Reproductive licenses

Discussion in 'Ethics, Morality, & Justice' started by Promo, Oct 16, 2012.

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Reproductive Licenses

Poll closed Oct 31, 2012.
  1. Yes

    30.0%
  2. No

    70.0%
  3. I don't care what other people do

    0 vote(s)
    0.0%
  1. Promo Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    237
    Should governments be able to issue “reproductive licenses” to couples who want to have children? Meaning any person/persons who wanted to have a child would have to meet certain income, living, education criteria before being allowed to have a child.

    This came up the other night with several of my friends and I wanted to see what you guys felt about this sort of thing.
     
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  3. BenTheMan Dr. of Physics, Prof. of Love Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    8,967
    Seems a bit...totalitarian.

    Personally, I'd rather not have the government passing laws regarding what amounts to an expression of love and a bodily function (or, if you're good enough, two bodily functions).

    Let me restate your question in another way: should a bunch of people with different values than I have be allowed to dictate the way I live my life?
     
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  5. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

    Messages:
    39,397
    I don't know.

    Should governments be able to issue "getting an education licences" to people who want to gain a qualification?
    Should governments be able to issue "reading a book licences" to people who want to read a book?
    Should governments be able to issue "walking down the street" licences to people who want to go for a walk outside their house?

    It's for your own good, you know. You might get hit by a bus if you go out walking on the street and you're not suitably qualified.
     
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  7. Buddha12 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,862
    No. Your opening the door to being a segregationist which means your going to have many troubles trying to enact laws like that.
     
  8. Promo Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    237
     
  9. Asguard Kiss my dark side Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    23,049
    James should the goverment be able to demand you get a licence to drive because poor driving puts others at risk?

    No I don't think on balance that this is a good idea BUT the international convention on the RIGHTS of the child puts certain demands on society and goverment, specifically those to ensure that parents are GOOD parents (defined as following the convention) and the demands to support children who are poor, providing all the basic needs such as food, housing, education, healthcare. Licencing would be a way to help ensure parents were complying with the convention, treating children as a responsiblity, not a right and there property, ensuring that certain behaviours were shown in no uncertain terms to be unacceptable and illegal BEFORE they happen and that denying the child certain things is the same (such as play and rest, right to determine who there friends are, right to know both parents and so on and so on)
     
  10. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,089
    The people currently in power being given extra power over reproduction... Hmmm.
    Think some bias toward their own class, political party and ethnicity might result? Think the licensing commission might be prone to graft? Think there could be friction between the 'gots' and 'didn't gets'? Think there might be trafficking in illegal babies, a rise in illegal pregnancies, more kidnappings? On the whole, this is an idea full of ill portent.

    It's more than any government can manage to protect the kids they already have, and many of them are zealously preventing birth control, without follow-through for the welfare of those extra babies. Governments are the least competent regulators of reproduction.
     
  11. Mazulu Banned Banned

    Messages:
    3,090
    You're going to require a license that grants people permission to have sex? Check with the Muslim countries to see if they're successful at preventing sex.
     
  12. Promo Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    237
    Let’s say for the sake of argument that the reproductive community is bi-partisan made up of 1 male and 1 female of every ethnicity and religion. Let’s also say that this doesn’t prevent sex, we’ll call it every male or female gets a vasectomy that is 100% reversible. Upon approval of the license you get a reversal and can reproduce.
     
  13. Mazulu Banned Banned

    Messages:
    3,090
    Just you saying that makes me want to exercise my right to own a gun. And my trigger finger is itchy.
     
  14. Promo Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    237
    Good to know I make you want to buy guns, I own several...
     
  15. Neverfly Banned Banned

    Messages:
    3,576
    My finger just twitched on the report post button.
    In the end, I decided not to report it but to give the attempt at addressing you first. What you just said is out of line.

    Look, for the species, it would ultimately appear (Though I don't believe it must) to be good for humanity to have a breeding program in place, to ensure not just current reproduction is top notch (And within population sustenance) but the long term effects of it are as well. We could breed out genetic diseases, faults, poor genes... Only allow the most fit, talented, scientific, artistic and brightest to have children.

    In the end, this is a terrible idea. But take away the reality of it and there's a function to it- a reason to the madness.
     
  16. Promo Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    237
    Thanks Neverfly for your post I appreciate you thinking about some of the pros and cons of the question. While, I think it would take a MASSIVE overhaul of the current government before anything like this could be done productively I do see some positives with having a screening process for reproducing.
    Regarding Mazulu’s comment I’m not too worried about him indicating he wants to buy a gun and possibly shoot me. This is a website and people tend to feel much bigger typing behind a screen.
     
  17. Mazulu Banned Banned

    Messages:
    3,090
    Forgive me, I wasn't trying to be hostile. I was trying to be humorous. I was trying to express the idea that I would not allow my government, or anyone, to give me a vasectomy without a fight. That's all I meant.

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
  18. Promo Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    237
    I had my vasectomy done when I was 22 years old. It was the best 20 bucks I ever spent, you should look into it.
     
  19. Mazulu Banned Banned

    Messages:
    3,090
    I thought that the populations in industrialized countries was shrinking? If so, wouldn't that ultimately resolve the overpopulation problem?
     
  20. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    37,884
    An old joke, and other notes

    It's a joke from the 1980s. And every time I recall it, I botch the attribution ... so I'll go with Paula Poundstone this time: "You need a license to have a dog, but anybody can have children."

    The irony is apparent, but there is no solution.

    As Neverfly pointed out, the species could find some advantage in willful selective breeding. To the other, though, I'll counter that we're human, and such a program could easily wipe out the species for lack of telephone sanitation. Even setting that aside, though, we're not ants or bees.

    It's a strange phenomenon to witness; it happens frequently. Human consideration of our own condition often sees us dancing in temptation with ideas that would likely improve our species within a utilitarian framework, but defy the whole purpose of our societal endeavors. Are we robots? Are we ants or bees? Are we purely utilitarian creatures? What, then, is talk of liberty? Factory bosses still want compliant, nearly-automated workers; Charlie Chaplin is not obsolete in this sense. And there are plenty of social justice advocates who would—inadvertently I think ... er ... hope—reduce socialization to a bland, uncontroversial stream of pabulum. It's not that I don't get these causes; the factory boss wants increased efficiency, and the social justice maven wants people to be able to go about their day without someone asking them to feel guilty that they were born black, or female, or gay, or poor, or whatever. But Americans, for instance, won't work under the conditions we hear about at Foxconn, where our iPhones are made. And while most can agree that you don't go around calling people niggers, there comes a point where we reserve the right to laugh at subcultural quirks.

    People don't want to be automatons. Society does not require a hive mentality. And, over the long run, given human frailty and propensity for screwing bad ideas into the roadkill pooch, it is entirely possible that a selective breeding system will first encounter the question of whence comes the lumpenproletariat, untermensch, or, as we call it in the U.S., service industry. Or the factory worker. Or something else. You know, who among the artificially overrepresented Alphas and Betas will do the jobs of the Deltas and Epsilons. And then, of course, arises the suggestion of tailoring the birth rate allocations.

    The reality is that the human endeavor presently requires a large population working hard in poverty. This is a tragic outcome of the best we've figured for cooperative resource distribution schemes. But to willfully tailor the situation to such ends? The faithful will call it "playing God". The cynical will denounce it as hubris. The logical will mutter to themselves, "This can't end well."
     
  21. Neverfly Banned Banned

    Messages:
    3,576
    I'm afraid not. Even ignoring our current problems- think far ahead...

    We're gobbling up natural resources at an alarming rate. While we're doing this, we are also advancing technologically. There are more of us, with better medicine, longer lives, wanting more stuff that wants more power.
    Even if we can sustain ourselves for 100 more years, what will we do when the world population is stable at 14 billion people and we run out of energy?

    There are most definitely pros. I'm sure most any of us that understand evolution, (Sorry Mazulu, you may have to sit this one out) can see the advantages of Smart Breeding.
    We can also see the disadvantages of it- when we find out that we're not as smart as we think we are.

    No one can predict the future, you see.

    Politically, I'd be strongly opposed to such measures and for obvious reasons. For society, when you've got that guy that was on the news sometime back that bred something like 15 kids and all of them were on welfare, you want someone else to get the little snip.

    I will avoid the politics of it.

    Sticking to just the biological, we can readily observe the effects of natural breeding. We are so numerous and so well supplied, currently, that mates are often chosen by ready availability, not so much but strong qualities. A person might choose a "Less than stellar" mate to breed with (Not even thinking about breeding itself, but the act of doing it) and in the end, it happens often enough to really clutter our species. On the other hand, those same reasons that cause some people to be less than choosy cause others to be even more choosy. They don't have to settle- they can reproduce with top notch. They have options.
    I'm a bit apocalyptic. I do not believe that our governments or ourselves have anywhere near enough predictive knowledge to know what's best for our breeding.
    It's better to leave it to chance, naturally, and see what happens, than it is to try to F* with it and screw it all up in the long run.
     
  22. scheherazade Northern Horse Whisperer Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,798
    I find it interesting that serious horse breeders study genetics and genealogy in depth prior to deciding whether or not mating a selected pair of animals has an increased chance of producing equivalent or better offspring than the present stock.

    With humans, it seems to be 'any port in a storm'. Do people even take blood tests any more to screen for preventable genetic problems before getting pregnant? Personally, I helped raise enough children of other people that I rather lost that maternal desire and I had concerns about the genetic history of my first husband, which sadly proved true in that he died of a heart attack one day before his 44th birthday. (We had been divorced for six years by then yet I was still deeply pained for he was a very kind person.)

    While I surely do think we should give far greater consideration to the parameters of human reproduction, I feel that these should come through better education and voluntary decisions around the issue, not through regulation. :bugeye:
     
  23. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,089
    If women are allowed to choose their own mates (no rape, no coercion, no selling of girls by fathers, no prostitution), the birthrate drops and the gene-pool improves. If men and women control their own fertility (accessible safe birth control and the education to use it), the birthrate declines and the babies are healthier. If people are allowed to make a decent living for themselves and their children, they have fewer children of higher quality.
    In order to control population increase, all government needs to do is its mandated job: to protect the citizens, and distribute opportunity evenly.
    Never going to happen.
     

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