Is it reasonable to require some sort of competence to have children?
Category: Real World > Religion
Yes
4
I actually think there should be counselling with less competent mothers and fathers to be prior to the actual birth
2
It is not at all unreasonable to hope that people who reproduce have a minimal level of competence. There is very little that can be done to enforce this, short of a totalitarian society. The best we can do is to use education to strongly promote responsible sexual behavior; to provide safe, effective, and affordable contraception; and to encourage effective parenting. In cases of abuse and neglect, of course, the state has the responsibility to step in, and remove the children from the parent if necessary. This is a far cry, however, from preventing people from having children in the first place.
The only circumstance in which I can see any kind of justification for mandatory sterilization would be for those unfortunate persons who are severely mentally incapacitated. In such cases, it is an act of mercy to ensure that someone who will always have the mind of an infant will not reproduce.
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No
4
How are you going to stop sweaty teenagers, or anybody else for that matter, from copulating?
Last time I checked, there were no intelligence requirements for people to do that. If anything, our cerebral functions are in the "off" position when we just let the hormones do what comes naturally.
And what are we going to do when people of limited education and/or intellect test positive for pregnancy? Require abortions? Didn't that once fall under the category of eugenics?
0
It's hard to distinguish competence. The developmentally disabled tend to lack many socialization skills and knowledge of life (not all of them, but quite a few). In Alberta up until a couple of decades ago, it was illegal for the developmentally disabled to reproduce. They would sterilize them and hospitalize them. It was awful, for some reason human rights didn't seem to matter to their caretakers. Thank God that's over now. If we're thinking about taking away human rights from people of lower intellect, who's to say we won't take back the rights of the developmentally disabled?
Perhaps I am taking this topic a little too seriously. Yes, I wish that incompetent idiots such as people in certain cults wouldn't reproduce. I wish that people who didn't know that it's bad to stick your finger in a lightsocket wouldn't reproduce. But Darwin tells us that these people will likely not live long enough to reproduce anyways, so let's hope for the best and root for natural selection.
