That is so rediculous! Who voted these monsters into office? I can't believe the Floridians actually are this backward. What next, twelve year olds can get married without parental consent too?
Florida Plastic Surgery Ruling
by Yerusalyim 27 Replies latest jw friends
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Special K
I'm just flaberghasted.. My mouth dropped open and fell to the floor!!
12 year olds..
Are you sure the state isn't run by J.W.'s .. they baptize them 12 and under.
Special K
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RAYZORBLADE
Thanks Reborn for posting that information, as the context certainly means everything, and I have a better sense of what the decision entails.
Crownboy you've also made some valid points.
I would hope, honestly, that parents (for the most part) are actively involved in their childrens' lives and be there in a time of need.
I appreciate the post Reborn/Crownboy, it helps give another perspective to this thread.
Thank you both for that.
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crownboy
What next, twelve year olds can get married without parental consent too?
Even if the parents did consent, should they be able to get married then as well?
I don't think "parental consent" in and of itself should really be the only factor controlling situations like marriage, abortion, etc. We probably wouldn't let 12 year olds get married to each other, or let a 12 year old get married to a 30 year old, but an abortion and the situations under which a teens privacy would be essential towards their making a sound decision are a little different. Even in the hypothetical situation with the 12 year olds marriage, both the parent and the child would agree on something that the 12 year old will utimately be solely affected by. There's no real cohersion there. However, for it to be the equivalent of the abortion scenario, the parents agreement with a 12 year olds marriage would mean that the child had to be married even if the child objected.
In the Florida law, the parent(s) would have veto power over the child's reproductive rights regardless of what the child thought, and frankly parents ought not have that kind of power over their kids. They are the kid's guardians, not their masters. The parent/ child relationship is necessarily unfair to the parent (at least before kids reach adulthood), with the parent putting in more towards the relationship than the child can. The parent must feed, clothe, teach the child,etc., while also respecting the child's right as a human being, even though they can't do for the parent what the parent is doing for them (yet). Just because a parent did all the aforementioned things does not mean they now have absolute control over the kid, even deciding whether or not the child will take on the life long responsibility of parenthood. If these abortions should be stopped, they should be based on something more than the parents "right" to tell the kid what to do, but so far I haven't seen that the supporters of the law had more to go by than some concept of ultimate parental power (or in reality, an anti-abortion agenda). Very young kids aren't allowed to marry, yes, but it's not based on the principle that the persons who gave birth to them thinks it's a bad idea. If we could come up with situtions in which 12 year olds getting married would be of extreme good to their development as persons, and to society in general, I don't think a parents objection should be what stood in the way of a marriage (but obviously, such a scenario would be hard to find, if not impossible).
(Edited to add: thanks razor blade )
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bluesapphire
Crownboy, even though I don't agree with you, I understand your point and appreciate the way you develop it. Thanks.
I do, however, see that my marriage analogy is faulty.
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Yerusalyim
IF these young girls should be allowed to have an abortion because of "privacy" issues without parental consent or notification, then where do we draw the line. Plastic surgery is a matter of privacy. 12 Year old girls should be allowed to have a breast augmentation. If a 12 year old wants to go join the Hare Krisnas and live in a commune, it's their business...parents should have no say...maybe they're being abused at home preventing 12 year olds from going to these communes by making them notify their parents is putting them at RISK!
THIS IS SO MUCH BULLSH*T, the idea that a 12 year olds "right" to privacy over rides a parents responsibility to their child is stupid. This had ZERO to do with the welfare of kids and everything to do with the idea that abortion is a right that over rides all others. This is CRIMINAL. The Florida Supreme Court has lost any common sense it might have ever had.
I wish I lived in Florida just so I could move out in protest.
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crownboy
Well, Yerusalyim, I already mentioned the reason why I was against the very young having plastic surgery (health reasons). Do you think that even if a parent did give consent for a child to get plastic surgery that the supremecy of parental consent ought to be the only thing that factors into allowing the procedure to happen? If the Hare Krishna's were not a dangerous cult that literally could cause you bodily harm, I would definitely disagree with a parent tiranically deciding that their child should not have the freedom to choose their religion (or to flip it again: if you decided that your child should be allowed to be a Hare Krishna, would that make it OK, since you've given the all important parental consent?)
Of course, you do make a valid point about where a line should be drawn, and it's certainly not my intent to imply that a parent has no right to tell their kid what to do (e.g.: help out around the house, do homework, TV regulation), but the right of the parent to tell the kid what to do only extends so far as it does not bring harm to the child (so if for some impossibly odd reason making a child do his homework would cause him some sort of irreparable harm, then I don't think the parent should have the right to make their child do it). In the case of a parental consent for abortion, for some kids letting the parents know about it could bring harm to them.
But as I stated in a previous post, the abortion case extends over to yet another principle, namely whether or not a parent has the right to override a child's reproductive rights, and in the process potentially adversely affect the child's life well beyond the time they'll be with their parents. Should a parent have that much power over not only a child's adolescence, but also the child's adulthood? Should the parent be able to single-handedly overrule a child's legal right to abortion? For me, the answer is clearly no (if the parent was not able to convince their child of the reasonableness of their anti-abortion attitudes for the preceeding 11-17 years, then they should have tried harder ). Not when so much is at stake in the life of a child.
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asleif_dufansdottir
I understand what you're saying, but how is a 12 year old going to pay for plastic surgery on their own anyway? You're talking thousands and thousands of dollars!
The same place she would get money for an abortion...the boyfriend (or the grandparents, or another relative - think about a situation where the other relatives are having a serious conflict with the custodial parent).
On the other hand, if you think about it another way, you might not be on the parents' side.
What if the child has a disfiguring injury or birth defect that was not necessarily life-threatening and the parents' religious belief would not allow plastic surgery to correct it? What if grandma and grandpa or someone else would pay for it? Should a child live through their teenage years disfigurement because the parents don't believe one should "undo God's will" (there are several extreme fundamentalist sects that would not allow corrective surgery, braces, hearing aids, and the like), until they're 18?
It's not always for a nose or a boob job.