"Choice"

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They have the legal right under Italian law but I strongly question the morality and it is not a question of is abortion ever justified but the trauma that the girl will suffer.

 

I probably have the opposite view from NOG - but that sounds fine. Good, even. I'm totally fine with abortion, especially in a case like this. That the abortion was forced on her is what I have the problem with.

 

I'm not an expert here, but I don't think doctors are allowed to perform unnecessary plastic surgury on minors. In other words, if the girl got her faced smashed in a car accident, they can try to fix it, but they can't just on the parent's whim. I think the issue here is that plastic surgury doesn't work too well on body parts that are still growing. That's why it's advised that you wait until adulthood whenever possible.

Because the government isn't the guardian of those people. In the case of mental handicaps, the person with that decision is whomever has power of attorney - again not the government. It does work both ways by the way. To take the example further - a doctor cannot perform any surgury on the child without the consent of the parents. If the child wanted to give up the kidney and the parents didn't, the doctors couldn't perform the procedure. Similarly if the girl wanted the abortion and parents didn't, the doctor could not legally perform the abortion.

 

If the girl wanted the abortion, but the parents didn't then the parents are making a responsible choice by avoiding a risky operation that may well cause permanent damage to the girl.

I'm not suggesting that the girl's personal opinion should weigh more than the parents', but rather that parents that are willing to make the decision presented in the original quote are not fit to be parents.

I fully understand and agree that children of that age are not really fit to make major life decisions like that. They don't have all the information, they usually don't think about the consequences, and they don't think about it logically. But the parents here seem to have done the same thing, only thinking about their own desires, not the child's.

 

What? This seems contradictory. Children aren't fit to make major life decisions. The parent's decision isn't fit. Whose decision is then? A child can desire mounds of chocolate and the parents can only think about their desire to not have to spend lots of money on chocolate... end result is that the child get's a balanced diet, despite the parent's only thinking about their own desires.

The parents know what is best for their child and have the right to bring up their child accordingly. I fully support the parent's decision because it's their decision to make. The child is not capable of understanding the implications and/or responsibilities of raising a child or even giving birth.

The parents are responsiable for anything their child does, therefore they should have complete and utter control over the child with reguards of power of attorney. It's unfair to be responsiable for something yet have no control over something. You might as well blame bad weather on the weatherman.

 

Aldeth: So you think it's fine for the guardians of mentally handicapped people to donate organs of the person that they're in charge of without any indication of consent from that person?

I understand that it works in reverse - I disagree with that just as strongly. Especially when it kills people, such as in the case of parents refusing to let their children to have blood transfers for religious reasons that the child doesn't share.

When you have things like this going on it's quite hard to agree to the proposition that the parents are any more fit to make these decisions than the child.

 

actually at least in Danish law, the state can overrule the parrents right to decide, if thier decisions harms the child.

as has been pointed out, if a child can only survive do to bloodtransfer for instance and the parrents deny it (because of religion or whatever) the state interveens.

also a parrent dosn't decide if a child goes to school or not. the parrent can only choose which form of school (public,private or home).

in this case imho, the parrents should not have the right to decide. abortion imho should never be denied or forced on anybody.

 

When you phrase it that way, of course I don't agree. The way you say it, you make it sound like the guardian of a mentally handicapped person is just going to give organs away on a whim. If, however, donation of said organ will save a family member's life with no life-threatening harm done to the handicapped person (like the kidney example listed above), then yes, I do do think they should be able to make that decision.

Generally speaking, you want the person who is most mature and responsible making the decision. Unless you happen to be born to sadist parents, there's no one who will look out for a kid's best interest more than the kid's parents. Also, the parents have a wealth of life experience to draw upon that the child obviously lacks. I don't know how old these parents are, but it's a safe bet that they are at least in their 30s. Teens live more in the here and now, while 30-somethings generally take a much bigger view of things. I would say that 99.9% of the time the parents are going to do what's best for the child. The other 0.1% of the time, the parents screw up. Like the parents you mention who refuse blood transfusions on religious grounds.

I'm not saying I *like* the parents' decision. I'm saying that I support the right for the parents to *make* such a decision. I'm willing to trade off the 0.1% of screw ups for the 99.9% of time that the parents are going to act in the best interests of the child. If all such decisions were up to the child, I'm willing to bet that the screw up percentage would be much, much, higher. Finally, at what age would you like child control of such decisions to start? Obviously you're OK with 13-year olds making such decisions. What about 10-year olds? 8-year olds? 5-year olds? Or heck, let's just say that as soon as the child learns how to talk, it can make all of it's own decisions. So toddlers on up are in control of all major, life and death medical decisions of their lives. I'm sure that would work out just great.

While such provisions also exist in the US, they require a signed court order by a judge. If it's a planned surgury a court order can be obtained beforehand. Unfortunately, regarding blood transfusions, if it's a case where the transfusion is needed immediately, there isn't time to get a court order.

 

If they're capable of expressing what they want coherently, then sure. This is more than likely not a problem though - children do what their parents tell/ask them to do, generally. I can't imagine that most young children want the responsibility of making these decisions or understand the concept of responsibility.

If we have a very intelligent and mature child that can express their opinion on what happens to them, then yes, I see no problem with them deciding these issues. Unless the parents are so horrible as not to have their trust, they would have plenty of parental advice they could lean on anyway.

But pretending I didn't say that: 18 is far too high an age before having a right to your own body. People are able to make these decisions far before that - even not taking into account my extreme position. At the very least I feel that this age should be lowered significantly.

 

I've seen some horribly ignorant reasoning in the last few posts, and I feel I need to respond.

Ab:

Aldeth:

Aik:

Do any of you have children? Do any of you live in a close relationship to someone who does (sister and her kids live next door, etc.)? Do any of you pay ANY attention to what the parents around you are doing?

Guess what, parents don't always know what's best for their children. In fact, it is not at all uncommon for them to not have a clue what is best for their children. They also don't always think with their children's best interests at heart. Parents can be just as self-centered and heartless as anyone else out there. There are mature adult parents who abandon their children, drown them in the bath tub, shake them to death, use them to smuggle drugs and drug money, beat them, oh and lets not bring up spanking. If parents are so perfect, then spanking shouldn't even be an issue. If it is ever used, it is used in the best interests of the child, right?

You all seem to have forgotten just how stupid and self-centered the average human can be when the mood strikes them.

And as for giving the kids control, let me reitterate something: Kids do not think about such things logically! They think emotionally! Seriously, people, the decision-making center of the brain for kids is the same as the part that processes emotions. At a certain age, (and over a course of time) those functions are transfered to the pre-frontal cortex, the reasoning and logic part of the brain. Now while I'll admit that the exact age of transfer from one to the other is neither exact, nor constant between individuals, it is a rare exception for it to present even as young as 15, and 18 is probably a bit on the young side already. The brain is all but guaranteed to be finished by 23, and there are still a few hold-outs by then, but that's ok, its to be expected.

To put it simply, the children SHOULD NOT be given that authority, though I believe they should be involved in the discussion. On the other hand, there's no guarantee that the parents are fit to use that authority. While I have no problem with the parents having default and normal authority, the government should be both able and willing to step in and remove them as legal guardians should they show themselves to be significantly incompetent (as I believe the case is here).

 

In my experience, the children of clueless parents tend to be even more clueless than their parents. I find it odd that you felt it necessary to insult the very people with whom you seem to be agreeing. None of them is stating that parents universally know what's best for their kids.....merely that they are a lot more bloody likely to know and act in their children's best interest than their children are. Critique should never ignore context.

 

because we all know government agencies are much more competent...
Daily Mail
Scotsman
BBC

[rant] I personally believe that the vast majority of problems the UK is seeing is because parents don't take responsibility for their own children but blame "society". Cases recently have been a father blaming society for his little darling getting involved in gun crime in London, and a woman blaming social services for not stepping in before her 13 year old daughter ballooned to 18 stone. [/rant]

So if your young teenager comes up and decides they want to start experimenting with hard drugs it will be OK with you? Sorry, children may believe they know what's best for them but in reality they don't have enough life experince to make those sort of decisions. From my experience of the 11 year olds plus round my way, very few seem to pay the blindest bit of notice to their parents or any other adult.

 

Indeed, Carcaroth, teens generally don't care about their parents. Take my sister, for example. She's 14 now, and sometimes does stupid things, as teenagers do. For example, she once stole cigarets from mother and when she got caught, there was no remorse in her, only anger because she had been yelled at. If they don't like what they hear, they ignore it or curse it all to the lowest pits of hell. Sure, there are exceptions, but that is generally the case.

 

NOG,

While I fail to see how the quote you picked out showed "horribly ignorant reasoning" on my part, especially since you obviously didn't read the very first two words that you copied - that was the "generally speaking" part - I will respond to your questions nonetheless.

My first, Mini-Fop, is in the oven, but has not finished cooking yet. Mrs. Idiot is due in August.

Yes. While none of them live right next door, I presently have 9 nieces and nephews (9 total not of each), with the ages ranging from 4 to 24. In addition, my youngest brother is still a teenager. My wife is the youngest of 7 children in her family, which is why we're on our first, but my oldest nephew has already graduated from college and is attending law school.

Is that rhetorical? Obviously the answer everyone will give is yes. At the very least everyone should have some idea as to what their own parents are doing, and at least to some measure everyone is paying attention at least some of the time. How about you, oh mighty purveyor of wisdom?

Yes, all of that is true. But the vast majority of parents don't abandon, abuse, kill, or use their children for illicit purposes - or any of that other nasty stuff you mention. In fact, with the exception of abuse, none of those items you mention are even remotely common. I'm sure there are hundreds of children every year who are murdered or used to smuggle drugs, or some other example you listed. You seem to forget that there are millions of other children who have none of that bad stuff happen to them. That's why I said "generally speaking".

I think I've already spelled it out clearly enough, but allow me to reiterate: MOST parents are in a better position to make important decisions by proxy for their children than the children are capable of making on their own. Clear enough now?

Aik - While I disagree with your position, I respect you for not stooping to petty insults in making your point

 

@NOG: How ironic, that you ask if other poster have children, and then immediately turn around and say that proves you don't:

Baloney. If there's one thing I've learned from raising my boys, it's that no ordinary parent ever sets out to deliberately harm their children. People may have widley different ideas of what "best interests" means, but they do have exactly that at heart.

The negative examples you cite are a very, very small percentage of the total number of parents in the world. Trying to build support for your position by relying on extremely rare datapoints doesn't work.

 

It's funny how quickly the mood of this thread changed...

@NOG: I'm 17, in case you didn't know. Legally (well, as far as I know anyway - not too sure on Australia's laws on this. Most likely very similar to America and such) I still have all this nonsense hanging over my head. It wasn't that long ago that I was at the ages that we're mostly discussing here, plus I only recently finished interacting with people of those ages by the way of school.

There are few 17 year olds I know that are incapable of making sensible decisions - those that are I don't see likely to improve any time soon. That goes down to at least 16 and for many individuals lower.

As for those who don't make sensible decisions - they're still their decisions, regardless of how intelligent we may find them. I might find your decision on something stupid - but that doesn't give me the right to stop you from acting on it.

I would not be okay with it - but wielding parental authority like a sack of bricks is not the way to deal with that. I believe that teenagers should be treated as people - so deal with it in the same way that you would deal with it if a friend or other close relative was doing it.

(There should be more here - but I've gtg - storm of doom outside...)

 

Parenting is different from the relationship with a friend or close realitive. You can be 5, 15, 25 or even 35 and you're still your parent's baby boy/girl. Parents will always be older than you, will always have more life experience than you (unless due to some freak accident like being stuck in a coma for at least 16 years... but that's really off topic) and more often than not they know better than you.

Certainly, someone is capable of making their own decisions. A three year old can make a decision between wanting a blue lollypop and a green one but if mommy knows that the green lolly pop contains a nasty food coloring chemical or something that is bad for poor Billy then she won't let him have it.

As for rights, they get trumped by responsibilities. A parent is responsiable for their child and believe it or not but till you're 18 you don't have as many rights as you might hope, yet someone is responsiable for you and your well being. Come 18 nobody is responsaible for you yet you suddenly get more rights. Certainly people are more mature at different ages, some before they're 18, others after, some never... but a system that would be used to determine if someone is mature or not would be so difficult to 1. dream up, 2. impliment, 3. enforce, 4. be un-discriminatory and 5. pay for... so there's a blanket system. It might not be the PERFECT system, but so far it's the best one.

 

Very well-said, Abomination.

 

*blush* Aww fank woo Miss Wally!

 

Ok, I appologize for my previous post. It came off harsher than intended, though the point was exactly what I had meant it to be.

I wanted to point out some statements that had been made that I felt were made with irrational generalizations behind them. To the end of explaining that, I'll go through them one by one, and I hope I don't offend anyone too much.

Obviously my point here was that this is hardly all the time. I don't know how common it is on a global, or even national scale, but I hear about a lot of situations, both on the news and from friends, where I had to stop and think "What was this parent thinking? How could they possibly do something so stupid, and with their children, to boot!" You seemed to be assuming that the parents had the right to decide because they knew what was best for their kids, and while this may be true most of the time, it is a horrible thing to assume to be true.

This one I included more because I see logical problems with it. First of all, the parents aren't actually resposible for EVERYTHING their child does, at least, not in America. There is a certain amount of responsability, but it is far from complete. Secondly, even if it were complete, I wouldn't feel comfortable giving them complete and unquestionable authority over another human being with that as the only cause.

Aldeth:

The generally speaking part I agree with you entirely. In fact, I think it is safe to say you always want the most marute, responsable, and informed person making the decision. The second part of it, however, seems to seperate from that 'generally speaking'. Specifically, the "Unless you happen to be born to sadist parents" seemed to break from that, to a condition of near totality. The part that followed is what I had issue with. Parents rarely intend to cause their children harm, and I would lump those that do in with your "Unless you happen to be born to sadist parents" condition. There are a lot of situations, however, where parents don't think of their childrens' best interests, where they only think of their own.

Aik:

In my experience, children rarely do what their parents ask or tell them to completely, and outright disobedience seems more common with the group that are traditionally at risk: the poor. I could be wrong there, but it seems so to me. Additionally, when talking about something as extreme as this, whatever exceptions to your 'generally' there may be are the very ones we want never to happen.

I think I responded pretty well to this one. Children simply don't think about these thing logically, they think emotionally, and no matter how early they begin experiencing such urges, it is neither a symptom of mental maturity, nor a reason to give them authority.

As a side note, and a bit of irony, my answers my own questions:
Do any of you have children? No

Do any of you live in a close relationship to someone who does (sister and her kids live next door, etc.)? No

Do any of you pay ANY attention to what the parents around you are doing? Well, some, and more now than I used to, but still...

Basically, I should be the least fit person to tell you just how unfit parents can occasionally be, but I know that parenting isn't easy and every once in a while even the most fit and responsable parents make stupid decisions and it only takes one to ruin or even end the child's life.

That said, no I don't trust the government to raise my children, but I do want them paying a little attention should I do something really stupid, or especially if someone seems to be making a habit of making stupid and risky decisions concerning their children.

Social Services in America, and I think probably most countries that have something like it, is designed as a safety net. It is far from perfect, and it should only be given full and permanent authority in the most extreme cases of negligence and/or abuse, but in a case like the one presented in the original post, it should be both willing and able to step in and protect the child's basic safety, which is really what I'm objecting to about that decision.

Drew:

Very true, but I'm not advising that the children be given authority either.

Aldeth:

Congratulations, and good luck with parenting. Please don't live up to your name, and for God's sake, be careful.

Unfortunately, a lot of people around here don't. I don't know if anything similar happened elsewhere, but in America in the '50s and '60s, parents let the schools raise their kids, so the kids never learned how to raise children. In the '70s and '80s, the government decided the schools weren't allowed to raise children anymore, so the parents had to. Unfortunately, the vast majority of parents at that time had been raised by the schools and never learned how to be parents themselves. We're seeing the results today.

Rally:

As I said, you're right that only truely disturbed parents would seek to harm their children, but it is not as uncommon as you may think that parents act without thinking of their childrens' best interests. Are you telling me that you, as a mother, have never done anything so outrageously stupid that 10 seconds after it happened you didn't curse yourself, rush to your children and thank God (you being Jewish, I seem to recall) that it didn't turn out as bad as it could have? I can personally recall several occasions like that with my parents, and I would rate them as excellent parents. I have heard more stories like it that make me cringe when I hear them, and usually end with something like "and thank God that (fill in horrible potential outcome) didn't happen."

That all depends on the severity of the circumstances. How rare does a dangerous data point have to be for NASA to consider it safe to send people into space? How rare do the data points have to be in level 5 bio-research facilites, where an outbreak could cause a world-wide plague? We're talking about things that could potentially scar, or end, a child's life. We're also talking about a situation where such chances are tested billions of times. How common is a .5% chance in a test sample of 2 billion? How many people would that be?

I know I'm talking about the worst case scenarios here, but that's exactly what these laws and systems are designed to address. If we assumed everyone was a good, caring, and attentive parent, we wouldn't need a large number of the safety nets that fill the modern world.

Aik:

If this is true, I hope you realize just how lucky you are. I am absolutely sure that there are 18, 17, and even 13 year olds who could be trusted to make responsable decisions, I was one myself, but there aren't a whole lot of us.

Here we get into an interesting philosophical debate about the nature of society, and I would urge you to read up on the Socail Contract, but I think a better example would be a joke I heard a few years back:

A man is walking on the sidewalk by an assylum. One of the patiens in the yard begins to walk along side him, looking at him constantly. Finally, the man becomes so distrubed by it that he turns and faces the patient. "What do you want?" he asks in a rather unsettled mood. "Do you know why I'm in here and you're out there?" the patient says. "No, not really. Should I?" The patient replied, "It is because there are more people in the world like you than there are like me."

Joke or not, this is a true statement. We friequently infringe on the rights of individuals because we believe them to be "dangers to themselves or others". Often, it comes down to a perception of reality, and you would be hard pressed to absolutely prove that your perception was right and theirs was wrong. People have been trying for millinea.

Finally, I would like to note something. Several people have made mention of "life experience" and how parents have more than their children. I'm not so sure I agree. You see, while parents have always lived longer, I'm not sure they have always learned more about living, and that's what life experience is really about. There are some people who mannage to become parents who have honestly not learned much from the years that they have experienced. There are also some (especially of the baby boomer generation) who litterally don't remember much of the years they have experienced. In these two groups, I have found the children usually become very good at learning from the limited years they have experienced, probably out of necessity. So I would definitely say it is possible (though by no means common) for a child to have more 'life experience' than their parents.