Should you need a license to have kids?

[Solace]

I mean, I can't go to a strip club when I'm 14 but I can have a child...

I know right.

[mrjizzbomber]

I apologize to the collective intelligences of everyone who has replied already, but this response comes without reading any of them - I just want to throw my two cents in...

What you are suggesting (a 'procreation license') is absurd and impossible. I think you are correctly and astutely identifying a serious issue in our country (and on an even larger scale in the world), but you need to be very careful in your solution.

Teenage pregnancy, orphans, kids living in poverty... these are all serious issues. It is easy to say we can remedy them by legally stopping individuals from reproducing, but you need to consider the serious violation of those individual's fundamental freedoms.

Our country is founded upon one single principal, 'freedom'. Without giving that word proper justice, 'freedom' means you can do whatever you want, as long as you are not infringing on the freedom of others.

Simply put, stopping individuals from having children is infringing on their rights TO have children - with the justification that this will have a future effect of protecting their children from unfit parents. First of all, what this does is take the rights away from the parents because you are protecting the rights of their children... who do not exist yet! Protecting the rights of unborns (and in this case, those who have yet to even be conceived) will lead you down a slippery slope. Should poor people be allowed to procreate? How about those who are prone to heart disease?

Once again, I think you missed the target with your solution, but you are absolutely thinking about one of the biggest problem our country... no fuck that, our world is facing. (Think about China, India, the 'third world').

Anyway,

- The Bomber

[Emadyville]

^ You should have definitely read the responses. I think you went way too into it, it was merely an idea about the extreme of some people. For instance, I go to school with people who do accounting work before they graduate, and have told me about people who come in for free to get this work done for their taxes, and specifically ask (and this is with, for every time she has told me this happened, there are several, 4-5, children with them) if they have more children what tax credits or money will they receive. If people want to have kids just so they can get tax breaks, or get more food stamps/money/aid or whatever, to me that is completely undermining the value of life, and hurts everyone else in the country who pays taxes (though that's the real issue here).

Things like that piss me off extremely, if you can't afford to have a child why would you? You make life for them worse and yourself, and society. I'm not saying you can't have kids, I'm just saying under certain circumstances should there not be something that stops people from doing something that doesn't make sense (I have no other way to word that lol).

Like I said before, idk who can't agree the fact that I can't buy a powerball ticket until I'm 18, yet at 12 I can bring a life into this world. To me that's just kind of absurd. Also, I don't have a solution, I don't want to even think of one, nor do I think there should be laws against this or anything I've said previous. This was merely brought up to see if you agree or disagree that this shit is kinda fucked up.

Edit: forgot to mention that I appreciate your opinion, I was in no way trying to say your thoughts were wrong or misguided in any way, I just wanted to add that

[mrjizzbomber]

I took a few minutes to read through most of the topic. I am just very lazy...

In response to the tax break / food stamps point (Emady)...

The cost of raising a child is enormous, nothing that can even be partially recovered by tax breaks, food stamps or donations. And I'm not only talking about the actual cost of food, clothing, medical care, etc etc etc, I'm including the cost of time associated with actually raising the child. What I mean is, if you are spending time raising a child, then you are NOT spending that time working and earning wages. The cost of that child becomes the actual monetary costs plus the loss of wages / loss of that time's utility. Anyone who thinks that having a child to receive handouts is a positive value action has rocks in their head.

In response to the 'if you can not afford a child why would you have one' argument (Emady)...

Why should someone who is in a worse economic condition be denied the right to have a child? Lets be honest, how much money you have is directly correlated to the family you were born into. If person A is born into a rich family, person B is born into a middle class family and person C is born in a slum, who do you think is going to be better off financially? Not only will the people born into better economic conditions have wealth from their families, they will have access to better education, a better police force / live in a lower crime-rate community (thus lowering the chances they get involved in crime or drugs). Are these people more entitled to raise children because they began their lives in a better position to succeed? I would find it hard to believe that the economic conditions of a person's birthplace has any correlation to their ability to raise children.

In response to the age restriction argument (Emady)...

There is no feasible way from preventing two people from having sex. A lot of money already gets dumped into sexual education and there are an abundance of laws against certain sexual situations (rape, an adult having sex with a minor, etc...) Barring two minors form having sex is not practical and (at least from my definition of human rights) begins to push us down a slippery slope. You are comparing a law which would begin to impinge upon 'human rights' with laws against minors going to strip clubs and playing lottery (which, by the way, are fundamentally in existence to PROTECT the 'human rights' of the minors - ie. protecting the ignorant form getting involved in self-deprecating behaviors... I know, I know, a very 'republican / Christian / conservative type of theory which I myself do not necessarily agree with).

In response to Yoshi...

Mandated tubal ligation??? Forced genital surgery??? I think its more reasonable to say THOSE are things that should not happen in our century. Wow.

In response to Sophie...

Yes, people do need to be educated in bringing up children. So why spend millions of dollars creating a licensing system, running police investigations and spending money at trial preventing people from having unlicensed sex? Why not use that money to educate people? Including educating people on making reasonable, sound choices of when to have a child.

In response to SajN and Robbie G



- The Bomber