Parental Consent for Tanning

[Seth]

Coito, I don't get what you're trying to say. What are e.g. the practical consequences for a doctor if they take your view? Will they be able to do something for the actual patient actually in the room with them right now, or will they have to consider and reconsider possibilities near endlessly, starting with not believing a word any patient says who appears young and wants an abortion?

You seem to be only questioning, but offering no practical solutions.

I don't know what the practical solution is.

I'm torn between not accepting that a doctor, or the State (noGod forbid... <shudder>) knows better than parents what they ought to do. To understanding that doctors do have expertise in these matters.

This is not a cut and dried issue in my mind. Medical decisions are to be between doctor and patient, but patients have parents and guardians for a reason - because they can't make decisions well for themselves. And, doctors are decision makers. Doctors give medical advice and make medical recommendations, and outline options, and the patient (with their parent or guardian) then decides courses of action and treatment.

I do not leave it to doctors to be the end of this discussion. Look at the other conversations we've had when some folks were outraged by doctors advising patients regarding abortions and daring to suggest alternatives, and daring to counsel a patient either against or about abortions. If the matter is between doctor and patient, then it is between doctor and patient, isn't it? Or, must doctors give their medical advice according to a certain orthodoxy that is most friendly to the decision to have an abortion?

You see - some doctors may be staunchly opposed to abortion. What if a child goes in and talks it over, and then "decides" not to get one? And, then she waits to tell her parents until she's too far along? What if a child goes in to a different doctor who is pro abortion, and the child expresses reticence to have an abortion but the doctor counsels her to get one? What if in both cases, the parents are left out of the decision?

The key, I think, is layers of safeguards, which is what we mostly have now. For minors, we have parents and doctors and Social Services and judges, all of whom are tasked with determining to the best of their ability what the best interests of the child actually are. It's an imperfect process no matter how many layers there are, but the notion of leaving all the decisions in the hands of a minor is just simply ridiculous.

[Pappa]

I'm not sure they would be much more careful. Back before contraceptives, people just got married much earlier, and had more babies. Contraceptives really didn't take off until the 1950s, and the pill not until the 1960's. Condoms were earlier, but like today, they were left unwrapped and in the package more often than actually used - they're more lip service. When it comes to act, pull and pray is pretty common still.

Back then, though, by the time a girl was 17, she was already scoping out husbands, and if she wasn't married by 20, she was starting have people look at her funny, and by 25 she was spinster material. Guys, of course, much the same only a tad older. Not married by 25 and you're a "confirmed bachelor" (i.e. code for gay). Teenage girls who got pregnant were spirited away and had the baby and it was put up for adoption, or they married their teenage lover, and then they got a job and started their life.

You might want to recheck your statistics. The median age at first marriage for men was 26.1 in 1890, the same as it was in 1990, after dropping to a low of 22 in 1956. For women, the trends were similar; the age was lower but the median never fell below 20.1, so more than half have always married after 20. The idea that there has been only a monotonic increase in age of marriage is mistaken.

The vast majority of children were born in wedlock back then, demonstrating that people - granted, probably more the women than the men - were much more reluctant to have sex without commitment before birth control.

That doesn't account for all the girls who got pregnant, disappeared for a while to give birth only to return home with a new baby "sister". Unfortunately there'll never be good enough statistics to know how common it was, but it was certainly common enough in the 50s and 60s that seemingly most people knew of a few friends/acquaintances that it has happened to.

[camoguard]

I'd leave the decision of having a baby to a pregnant minor. I'd think she was smart if she aborted. But if she didn't, I think it's her choice since she gets to live with it.

[Warren Dew]

Tanning is increasingly being proven to be exactly a medical procedure in that it radically increases, and may indeed be the cause of skin cancer decades down the road. Current research is finding that bad sunburns in young children are responsible for melanoma later in life, which is why tanning is being seen as an inherently harmful activity to minor children who may make a bad decision of favoring a deep tan over a future that includes cancer.

Aren't people careful to avoid sunburn in tanning beds?

The current research says that while sun exposure - and presumably tanning salons - may cause an increase in melanomas, which can be fatal but are rare, the beneficial effects of sun exposure in preventing other cancers far outweights that:

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/supp ... e-madness/

[hadespussercats]

Okay. I'm not going to be able to answer all of Seth's questions ATM, but I'll give a stab at some.

Regarding abortion as a legal, available option for terminating a pregnancy: Seth, you and I agreed that an adult woman has full control over her womb, what goes into it and what comes out of it. That being the case, your particular ideas about sexual morality are inapplicable, except in a situation where you are personally involved with the woman making the decision about what to do with her womb. Even in that case, your opinion only matters as much as the woman in question decides it matters, since her womb is housing the contents in question.

Your personal morality would also be a consideration if it is your minor daughter who is pregnant and is trying to decide what to do about it (to what extent your views matter in that case, I'll touch on in a bit.)

You might feel strongly that taking abortion out of the picture as an option for women who are pregnant but want or need to terminate that pregnancy would improve the sexual morality of the nation at large. But if you feel that a woman is in charge of her womb, then you need to live with the consequence that there are women who will make choices about their lives and bodies that you don't agree with. Perhaps you could consider some other routes to encouraging the morality you endorse-- teaching, preaching, public relations campaigns, and so forth-- as well as supporting a social safety net of funding and care for unwanted children. Perhaps, since you are generally anti-tax, you could look into creating a foundation or trust towards that end.

Now, on to the subject of parental notification of minors who want abortions--
In an ideal world, daughters would come to their parents for support and guidance when making such a momentous decision, particularly since surgery is involved. However, in an ideal world, girls wouldn't get pregnant unless they wanted to be pregnant. And in your view of things, minors should be abstaining from sex if they don't have their parents' consent to be sexually active in the first place. Still, boys and girls get pregnant (well, girls actually get pregnant, but I phrased the situation that way to illustrate how heavily these "bad consequences" you describe fall on girls, when the boys involved have been just as "irresponsible." My guess is you'd say that's what's natural, and therefore good or acceptable. I think one of the blessings of being human is that we can intervene with nature towards egalitarian ends.)

As I was saying, boys and girls do get pregnant. Without their parents' consent. And if the girl so chooses, she can carry a pregnancy to term without her parents' consent. I understand that you claim a parent should be able to force a child to have an abortion, but the circumstances are rare where they actually could (Note I said rare , not that they don't exist-- no need to present the exceptions that prove the rule.) But if a girl wants to terminate a pregnancy, suddenly the parents' wishes are paramount? Why? I'm sorry, but I don't see how that's not just a legal strategy to make abortions less accessible.

In a mostly ideal world, where mistakes happen but are managed perfectly, parents would be loving and daughters would be trusting and no one would be beaten or thrown into the street or disowned for getting knocked up when they're young. No one would be impregnated by family members.

But hell, in an ideal world, no one would steal or kill, and we wouldn't need any laws in the first place.

Not having parental notification laws doesn't mean a daughter can't talk to her parents if she needs to. It doesn't mean parents can't watch out for their children, be involved in their lives, or help them make decisions. Not having parental notification laws is simply a recognition of the fact that in a world that's not ideal, they hurt more than they help.

[Seth]

Tanning is increasingly being proven to be exactly a medical procedure in that it radically increases, and may indeed be the cause of skin cancer decades down the road. Current research is finding that bad sunburns in young children are responsible for melanoma later in life, which is why tanning is being seen as an inherently harmful activity to minor children who may make a bad decision of favoring a deep tan over a future that includes cancer.

Aren't people careful to avoid sunburn in tanning beds?

The current research says that while sun exposure - and presumably tanning salons - may cause an increase in melanomas, which can be fatal but are rare, the beneficial effects of sun exposure in preventing other cancers far outweights that:

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/supp ... e-madness/

Seeing as how there is significant controversy about the health benefits/risks, it seems to me that society would be wise to defer to the parents when it comes to minors and melanoma. One can take vitamin D pills if that's the issue.

[mistermack]

I'm not accepting anything except arguendo for the purposes of analyzing parental authority over children, whether it be for tanning, abortion or appendectomy, in this particular debate.

That's what make your argument pathetic, and you a troll.
You're quite happy to argue one thing in one debate, and the complete opposite in another.

Yup. I said so when I joined the group. I find that capacity an indication of a superior intellect that's all too rarely found here, and I find those who insist on dogmatically clinging to their own ill-considered and ineptly presented preconceptions and ideologies who are incapable of arguing points from varied positions to be intellectually ossified and of inferior intellect.

So there!

Well, I'm interested in the subject being argued, and peoples' honestly held opinions, because they may be right, I might be wrong, and I might learn something.
Fat chance of learning anything from you, a couldn't-care-less troll, who values verbal diarrhoeah over sincere opinion.
Your "superior intellect" doesn't seem to be widely acknowledged, from what I've seen. If you do have one, then hiding it seems to be your one great talent. I don't think Darwin or Einstein ever got their kicks arguing pure bollocks for the sake of it.
I judge an intellect by what it produces. Yours produces a load of insincere drivel.

[mistermack]

On the subject of parental consent, there should be a test that you have to pass, to demonstrate competence. Because it doesn't take any life-skills, any intelligence, any wisdom or even the slightest bit of common sense to become a parent.
Why should a complete moron have such power over a child's life, just because she managed to drop her pants for five minutes, or he managed to find the right orifice? Is that good enough?

Make em sit an exam.

And the answer to tanning machines is not to ban them, but to only allow machines which have been demonstrated to be safe. Good luck with that.

[Seth]

Okay. I'm not going to be able to answer all of Seth's questions ATM, but I'll give a stab at some.

Thanks, I appreciate it, really.

Regarding abortion as a legal, available option for terminating a pregnancy: Seth, you and I agreed that an adult woman has full control over her womb, what goes into it and what comes out of it. That being the case, your particular ideas about sexual morality are inapplicable, except in a situation where you are personally involved with the woman making the decision about what to do with her womb. Even in that case, your opinion only matters as much as the woman in question decides it matters, since her womb is housing the contents in question.

Well, as I said, like any individual right, the exercise of the right to abortion is subject to reasonable regulation in the public interest. Knowing full well that you will likely maintain that a fetus is not a "person" and therefore has no rights to be respected or considered in such decisions, I want to point out that "personhood" is not, so far, subject to an objective scientific definition. Instead, it's a moral, ethical and social determination made by a particular society based on the dominant mores and beliefs of the culture involved, and that accordingly the state's interest in protecting the rights of the fetus grows along with fetal development.

In the case of the US, the Supreme Court has ruled that the point at which the state's interest in protecting life overcomes the woman's right to privacy and control of her womb is "viability" outside the womb, generally 24 to 28 weeks. But there is no firm, objective point in time at which a zygote, blastocyst, embryo or fetus transforms from a "clump of cells" into a "person." On the other hand, there is a clear, precise scientific moment in time when the two independent cells from the mother and father combine to become a new, unique living human being, and that is at the formation of the zygote, about 24 hours after fertilization.

The point is that the determination of "personhood" as it applies to a fetus is not a medical or scientific determination, it's a political one, subject to the judgment and regulation of the society in which the woman lives.

That being the case, the point at which a woman's absolute sovereignty and control of her womb is subsumed by the state's interest in protecting the child is determined by, and the exercise of her rights becomes subject to one degree or another to the new life growing within her is subject to the oversight and regulation of the state, is not within her sovereign authority any longer, and there is no impediment other than cultural mores and beliefs that would prevent a society from declaring the one single identifiable instant in time during the entire process that changes the fundamental nature of the organism from a combination of cells and DNA into a new, living, unique human being, which point is the formation of the zygote, as the point at which the mother's interests and rights become subservient to the well-being of the human being within her and the state's authority to protect that being's life.

Nor is there any impediment other than cultural mores to picking some other arbitrary time during gestation as the moment that "personhood" attaches, such as the formation of the primitive streak (embryonic notochord), which is the point at which embryology ethicists generally agree experimentation on human embryos should cease.

So, in fact, a woman's sovereign rights over her womb are not absolute, and she can "sit on her rights" and thereby lose them simply by failing to act at the legally-appropriate time. And that, I think, is an appropriate thing. Whenever society determines that a fetus becomes a protected person under the law, be it at the zygote stage, as an embryo, as a viable fetus, or as a delivered infant, it is incumbent upon the woman to exercise her right to privacy as regards abortion before that deadline passes, or she forfeits her right to absolute control.

Your personal morality would also be a consideration if it is your minor daughter who is pregnant and is trying to decide what to do about it (to what extent your views matter in that case, I'll touch on in a bit.)

Indeed.

You might feel strongly that taking abortion out of the picture as an option for women who are pregnant but want or need to terminate that pregnancy would improve the sexual morality of the nation at large. But if you feel that a woman is in charge of her womb, then you need to live with the consequence that there are women who will make choices about their lives and bodies that you don't agree with.

As my above argument illustrates, the problem with this argument is the false assumption that the product of fertilization of a human egg and sperm is something other than a human being and that it is without rights or interests in the matter of abortion at all stages of development. By this I mean that at some point in the pregnancy, the woman's sovereignty becomes subordinate to the interests of the child and the state. What that point is, exactly, is a matter of debate and a decision that the society as a whole is empowered to make that overrules the woman's right to choose abortion.

That being the case, I can argue that women can and should be held accountable for their actions which result in the creation of new human life and that they may be compelled to gestate and look after the best interests of the new life within them at some point in their pregnancy, as dictated by society and its laws.

Perhaps you could consider some other routes to encouraging the morality you endorse-- teaching, preaching, public relations campaigns, and so forth-- as well as supporting a social safety net of funding and care for unwanted children. Perhaps, since you are generally anti-tax, you could look into creating a foundation or trust towards that end.

All of those things are laudable objectives, but they are beyond the scope of this particular debate.

Now, on to the subject of parental notification of minors who want abortions--
In an ideal world, daughters would come to their parents for support and guidance when making such a momentous decision, particularly since surgery is involved. However, in an ideal world, girls wouldn't get pregnant unless they wanted to be pregnant. And in your view of things, minors should be abstaining from sex if they don't have their parents' consent to be sexually active in the first place. Still, boys and girls get pregnant (well, girls actually get pregnant, but I phrased the situation that way to illustrate how heavily these "bad consequences" you describe fall on girls, when the boys involved have been just as "irresponsible." My guess is you'd say that's what's natural, and therefore good or acceptable. I think one of the blessings of being human is that we can intervene with nature towards egalitarian ends.)

As I was saying, boys and girls do get pregnant. Without their parents' consent. And if the girl so chooses, she can carry a pregnancy to term without her parents' consent. I understand that you claim a parent should be able to force a child to have an abortion, but the circumstances are rare where they actually could (Note I said rare , not that they don't exist-- no need to present the exceptions that prove the rule.) But if a girl wants to terminate a pregnancy, suddenly the parents' wishes are paramount? Why? I'm sorry, but I don't see how that's not just a legal strategy to make abortions less accessible.

Assuming arguendo that a girl can indeed choose to deliver a child over the parents objection, there are several reasons why a parent's authority should have priority in the case that the child wishes to have an abortion. The first and most obvious is that abortion is a medical surgical procedure and minor children are not necessarily competent to make good, rational judgments about having surgery that are in their best interests. That fact alone is perfectly adequate to justify a societal injunction against allowing minor children to make such decisions.

Then there is the emotional/psychological issue. Abortion is not, contrary to Planned Parenthood propaganda, universally psychologically or emotionally harmless. Both the short term and long term effects of abortion need careful consideration and wise decision making, and a child is clearly unqualified to make such decisions for herself. This militates for consultation with the parents and the attending physician, and perhaps a mental health professional, as a part of proper decision making in the best interests of the child's immediate and long term mental welfare.

And then there are the religious, ethical and moral considerations that must be presented, considered and decided upon that a child may not be qualified or prepared to address on her own.

And finally, there are, or may be, the interests of the fetus and/or the state's interest in protecting that fetus that need to be considered by someone other than the pregnant child herself.

All this makes parental consultation and consent a reasonable and necessary part of making the difficult decision to abort or keep a child by a child.

In a mostly ideal world, where mistakes happen but are managed perfectly, parents would be loving and daughters would be trusting and no one would be beaten or thrown into the street or disowned for getting knocked up when they're young. No one would be impregnated by family members.

But hell, in an ideal world, no one would steal or kill, and we wouldn't need any laws in the first place.

This is not really a valid argument. The belief that there are bad parents who might toss their girls into the street for seeking an abortion doesn't well represent the facts. It's a special case that can be dealt with using special procedures. This is generally known as the "parental bypass that allows a child in such a circumstance to appeal directly to a judge, who will be more neutral than the parents in deciding what is best for the child.

But if I take your argument correctly, you are advocating for a system where a child can obtain an abortion in secrecy without the parents ever knowing she was pregnant in the first place, in order to avoid negative consequences within the family, the worst-case scenario of which is being thrown out of the house.

The problem here is that you are assuming that what a child fears by way of consequences is how things will play out in reality. The reality is, I would say, that the "oh my God my dad will kill me if he finds out" fear of the pregnant teenager is more often than not an emotional overreaction based in irrational fear that's magnified by feelings of shame and guilt far out of proportion to the actual risk of the girl being killed, or tossed out of the house, by the parent. Children, including teens, are not well known for critically and objectively analyzing risks and dealing rationally with emotions, which is one reason they get pregnant when they didn't want to.

Public policy cannot reasonably look to the irrational fears of a frightened pregnant teen-age girl for rational determinations that parental consultation and consent can safely and properly be bypassed. In particular, it's nonsensical to allow an emotionally overwrought, frightened, embarrassed, ashamed teen age girl to simply walk into an abortion clinic and procure an abortion without any sort of counseling and psychological and medical evaluation by a neutral authority qualified to judge what is best for the child.

Unfortunately, Planned Parenthood is notoriously unreliable and corrupt at giving proper, rational, neutral information about abortion to teens, and has been caught repeatedly telling lies to teenagers, suborning perjury, and defying state laws in their efforts to sell abortions to teenagers without fully and properly informing them of the consequences of having an abortion, much less being able or willing to provide proper, neutral, objective psychological and medical counseling prior to being subjected to the high-pressure sales tactics of Planned Parenthood employees.

If parental authority is to be bypassed, then the girl must appear before a judge and plead her case and prove that notifying and obtaining consent from her parents will result in abuse or be more detrimental to her than doing so and accepting the consequences of her irresponsible sexual conduct before her parents. There must be a legitimate and serious threat of actual harm, either physical or psychological, from the parents before bypassing their right to be involved in such decision can be justifiably bypassed.

Simply fearing that one's parents will be mad, or that the girl might face serious negative (though not abusive) consequences for getting pregnant is not sufficient justification to bypass parental authority. Much, much more is required.

Not having parental notification laws doesn't mean a daughter can't talk to her parents if she needs to. It doesn't mean parents can't watch out for their children, be involved in their lives, or help them make decisions. Not having parental notification laws is simply a recognition of the fact that in a world that's not ideal, they hurt more than they help.

Only in the most extraordinary and egregious of circumstances, where there is a clearly demonstrable risk of serious abuse by a parent if the parent finds out about the pregnancy should a child be permitted to apply to a court for permission to bypass parental consent. There are adequate safeguards in most state laws in that regard. Under no circumstances however can a child be allowed to make the decision all on her own without any competent adult authority reviewing her desires and determining that accommodating them is in her best interests.

[hadespussercats]

This was a big assumption you made in your response to my presentation:

Well, as I said, like any individual right, the exercise of the right to abortion is subject to reasonable regulation in the public interest. Knowing full well that you will likely maintain that a fetus is not a "person" and therefore has no rights to be respected or considered in such decisions, I want to point out that "personhood" is not, so far, subject to an objective scientific definition. Instead, it's a moral, ethical and social determination made by a particular society based on the dominant mores and beliefs of the culture involved, and that accordingly the state's interest in protecting the rights of the fetus grows along with fetal development.

While I do think there are points in the course of fetal development where it would be difficult to argue for full personhood, I do actually think the fetus is a baby long before it is born. I experienced a connection to my son long before he was born, thought of him as a person, saw images of him acting like a baby. If I'd lost the pregnancy at eight months I would have mourned it as the loss of a child.

Here's how I see it-- a baby in utero, and the clump of rapidly-dividing cells that might grow into that baby, are living essentially parasitically off a woman. In my case, I was a willing host. But some women aren't. A baby in utero feeds off another person, changes that person's body irrevocably, subjects her to grave physical and mental risks, takes over her health and her life for months. I don't think any person has the right to do that to another person without that other person's consent.

Now I can almost hear you saying, "She consented to that arrangement when she had sex." I don't see it that way-- as I've explained above.

I think a woman has a right to kill that person that's sucking her very life force, in an act of self-defense. But this situation only exists up to the point of birth.

In your scenario, the moment of conception is your hard-and-fast line even though there are nuances (like the moment of implantation, etc.) that muddy the waters. In my scenario, the moment of birth is the hard-and-fast line. in terms of the baby's physical being, not much has necessarily changed. But the relationship between the mother/host and the baby/parasite is irrevocably different.

I just wanted to put that out there for clarity. I'm not sure how important it is to the discussion at hand.

[hadespussercats]

Only in the most extraordinary and egregious of circumstances, where there is a clearly demonstrable risk of serious abuse by a parent if the parent finds out about the pregnancy should a child be permitted to apply to a court for permission to bypass parental consent. There are adequate safeguards in most state laws in that regard. Under no circumstances however can a child be allowed to make the decision all on her own without any competent adult authority reviewing her desires and determining that accommodating them is in her best interests.

I don't know how a teen girl could prove that to a legal standard, without her parents being involved. Particularly since people generally have a right to defend themselves from testimony against them.

I think having an adult counselor or counselors that would help her with her decision is a great idea, though.

[Pappa]

There's a sub-theme in this thread that relates directly to this discussion Cunt once started a long time ago: http://rationalia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=322

It's about whether men should be able to abdicate parental responsibility. It never got that much discussion, but I always found the argument put forward fascinating.

[Tyrannical]

Regarding abortion as a legal, available option for terminating a pregnancy: Seth, you and I agreed that an adult woman has full control over her womb, what goes into it and what comes out of it. That being the case, your particular ideas about sexual morality are inapplicable, except in a situation where you are personally involved with the woman making the decision about what to do with her womb. Even in that case, your opinion only matters as much as the woman in question decides it matters, since her womb is housing the contents in question.

That's the same type of thinking that made wife beating legal
The husband had full control over his wife and the State had no business telling him otherwise.

[hadespussercats]

There's a sub-theme in this thread that relates directly to this discussion Cunt once started a long time ago: http://rationalia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=322

It's about whether men should be able to abdicate parental responsibility. It never got that much discussion, but I always found the argument put forward fascinating.

We discussed it quite a bit in the super-long abortion thread that started around when Seth joined up. It'd be tricky to figure out how to implement such a thing with the least possible amount of abuse, but I think it's worth considering.

[hadespussercats]

Regarding abortion as a legal, available option for terminating a pregnancy: Seth, you and I agreed that an adult woman has full control over her womb, what goes into it and what comes out of it. That being the case, your particular ideas about sexual morality are inapplicable, except in a situation where you are personally involved with the woman making the decision about what to do with her womb. Even in that case, your opinion only matters as much as the woman in question decides it matters, since her womb is housing the contents in question.

That's the same type of thinking that made wife beating legal
The husband had full control over his wife and the State had no business telling him otherwise.

Whatever. Living in the same house isn't the same as living inside someone else's body.