From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Sun Aug 26 2001 - 11:08:24 MDT
Zero Powers wrote:
>
> >From: "J. R. Molloy" <jr@shasta.com>
>
> >From: "Zero Powers" <zero_powers@hotmail.com>
> > > The simple fact is that a welfare mother is not likely to be able to
> >afford
> > > to pay *anything* to educate her children.
> >
> >I think deadbeats who bring children into the world without the means to
> >adequately support them should be punished for this unconscionable abuse
> >and
> >negligence, and the children should be placed with more responsible
> >parents.
>
> A few questions:
>
> What of the inalienable right to procreate? Should that be limited only to
> the fiscally fit? Should that right be denied to the poor? If so, why
> don't we just sterilize everyone living in poverty until they can prove that
> they are financially responsible enough to have the procedure reversed?
> Sound a little Orwellian?
Since the 'inalienable right to procreate' is in there with the vast
majority of our history of surviving as brutes in the wild, where an
inability to support and defend your family ended up with them being
eaten or dead (or both, not necessarily in that order), its rather
obvious that rights posess as an inalienable component of them the
responsibility on the individual to use them maturely and rationally.
Children are not objects, they are people with their own real or
potential rights, and no parent should be able to place their own
desires ahead of their child's rights.
>
> Do you think children would be better off in foster care than with their own
> loving parents, simply because the parents are poor? Have you ever known
> anyone raised in the foster care system?
I've known a number of such children. The problem with this argument is
that it is an argument of exclusion: you can't, by definition, know as
many kids who were in highly abusive households and were never removed,
because they generally are killed off at a far higher rate than those
who are removed and placed in foster care. So the question to ask is: is
being in foster care with unloving parents better for the child than
being dead from the 'care' of abusive parents?
As a person who survived an abusive childhood, I have to side with
foster care. We got off rather lightly. Fortunately my parents were not
addicts or anything like that and got into counseling, and we have a
fine relationship today. I read in the papers of too many incidents of
self involved parents killing their kids left and right, from shaking,
drowning, dropping, suffocation, etc. and the justice system goes too
lightly on too many of these people, especially if they are teenagers.
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