This, quite simply, is not a right. Going further, this has nothing to do with the concurrent thread about gay couples subverting nature with technology in order to conceive. What I am getting at is the pervasive misconception that, even if physically and naturally possible, a person has the right to conceive and raise a child.
I attended a dinner a few evenings ago, consisting of six couples, all highly educated and all working in responsible positions in their various fields. Cumulatively, there were more advanced degrees at the table than there were guests, and it occurred to me that not one of these couples had children. An odd bit of social commentary, perhaps, but if the most educated segment of our population is choosing not to have children, what does this mean for the next generation?
Addressing the problem specifically, it seems like a mistake to allow someone to have a child if they are not capable of supporting that child from birth through to the point in time at which the child can support him/her self, from a financial perspective.
I see a few possible solutions here:
Impose mandatory birth control for welfare recipients. This would ensure that no child is brought into a family that is incapable of sustaining itself, let alone a child.
Provided that the ability to support a child financially is demonstrated, there should be some sort of mandatory skill-testing question that has to be answered correctly, in order to prove that the prospective parent is mentally adept enough to be permitted to raise a child.
Finally, given the advances in mapping the human genome with respect to identifying those genes responsible for known diseases, the prospective parents’ DNA should be examined to identify high probabilities of having children with such afflictions, and where such probabiliy is extreme, the right to conceive should be outright denied.
And when the birth control fails, as it sometimes does, do you require mandatory abortions? How do you differentiate between accidental failures and deliberate ones? What about families who already have children and fall on hard times, necessitating welfare help? Will they be required to hand over their kids to the state until they’re financially solvent?
Who will write this test and what, precisely, will it test? Will an all-encompassing knowledge of, say, the mating rituals of cockroaches compensate for an inability to correctly sort laundry?
Who will pay for such extensive testing, and who will see that it is undergone before conception occurs? Do you plan on running around, peeking in people’s bedrooms, and asking for their papers before they’re allowed to have sex?
So, in short, my comment would be–no way, no how would this, could this work.
I think there were some folks in Europe in the early part of the last century who wanted to try this. Most people today do not remember those people kindly.
Since ethnic and racial minorities are more likely to be on welfare, this would inevitably be denounced as racist, in effect if not in intention.
We’re having enough trouble with testing standards for schools, setting standards for having children would be a bureacratic and political nightmare.
The problem is that choosing some people to have children and forbidding others, is basicly eugenics- attempting to promote someone’s idea of what constitutes “desirable” features. I think the strongest birth-prevention feature is free-market economics: whether you can literally afford to have children. Ironically, the example given in the OP was of people who had a choice between paying for an extremely expensive education, or raising children, and chose the former.
While I have no philosophical problem with eliminating laws that actively promote or subsidize reproduction–e.g., child tax credits and such in the tax code–the idea that the government would determine who could have children and in what circumstances is repugnant to me. You might as well legislate who gets access to oxygen.
My mother’s brother (also known as my uncle) was born with some sort of mix of autism, epilepsy, and such. He grew up to get a 3’ X 3’ X 3’ ugly-ass leach beast thingy that knew she could depend on the government to keep her fed if she married him–and of course he is not bright enough to have known better.
They then proceeded to have three children, all three of whom have some mix of autism, epilepsy, and such.
Two of my dad’s brothers were druggies and alcoholics for most of their life, as were their wives. Both of their oldest daughters ended up becoming alcoholic druggies, running away to get knocked up by some 40 year old dude when they were around 14 or 15. What further ensued for one of them we are not sure, the other one had the baby, almost ended up killing it out of neglect and one of her boyfriends throwing it down on concrete and cracking its head. Since, the government has taken her child away–though I believe that I have heard she was tring to clean her act up so she could get her baby back.
The younger daughter of one of these families however has grown up just fine–though she hates her parents and will not admit the existence of her sister.
So, overall, eugenics really does seem like it does have its place in the world. I just don’t see it ever happening, even though if worked at one could probably come up with a system that was (if never perfect) truly beneficient to society, and not just some sort of racist weapon or whatever.
But as said, it will never happen due to political correctness.