From: Emlyn O'regan (oregan.emlyn@healthsolve.com.au)
Date: Sun May 12 2002 - 22:33:31 MDT
>
> YP Fun wrote (in regard to Lee's idea that parents should own their
children):
> His arguement is no different than
> conception in regards to abortion.
>
> Harsh but true.
> (end)
Kinda the same. I guess it's all about where you draw the line. Where do you
draw the line, Lee? First trimester? First birthday? First semester of
highschool?
I go fairly far the other way. I'd say we should give children full
citizenship rights as early as possible; for instance, voting age should
come way down. Let's face it, many kids know at least as much about politics
as their elders (ie: squat), and many know plenty more, because they learn
it at school. If Homer Simpson is allowed to vote, why exclude Lisa?
To come back to this nasty infanticide thread, I believe that children
should certainly be regarded as citizens just like adults with regard to
being protected from assault apon their person. I'd say that, at the very
least, they are entitled to this from birth onward, and I'd venture to say
that this particular line should be drawn even earlier, although there do
tend to be some messy issues about mother & child rights conflicting, about
who does the interpreting of that, and so on.
Earlier still, there is a period, from conception to somewhere (dunno where,
personally), during which the growing glob of cells is not a person enough
that we really should get hung up about aborting them. Drwaing that
particular dividing line leads to a whole debate that I don't want to get
into.
I think that Lee leans toward "total freedom" (of those who can step up and
take it) and away from rights because it removes all the messy issues of
interpretation and subsequently power, ie: who gets to arbitrate. I do think
it's a bad position, however. It's bad because it is a defacto
might-makes-right argument.
Basically, it says that you may do what you will if you can do it, and then
it's ok. This works just fine for issues affecting only one's person, ie:
drugs, sexuality. It works less well where the interests of several parties
collide, such as in the case of parents vs children. Hands up everyone who
would have been happy to have been legally regarded as the personal property
of his/her parents?
There are people in our world who have reasonable interests (such as being
able to grow up, being educated, being able to eat), but who cannot meet
them. All of us are amongst that number at least once in our lives,
historically twice, and usually more often than that. To my mind it is the
single most important function of a society of sentients that the reasonable
interests of the powerless are met. It's always going to be a messy
business, but that does not make it ok to ignore the issue.
>
> I totally agree. As for Samantha being shocked at what Lee
> Corbin said, I bet he would have felt at ease in ancient Sparta.
>
> To be honest, I think abortion is in many cases simply about
> self-centered convenience. But many people like to convince
> themselves otherwise.
>
> Pleasure is wanted without the pain and challenge of the
> possible consequences.
>
> best wishes,
>
> John
>
Nothing wrong with consequence free pleasure in my book.
I think an extropian solution to the abortion dillema would be to find a way
to permanently set people's reproductive systems to off, with a pill to turn
them on, rather than the stupid reverse situation that we have now.
Emlyn
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