter. She would surely be aware of her alternatives before hand.
I guess we’ll see how it turns out in Georgia (and other states).
Peace,
mangeorge

7

I think that the thing she wants to get rid of, one way or the other, is a compelling indication that she has a poor track record of reasoning through her alternatives.

8

Let’s stipulate that a woman gets pregnant irresponsibly and without the necessary means to properly raise that child, either economically, intellectual and/or emotionally.

Regardless of how we treat the mother, is it conscionable to punish the child by mandating that it grow up in that deficient environment?

He’s the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armor, shouting ‘All Gods are Bastards!’

9

I’m confused here. Libertarian, if a mother doesn’t want her baby, what’s the solution here? Should the government force her to raise it? Surely you don’t agree with that position. So what should happen to the baby? I see a complaint, but I don’t see any proposed solution.

10

Lib, who the hell said this was any of your business? From what you’ve stated of the law, there’s no indication that you would be taxed for this, or that it would in any way infringe upon your rights as a peaceful, honest citizen to do what you like.

This law limits the authority of the state in circumstances where

a) no harm is done to a person or person’s property.

b) could conceivably prevent harm from being done to a child by a frantic person who cannot find a legitimate way to escape the realities of being responsible for a brand new human being.

There isn’t even anything in what you mentioned that makes the government responsible for the children. And while it is naive to assume that they wouldn’t, it just as easily could be left to the hospital to find a private adoption organization to place the child. The adoptive parents could then pay for the whatever costs the baby incurred to the hospital.

I’m not seeing a conflict with your stated values, Lib. While it’s unhappy that any child might be unwanted at its birth, it’s much, much unhappier that a parent could cause harm to their child because it’s unwanted. It sounds like this law is designed to force the state out of a very private, very individual decision.

11

Heck, no, Arnold! See, what happens is that peaceful, honest people step in and raise all those unwanted kids, so young mothers (irresponsible or no) can rest easy in the knowledge that all their peaceful, honest neighbors will help them out if they’re ever in a jam.

Meanwhile, here in the REAL world, so many people are abandoning babies to DIE that governments are, in desperation, decriminalizing the act of abandonment (IF the child is left in a safe place) in an attempt to save some of the children who might otherwise perish.

Libertarian has, as usual, grasped the wrong end of the stick: Instead of asking what SOCIETY (you know, all those peaceful, honest, volunteering people) should do to prevent the abysmal (and, apparently, growing) problem of abandoned children, he attacks the government for trying to save the lives of innocent kids. The irony, of course, is that the government first stuck its nose IN the problem by criminalizing the act of abandonment; by de-criminalizing it, the government is merely taking its nose back OUT. Hard to see how a Libertarian could find fault in that.

Jodi

Fiat Justitia

12

This is awful on so many levels I don’t even know where to start.

I guess the young men and women of Georgia no longer need to worry about the consequences of their actions. My usually reliable crystal ball sees a day not too many years from now with a large population of non-parented children. If you think welfare was bad . . . wait.

Headline news: One youth was questioned outside of George Washington Carver Memorial hostpital and is reported to having said:

“Hey ya’ll. Um . . . yeah it’s my fifth ‘un. I jus’ keep havin’ ‘em and leavin’ 'em here.”

“Miss, do you know what happens to your children.”

“Yeah, the state o’ Ge-or-ge-uh does somethin’ with 'em.”

“Did you know they make dog food out of them?”

“Naw, but it wouldn’t s’prise me none. I gotta’ git my hair bleached now. See ya’ll later. [smacking on chewing gum and smoking camel unfiltered]”

13

jodih, phouka, I agree with what you’re saying. However, I haven’t read the article that Libertarian is referencing, so I don’t know all the details. Maybe the Georgia House prevents hospitals from refusing abandoned children? (Though I can’t imagine a hospital doing that.) In that case, it would be government telling a private business what to do, which would offend a libertarian. I’m just speculating here. Maybe someone can find more details on the law.

inertia, I take it you’re disagreeing with the decriminalization of abandoning children? I don’t see however that the automatic consequence is larger numbers of abandoned children. There are already many ways of getting rid of an unwanted child. The decriminalization may however save the life of a baby whose parents are too callous or terrified to be able to think rationally on what to do with their offspring.

14

Inertia: I’ll repeat my point in different words.

Would forcing a child to be raised by an irresponsible parent be showing respect and consideration to that child’s well being? If not, to punish a child for his parents’ crime seems monstrous.

Are you and Lib saying that all adoption constitutes a criminal violation on the part of the biological parents? If not, under what circumstances does adoption not constitute a crime?

15

This issue was covered in a front page story of yesterday’s New York Times. The online copy is at www.nytimes.com/00/03/06/news/national/abandoned-infants.html
The law is already in effect in Texas, and 23 other states are considering some form of it.

16

According to the Times article linked by nebuli, the law has had no discernible effect in Texas. No babies have been abandoned in accordance with the new law. This would appear to be preliminary evidence for Libertarian’s claim that these are not rational people making rational choices.

I also have a problem with the fact that the parents abandoning the child face no consequences for their actions. The real crime here is not abandoning a child in a duffel bag, it’s abandoning the child at all. By making it easy to abandon a child with no fear of repercusion, do we not implicitly say that it is an acceptable thing to do?

gEEk

17

Is that a joke?

What the government should force her to do is pay for someone who is a responsible citizen to raise it. It should throw her into prison and force her to work to pay for her room and board and for the baby’s support.

If no one wants to raise her baby, then it should be handed over to a charitable orphanage. Yes, that’s godawful, but it’s a godawful thing caused by her. She left you very few options with her ineffibly irresponsible behavior. You can let her raise it (probably with other peoples’ money) and ruin its life. You can make other people raise it for her, people who had nothing to do with her despicable actions. You can do this, and you can do that, but the bottom line is that she handed you a plate full of shit to eat and destroyed the life of a child in the process.

She is a criminal among criminals. She gave less thought to having a child than she did to having breakfast. She might have stopped at McDonalds’ drive-thru on her way to the hospital.

Don’t you wag your finger at me, holding up the baby as the reason why the mother must be indulged. Stop her now before she cranks out another one. Make as public an example of her as possible. If madness like this isn’t stopped, your own children will bear the fruits of your harvest.

The solution is to enforce responsiblity as more than just a quaint notion. Hold people accountable for what they do. Unless she was raped, the mother assumed a risk when she was having sex. Pin her to the wall with it.

The baby is already a lost cause, inflicted on society be her. It might, by some miracle, grow up happy and loved, but she has already all but assured it a life of misery and rejection.

Punishing her to the fullest extent of the law as an example to others, and making sure she never does this again, is the best way you can show concern not only for the baby she abandoned, but for the untold number of future babies that now won’t be brought into an uncaring, impossible environment thanks to your taking this sort of thing seriously.

In other words, if you really care about those future babies, stop this madness before they are ever conceived. Show your concern for babies by letting them be born to responsible parents.

18

My response to this topic is not appropriate for this forum. Please see My post in the BBQ Pit for my response.
:mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:

19

Lib, I just responded to the Pit thread, but in a nutshell, I agree with you completely. We may have different ways of reaching that agreement, but I’m glad you feel that ensuring future generations are productive citizens is an appropriate function of government.

And to reiterate–if someone has a child, they MUST be held accountable for that child’s upbringing. If that means forcing them to work at gunpoint, so be it.

-andros-

20

Lib,

I am honestly shocked by some of the things you just posted. The only time a baby is a lost cause is if it’s already dead or irreparably ill/injured. To say anything else shows a callous disregard for human life that is directly in conflict with your stated values as a Christian.

I wonder how much you know of the cases and circumstances that would lead a woman to abandon her infant. Of all the news articles and analyses I’ve read, the vast majority of the cases involved women (or, in most cases, girls) pushed by emotional trauma or stress into lines of thinking that are considered irrational. Very, very few of them had any sort of malicious intent.

The law in question is not designed to let any particular person get away with a heinous crime. It’s designed to provide an escape route so that babies who might otherwise be harmed or abandoned are given up into circumstances that are safe, secure, and have a foreseeable future. Whether or not this actually works in the longterm remains to be seen. I think the statistics from the Texas law may be faulty, as I consider myself to be a well-read person and hadn’t heard of the law. There are probably many women who would be affected by this law and haven’t heard about it either.

Do I think that these women should be punished? I’m undecided, but whatever punishment would be appropriate only increases the chances that a woman in straits dire enough to consider abandoning her baby would do it in a manner that the child stands even less of a chance of being rescued before it comes to harm. Given a choice between an unpunished abandoner or a dead child, I’ll choose the unpunished abandoner every time.

I really am surprised by the vehemency you show, Lib. I don’t see any arguments adhering to Libertarian ethics. What I do see is a vicious over-emotional attack against people in circumstances you show little understanding of or sympathy for. I see you ready to sacrifice the lives of more than a few infants in order to satisfy your bloodlust for those wrongdoers. I see you clinging blindly to an ideal that has no grounding in reality in an apparent effort to show how morally superior you are to anyone else involved in this tragic situation.