Is procreation a right?

[javasaurus]

Should negligent mother of seven retain the right to have kids?

Please read the article before commenting.

Comments

[faireraven.livejournal.com]

I very strongly believe that this woman should not have more children, unless (as the courts also recognized) she can prove herself by showing she can care for the children she already has. Despite this, I also believe that it is not the court's place to ban her from having children, and threatening to jail her if she does so.

But once you set a precedent, it is hard to revoke it, and easy to expand it.

That's exactly it. If you allow the government to interfere with one woman's right to bear children, you crack open the door for abuse of that.

Where were we, as a society, when she was growing up, when she failed to learn about birth control, about healthy relationships, about drug abuse?

We were getting social services slashed for the sake of a few bucks. If one looks at the percentage of the budget that gets spent on social services, it's a pittance compared to everything else. But it's also the first thing to get slashed as "unnecessary".

As for men, and how would it be different...
I don't think there should be any difference between how the courts treat a negligent mother or father. But there would be a difference when it comes to enforcing "no more kids." Why? Abortion. Men have no legal say regarding abortion. If a woman becomes pregnant, she has the legal right to stop the pregnancy, but a man can do nothing. If the choice is not equally shared, why should the responsibility be equally shared?

Actually, Men DO have a legal say regarding abortion of a fetus that is genetically related to them. They've had court cases where a temporary restraining order has been placed upon the mother to prevent her from aborting when the father has expressed a wish to see the child come to term. It doesn't happen often, but it DOES happen. The thing is, in many abortion cases, the woman wants an abortion because the father wants to take no legal responsibility for the child, and she can't afford to raise said child on her own (no, I'm not making that a blanket statement, because there are plenty of other reasons for it, but that's a big one).

If a woman gets an abortion before the father even knows, there's no way for him to stop it. But I do wonder, after the precident that has been set by the courts that the father can legally block an abortion from being performed, can he sue afterwards if she aborts without telling him?

True, the choice remains more hers than his. But he is also not the one who will be carrying the child, and therefore the child that he took equal participation to produce will have less impact on him, at least physically. But because of that in part (well, that and the discrepancy with salaries between most men and women, plus several other factors), the man has traditionally been given more monetary responsibility, because he could not take the physical responsibility, both in the toll the child produces on the body during pregnancy, and the aftereffects that many women experience.