I found the LaFollette piece both interesting and exasperating, in that despite understanding most of his reasoning, I still disagreed with his fundamental argument. He dismisses the severity of this plan, declaring the restrictions of licensing parents as seeming “relatively minor.” To the contrary, his intended plan would be limiting an action which throughout the majority of history has been seen as a basic right. Despite whether or not right to bear children is a basic right, society would not take these restrictions to be “relatively minor.”
He states that restricting parenting licenses is meant to protect innocent people. But it seems that instead of protecting innocent people, his plan would take away the opportunity for these innocent people to even exist. His idea of protecting the innocent involves preventing them from being given the chance to exist. In fact, his plan seems to assume that these future-beings would be better off to never have lived than to have been born to negligent or abusive parents. It seems presumptuous for us to assume that, despite experiencing terrible hardships under one’s parenthood, one is incapable of having any joy in life or would rather have not been born.
Granted, pressure to this may come from a quote offered in Wolf’s article. Condorcet argued that men have a duty to give future generations happiness, not necessarily existence. Still, who are we to assume the future happiness – or lack thereof - of beings still unborn, despite any hardships they will face by their parents. To use Condorcet’s belief as support for LaFollette’s piece, we would have to assume that abused/neglected children are never put into foster care or a better living situation or simply don’t find happiness through other means outside of their negligent parents. LaFollette gives statistics that people who abuse children were often abused themselves. However, we cannot translate this as saying abused children will necessarily become abusers. Put simply, we cannot say what the lives of children of “unlicensed parents” hold in the future, so we have no right to ban their existence.
Some criticism my opinion may face is that it does not safeguard society from possible future abusers (children abused). In response to this, I most readily advocate a less strict form of licensing, which LaFollette himself advocated to a lesser degree than his strongest position. Licensing parents is acceptable in itself, so long as it does not prevent unlicensed parents from bearing children. Instead, unlicensed parents should be closely monitored by protective services to ensure the right treatment of the children. In this way, no future children are being denied the opportunity to live, and society will work proactively to protect them.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
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