Father's Rights (Children)

[TheKassi]

No, the drinking age is one among a great deal of examples western society (not just American society) is given moral authority to override the choices one makes with their own bodies, even when those choices do not have huge finical or emotion consequences for others. If I remember right entire European countries have banned trans fat.

that makes the 'control over your own body' line pure fantasy.

Now if you want to argue that society shouldn't have such moral authority, that is fine. That however isn't anything like the way the world currently works, and absent a global libertarian revolution (which is a laughable concept) the world isn't going to start working that way.

[MinDonner]

No, the drinking age is one among a great deal of examples western society (not just American society) is given moral authority to override the choices one makes with their own bodies, even when those choices do not have huge finical or emotion consequences for others.

Of course not just American society - but you were giving specific examples of occasions where a person was able to make particular adult decisions (go to war, etc) and yet not be allowed to drink, and that IS mostly an American thing. Just to clarify. Child-specific restrictions are a different kettle of fish from constraints on adults.

If I remember right entire European countries have banned trans fat.

If they have, then they haven't banned anyone from eating it - anyone that wants to can cook up some lovely trans fat and stuff their face. Drugs would be a good example, but food-quality-control is dubious at best. If it's restricting anything, it's the ability of unscrupulous food-vendors to rip off their customers with harmful but cheap ingredients, nobody's bodily integrity is being violated.

that makes the 'control over your own body' line pure fantasy.

Now if you want to argue that society shouldn't have such moral authority, that is fine. That however isn't anything like the way the world currently works, and absent a global libertarian revolution (which is a laughable concept) the world isn't going to start working that way.

So any right has to be either/or, or it's worthless? This is peculiar thinking. Dealing in absolutes is pretty much impossible outside of theoretical physics. "Control over your own body" can be quite handily defined as "choice about medical procedures" without getting into crazy extremes.

[TheKassi]

First: I see no reason to get into a discussion about the invalidity of any example that fails to apply globally. Heck, I do not think any discussion about reproductive rights can include global examples, given the existence of places like China and the Middle East.

Second: If you are old enough to fight through a couple of tours in Afghanistan, you are not a child.

Third: Prohibiting the sale of something in mass production all over the world is the same as prohibiting someone from putting it in their body. Trans fat is however once again just an example. If you wish to go with recreational drugs, or the availability/sale of contraception, or prostitution, or the consumption of flavored cigarettes or any number of an extremely long list, feel free.

Lastly: Even narrowing it down to “control over medical procedures” the claim is still fantasy. There are extensive medical regulations prohibiting everything from certain medical procedures and the sale and or use of medication, particularly if you demand we open up the scope to the entire world, rather then just sections hundreds of millions of people wide. The primary example from my perspective would be euthanasia. If I remember right that example even applies to parts of Europe. I seem to remember a news caster in the United Kingdom admitting on air to helping his partner end his suffering, counter to that nation's laws.

A person does not have control over their body. A person does not have control over the medical procedures they elect to undertake. If you wish to refine that statement's wording to make it accurate, you would have to go as far as saying "Some societies sometimes choose not to prohibit certain medical procedures."

Which kind of lacks the intended punch of the original quoted statement.

[A wilding]

But the point of most laws that you see as limiting people's control over their own bodies is that they have a central purpose of protecting us from other people, not of limiting our own choices.

For example, euthanasia. The major argument against it in the UK is that, if it was legal, elderly and disabled people might well be subjected to a great deal of social and family pressure to opt for it against their wishes ("soaking up precious NHS resources that would be better spent on someone who might actually get better"; "the nursing home payments mean that your grandchildren won't be able to afford to go to university"). Euthanasia is a contentious issue precisely because this argument is balanced against the strong one that maybe people in a sufficiently bad way should be able to choose to die if they really want to. So the result in practice is that assisted suicides are often not investigated and terminally ill patients in pain are typically allowed to take dangerously large doses of morphine.

Or food additives. As MD said, nobody goes out looking for food with trans-fats in, or cooks it up as a delicacy. Banning it is about protecting us from food companies sneaking it into food under the radar.

But the US age limit on drinking alcohol is just stupid.

[Kalbear]

Until that time the 'unborn child' is still a foetus without a heartbeat. Abortion after the third trimester is illegal and/or dangerous for the mother, in now way am I suggesting it is ok to abort a child with a heartbeat.

Then most abortions are illegal, as you can hear the baby's heartbeat well into the first trimester.

also, abortion after the third trimester would be 'killing a born child'.

[Brienne the Beauty]

But the point of most laws that you see as limiting people's control over their own bodies is that they have a central purpose of protecting us from other people, not of limiting our own choices.

For example, euthanasia. The major argument against it in the UK is that, if it was legal, elderly and disabled people might well be subjected to a great deal of social and family pressure to opt for it against their wishes

I really hate that argument. It's so patronizing towards elderly people, as if they did not have minds of their own or were children. That's one of the horrific things about becoming old - becoming legally a child again, but without the fun. And the only way you can avoid it is taken away from you - euthanasia. If an elderly sick person decides they can't go on, they have to kill themselves on their own (so lonely and sad) and risk making their situation worse by a botched attempt. I'd compare it to a home abortion in a country where abortion is not legal - banning it doesn't prevent it, it just makes things worse. I think the laws against euthanasia are cowardly.

Laws banning or mandating abortion or euthanasia are violations of the fundamental human right over your own body in ways that laws banning drugs or drink or unhealthy foods are not. Drink and drugs are "nice to have" additions to the human experience, and we don't suffer from not having them. The rights to decide whether or not to end your life or to start a new one are absolutely fundamental and important, because lacking that choice can ruin more than one life.

[A wilding]

I really hate that argument. It's so patronizing towards elderly people, as if they did not have minds of their own or were children.

I don't like it either. But given some of the things that already go on in some geriatric wards and nursing homes, I don't think we can deny that it would happen.

[TheKassi]

But the point of most laws that you see as limiting people's control over their own bodies is that they have a central purpose of protecting us from other people, not of limiting our own choices.

For example, euthanasia. The major argument against it in the UK is that, if it was legal, elderly and disabled people might well be subjected to a great deal of social and family pressure to opt for it against their wishes ("soaking up precious NHS resources that would be better spent on someone who might actually get better"; "the nursing home payments mean that your grandchildren won't be able to afford to go to university"). Euthanasia is a contentious issue precisely because this argument is balanced against the strong one that maybe people in a sufficiently bad way should be able to choose to die if they really want to. So the result in practice is that assisted suicides are often not investigated and terminally ill patients in pain are typically allowed to take dangerously large doses of morphine.

Or food additives. As MD said, nobody goes out looking for food with trans-fats in, or cooks it up as a delicacy. Banning it is about protecting us from food companies sneaking it into food under the radar.

But the US age limit on drinking alcohol is just stupid.

Be it wise or not one fact remains the same. Society demands some people live in abject agony, lingering absent hope but still suffering in ways most people can not imagine, not to mention the shared suffering endured by their families, so that others might not have to endure possible shifts in social pressure.

(side note: Given the nature of this thread, I think it would be more then fair to argue that one could make the exact same argument about the social pressure to seek an abortion increasing with the legalization of abortion. There are a lot of parallels between the right to choose and the right to die.)

Society sticks it's nose right in a very personal issue and overrides the choice of an individual to seek a medical procedure in the name of protecting third party from being coaxed into doing the same. It does this despite the tremendous physical and emotional agony it inflicts upon not only the person seeking the medical procedure, but those close to them.

That takes the wind right out of the “My body my choice” or “"Control over your own body" or "choice about medical procedures” lines, regardless of how you wish to refine them. As so many have brought up in this thread before laws are currently constructed with an eye toward the good of society, not respecting the choices of an individual, regardless of how personal, painful, and complex those choices are.

[Brienne the Beauty]

I don't like it either. But given some of the things that already go on in some geriatric wards and nursing homes, I don't think we can deny that it would happen.

Probably, but is that any reason to deny a human right? Remember that denying the right to a peaceful death results in some very real negative consequences that are happening right now - people dying in agony and fear when they do not need to or want to. And who would want to be dependent on grasping relatives that want you dead? What sort of life would that be? They'd doubtless be abusive and neglectful.

[A wilding]

Be it wise or not one fact remains the same. Society demands some people live in abject agony, lingering absent hope but still suffering in ways most people can not imagine, not to mention the shared suffering endured by their families, so that others might not have to endure possible shifts in social pressure.

In the UK at least, the "abject agony" would be very unlikely. Such a person would almost certainly be blissed out on morphine, and if the morphine killed them before whatever else was wrong with them did, no fuss would be made.

I don't want to get too sidetracked here, but I don't think it is possible to just sweep the case against euthanasia under the carpet. I don't know if you have met any mildly demented people, but in my anecdotal experience, it is very easy to talk them into doing something without them really understanding what they are agreeing to. I can also cite further anecdotal evidence of a nursing home where the staff moved the hands of patients to get them to sign postal voting forms at an election. Certainly abusive treatment of elderly people is all too common. I think it would be very difficult to set up a foolproof procedure to ensure that all voluntary euthanasias really were voluntary.

(Incidentally abortion is more or less available on demand over here, but there is very little social pressure on women to have them. The UK has a remarkably high number of teenage mothers.)

[TheKassi]

If you want to have a discussion about the merits of prohibiting euthanasia I would be more then happy to have one in another thread, but right here I am just using it as an a example of the extent of the moral authority society is given over people's most personal choices to contradict the claim that the right to have control over your body or whatever phrasing is favored is something society respects.

It quite simply does not. Not on any level, not even close.

Rights, as viewed by society, are not objective inviolate principles. They are inherently mutable and subject to changing public opinion or social need.

[turinturambar]

Mark and Emma are married, with no kids. Mark has a good job, but Emma has been unlucky in her career and is a low earner.

Emma has always dreamed of children, but they have had no luck conceiving. They use IVF, and it's a gruelling process, but finally the happy positive pregnancy test arrives. However, Mark finds he does not share Emma's joy. He never really wanted children - he only went along with it to make Emma happy, and the carefree girl he married is gone, replaced by a baby-obsessed bore. He has met this great new woman at work, and they have been falling in love while Emma was distracted by the IVF.

Mark demands a divorce. He also demands an abortion, because the money he'd pay in child support would interfere with his plans to form a new life with the wonderful woman he has fallen in love with. Emma is nothing to him any more, and he was never really invested in the baby.

Emma now has a choice: raise a child in poverty, or abort a dearly loved unborn child.

Emma would probably be getting some pretty hefty alimony payments that would help her situation out quite a bit.

Women tend to "bond" with a child in the womb. In other words, they name them, they plan out the nursery and they start to think of them as one of the family. I know a pregnant lady myself, and I honestly think she would be a danger to herself if her husband acted like "Mark" and demanded an abortion. It would be horrific beyond words. It would be the same as if someone took her newborn baby and dashed it's head in on the ground at birth.

You can't take human emotions out of the law. Otherwise, rape would be legal if it resulted in no physical harm, wouldn't it?

I completely understand this. I had a 5 year relationship that ended due to a child we lost 4 1/2 months in. She fell into a very deep depression and never was the same person after that. I took it hard, she took it much worse than she did. I also had a friend whose fiancee became pregnant and then had an abortion without telling him. Needless to say, their relationship ended after that, and he suffered a long emotional lapse about the abortion. He still has strong feelings about it to this day. People hear that beating heart, they see the images, they have a name for it, they become very excited about it. When a miscarriage or something similar happens, it can be absolutely devestating. People like Solymar will never understand.

[Brienne the Beauty]

Emma would probably be getting some pretty hefty alimony payments that would help her situation out quite a bit.

In a hypothetical world heartless enough to allow men to opt out of child support? I doubt it. Also even in this world from what I hear alimony is becoming less common, due to women having careers outside the home.