And it should be. First of all, you have the freedom to spread your ideas, as morally abhorrent as society may find them. If you wanna create your own army of racists by creating and indoctrinating them, that's your say. You are the parent. If society starts policing ideas, it will have lost the best measure it has for obtaining truth - an open debate. That also goes for parenting policies, religion, and so on. Mating itself is such a fundamental human right that licensing it seems horrifying. Few people are more qualified than others to determine how a child should be raised.
Actually you can suspend birthing rights without suspending mating: there are reversible but temprarily permanent ways of sterilizing both halves of a couple, that are perfectly safe to undo. The couple can then have as much bareback as they want without fear of having children. It's parental planning, really.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.I wasn't talking about sex, I was talking about "birthing rights" as you refer to them. ATM your only shot at biological immortality is passing on your genes. Suspending your right to have a child is killing your particular genetic line. In terms of how long it lasts, it might be considered more important than an individual's life.
Much to my BFF's wife's chagrin, No Pants 2013 became No Pants 2010's at his house.
That's a very strange way of looking at things. Anyway, I think a course on basic parenting skills and the following exam shouldn't be harder than getting a driver's license or a conceal-carry permit. If you can forbid a person what is basically the only truly viable means of transportation in the USA or the right to armed self-defense, because they couldn't prove they mastered some very basic skills that everyone should know, why shouldn't you be able to forbid an unworthy person a responsibility as huge and important as creating new life.
It's a little hard imagining police officers forcibly dragging a woman into an abortion clinic.
It might not be that extreme, but things get iffy from a moral viewpoint if someone managed to get passed the birthing license. Parenting courses would be easier than mass birth control, even if that birth control is a pill.
edited 13th Mar '12 2:22:33 PM by chihuahua0
If you had lived in the regimes where people needed permits just to move from one town to another, you wouldn't be saying that. Singapore has a fertility rate of 0.78, and it's a very prosperous place, with lots of future. And that's just one example
. Lots of cultures see children as more of a burden than an asset, especially when prosperity and population density is high, real estate is scarce, education is expensive, and, most important of all, there's pension for everyone so you don't need children to take care of you in your old days.
edited 13th Mar '12 2:41:33 PM by TheHandle
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.Yes we are. I apologize. But discussing solutions to bullying involves some meandering. And by those countries I meant Red China and the USSR specifically, although there were others. The USSR at least was much larger than the US, in surface area, and even less densely populated.
edited 13th Mar '12 2:44:03 PM by TheHandle
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.@The Handle: Don't put words in my mouth. That's not what I was saying at all. All I said was that no matter how much one tries to prepare, one can still suck at parenting if it's something they're naturally inept at.
Insert witty and clever quip here. My page, as the database hates my handle.I didn't put words in your mouth, I simply asked if that was what you were implying. Even rephrased that way, the logical next step is "are these people chronically unfit to be parents, and, if not, should they be allowed to raise children?": the question is inescapable. If you're going to automatically raise dysfunctional buggers who will propagate your dysfunction to their own kids et caetera then maybe you shouldn't. Let me give you a very brutal example, and we can follow a slippery slope from there: suppose an adult were to publically confess they're a paedophile (if you want to be even more brutal, a convicted child molester), yet insists in engendering and raising children with their consenting, supportive spouse. When asked about the safety of their future children, they will say that, in the same way other parents don't go after their own sons and daughters even after they have grown past the age of consent, they won't go after their own children, regardless of age.
Somehow, I suspect many would say There Should Be a Law forbidding this state of things.
Now, let's ride that slippery slope, downwards. A parent has been convicted for abusing their children. Should they be allowed to have more children, if they so wish?
Lower: A parent isn't being neglectful or abusive, but they pretty much ignore their kids besides the basic needs, and in fact spoil them with money as long as they don't bother them. Said kids are left to their own devices most of the time. Should anyone individual or public organization step up and act against this?
A little lower now: A parent has been proven to teach their children pernicious ideas, habits, and mindsets, that lead to said children tormenting and abusing their schoolmates. They also unconditionally protect, aid, support, and approve of their children's behavior. Should something be done about this, and, if yes, what?
Now let's flip the question around: Think of the Children!. Are child protecting services there only to protect children from adults, or shouldn't they also protect them from each other? And from the adults that encourage "each other" to hurt them? How about protecting bullies from the bad education of their parents? Child protection services will take your child away from you if there is evidence of abuse, but what about when you teach and encourage your child to abuse other children?
edited 13th Mar '12 3:06:48 PM by TheHandle
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.The first two situations, so long as they've truly reformed, I'd be fine with them being parents, so long as they do a damn good job.
That's still a passive form of abuse, or, if you don't wanna use that term, a form of parenting that CAN get your children taken away from you.
Now let's flip the question around: Think of The Children. Are child protecting services there only to protect children from adults,or shouldn't they also protect them from each other? And from the adults that encourage "each other" to hurt them? How about protecting bullies from the bad education of their parents? Child protection services will take your child away from you if there is evidence of abuse,but what about when you teach and encourage your child to abuse other children?
I never said anyone can't have children if they want to. It's just not my problem if they're bad enough parents that they get their kids taken away. Parenting is a hard job, but it's one that one should at least try to have some dedication to and get help from others with if you're not good at it. Possibly psychological help, if necessary. No snark intended there, I'm completely serious about that.
edited 13th Mar '12 4:26:04 PM by 0dd1
Insert witty and clever quip here. My page, as the database hates my handle.It's fine (if only in extreme cases) to take children away. I wasn't addressing you, sorry if you thought that.
But restricting people's right to have children? That's way too authoritarian for my tastes.
edited 13th Mar '12 4:51:11 PM by Ultrayellow
Except for 4/1/2011. That day lingers in my memory like...metaphor here...I should go.Oh, whoops. Sorry for gettin' all defensive and whatnot. Agreed.
Insert witty and clever quip here. My page, as the database hates my handle.With this sort of bullying, we're not even just talking about bad parenting. That's one thing. But it's too small of a scale. We're talking about broken communities as a whole. This is a situation where parents are acting as expected for local community norms and it is teaching children to act in such a way that results in bullying. It's not exactly fair to blame it on the parents.
Democracy is the process in which we determine the government that we deserveCryogenics, the study of how the body reacts to cold, is as far as I know legal everywhere. However cryonics, the practice of freezing dying humans in the hope that future scientists will be able to unfreeze and cure them, is not.
Nitpick-man AWAY!
...at the risk of being potentially mentally unstable and emotionally dead inside with the knowledge that more or less everyone in town considers you a filthy heathen who should just go curl up and die already.
edited 13th Mar '12 11:07:21 PM by 0dd1
Insert witty and clever quip here. My page, as the database hates my handle.

See, you can read all the books and take all the classes you want, but that won't help much at all if you're just naturally inept at it.
Insert witty and clever quip here. My page, as the database hates my handle.