Procreation Is Not a Right
Introduction
Society's ills will never be corrected by attacking the symptoms, which is the path taken by many, from politicians to charitable organizations. To solve the world's problems, we need to attack the root causes. Religion is one such cause, as is overpopulation. Related to overpopulation is the idea that people should have the right to procreate according to their desires. Besides overpopulation, this right creates other problems, the primary of which is an inability to tackle the number one root cause of humanity's troubles--human nature itself. Below are examples of how society has been harmed by allowing people to procreate at will.
June 24, 2007
Crossing Gangland, L.A.
The entire report is interesting and worth listening to, but focus on the part towards the end that describes the situation of the young man with an infant son who drives his family everywhere for fear of street shootings. He has an infant son. We can infer from this that he chose to bring a child into a neighborhood which is so violent that he is afraid to walk anyway, afraid to give his name, and even afraid to stand outside with the reporter when a car slows down as it passes by. That child is at risk of being killed, growing up without one or more parents if either are killed, or perhaps joining a gang himself when he is older. Even if these possibilities are considered small, that child will certainly grow up with a higher stress level than children in a peaceful learning, and stress has been shown to affect development and learning. You might think that the man had a right to have this child, but that ignores the man's responsibility not to impose a disadvantage on another human being. In the interest of raising the best possible humans, society has an interest in not allowing children to be born into dangerous situations, whether a war-torn country like Iraq or a dangerous neighborhood in L.A. Do not feel sympathy for this young man and his plight--if you are to feel anything, feel contempt. The child should have been aborted or given up for adoption, and it is a continuing crime against that child to allow him to grow up under such conditions.
June 20, 2007
Teens May Have Made Pact to Get Pregnant
This store (which is still developing--Google for updates) is horrifying. But what is more horrifying is that it is almost certain that the government will allow these teens to bear and raise their children. If the intial reports are true, the girls' acts of becoming pregnant are acts of extreme selfishness. They were trying to satisfy their own needs without regard for the effects on the children and on society. If you google words like "teenage mother poverty statistics" you can easily find evidence that children born to teenage mothers have an increased likelihood of living in poverty. Most opponents of regulating procreation will make the naive statement that every person has a "right" to procreate. This statement arises from the fundamentally flawed paradigm of perceiving ethics in terms of "rights" instead of consequences. If consequences are considered, then we conclude that some significant percentage of the children born to these teenagers will live in poverty. Recognizing this, if we still allow this to happen, we are condemning these children to poverty just as if we condemned them to a prison sentence. I would call this a crime against the children, and a crime against the human race.
These girls should not be allowed to raise the children, whether that means placing the children in suitable homes or, if no such homes can be found, aborting them. Those who would find such actions horrendous and draconian suffer from a primitive moral sense that prevents them from seeing what is truly beneficial for society.
UPDATE: New reports state that there was no pact to get pregnant. This is important; it goes to the mindset of the girls. However, it is ultimately irrelevant to the likelihood that the children, if allowed to be born, will live in poverty. Whether or not the girls had a pact, they should not be allowed to raise children.
June 11, 2007
Mississippi School Holds First Interracial Prom
As you listen with disbelief at this story about a prom that has been segregated until now, listen for the part where the student reports a parent saying at a meeeting, "I'm not going to have any of those niggers rubbing up against my daughter." This parent is a racist, and that person should never have been allowed to raise a child. It is not hard to find evidence linking racist attitudes in parents with racist attitudes in children. Whether the cause is hereditary or simply learned, we have plenty of evidence to conclude that a number of children raised by racists parents will grow up to be racists themselves. By allowing this, we allow the cycle of racism to be perpetuated. By allowing a racist to raise a child, we are partially responsible for that child's subsequent racist actions. If that child grows up to commit a physical assault on a member of another race, or merely to discriminate against another race in the workplace, we share in that responsibility because we allowed that child to be born and raised by the racist. To the extent that racism is holding humany back from realizing its full potential, it is a crime against humanity to allow a racist person to raise a child.
November 14, 2007
Income Disparity Persists Between Blacks, Whites
In the report, one of the guests states that only a third of middle-class families are secure. This is a situation that creates a potential for a great deal of suffering and conflict when something occurs, like a recession, that pushes people into poverty. A solution to this problem is so obvious that it almost defies belief that nobody is talking about it. Quite simply, families that are not financially secure should not be allowed to exist. It should be a precondition for the creation of a family structure that the financial resources exist to guarantee a comfortable and social productive existence for that family.
October 24, 2007
Ex-Members of the Far Right Warn of Life They Left
This is a key quote from the report: "From a young age, her mother and grandfather taught her that foreigners and Jews were blocking Germany's rightful place as a world power." Later in the report: "By the time she wanted out years later, Privenau was married to another neo-Nazi, a violent man, she says. She had five children."
What do you think Privenau's husband was teaching their children? The same hateful ideas Privenau herself was taught as a child. This is a one of the fundemental problems with the the right to procreate, a right which is accepted by nearly all humans without realizing the great harm that is done to the world and humanity. Allowing people to bear and raise children as they see fit is horribly destructive for many reasons, one of which is that the children can be inculcated with character traits, such as racism, that are harmful to society.
To anybody who has the ability to overcome social and parental conditioning and focus his mind on cause and effect, it has to be obvious that in order to solve the problem of racism and other forms of prejudice, those who exhibit prejudice must be prevented from raising children.