LICENSING PARENTS: Peg Tittle (in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer)

[More: here, here, here, here; via the intrepid commenters at Mark Shea's. --Eve]

...The thing is, we can already create human life. Kids do it every day.

And although we've talked ourselves silly and tied ourselves in knots about ending life --active, passive, voluntary, coerced, premeditated, accidental, negligent -- we have been horrendously silent, irresponsibly laissez-faire about beginning life. We would not accept such wanton creation of life if it happened in the lab. Why do we condone it when it happens in bedrooms and backseats?

It should be illegal to create life, to have kids, in order to have another pair of hands at work in the field or to have more of us than them. It should be illegal to create a John Doe Jr. to carry on the family name and/or business.

And it should be illegal to knowingly create a life that will be spent in pain and/or that will be severely substandard. ...

Then again, wait a minute -- we have set a bar for parents: adoptive/foster parents. Those would-be parents have to prove their competence. Why do we cling to the irrational belief that biological parents are automatically competent -- in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary? We have, without justification, a double standard.

One common response to this notion of licensing parents is dismissal with a giggle, as if I'm suggesting the presence of police in the bedroom. But there is no necessary connection between sex (whether or not it occurs in the bedroom) and reproduction (unless, of course, you reject all forms of contraception), so that response indicates an error of overgeneralization. On the other hand, sex can make you a parent only in the biological sense; since I'm proposing that we license both parentage (the biological part of being a parent -- the provision of sperm, ovum, and/or uterus) and parenting (the social part of being a parent -- the provision of care, very comprehensively defined), the response also indicates an error of undergeneralization. ...

Yet another response is dismissal with indignation, because surely such a proposal violates our rights! But do we have the right to replicate ourselves, to create a person? And do we have a right to raise that, or any other, person? ...

Why should children born as a result of assisted insemination or in vitro fertilization be privileged to a higher standard of care in their creation than children born as a result of coitus? These questions about rights are not easy questions to answer, and this particular dismissal of the proposal to license parents reveals gross naivete.

Yet another dismissal appeals to the difficulty or impossibility of implementing the idea: Who would set the requirements, what would those requirements be, how would they be assessed ... ? ...

Well, those bedrooms and backseats -- we could never really control the parentage part. No, not at the moment. But what if we developed a contraceptive vaccination? ...We could administer the vaccine as a matter of routine, perhaps once puberty is reached. And then, as part of the license, the antidote could be made available.

One last objection concerns the potential for abuse. Do we really want to give the state this particular power? I have to say, seeing a theocracy coming ever closer, that this is the argument that gives me most pause.

I want to point out that just because something will be abused doesn't mean it shouldn't be tried, and I want to point out that our many other licensing policies still exist despite the occasional abuse.

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posted by Eve at 10:39 PM VOTE

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