Ethics of Allowing Anyone to Have Kids

Biomedical Ethics

The author of this report was given the choice of one of two assignments when it comes to the Johnna Fisher textbook offering on medical ethics. The author of this report has decided to seize upon one of the articles littered throughout the book and make a thesis argument and report about the same. The Fisher text is full of articles and ethical quandaries that are ripe for the picking. However, the author of this report has chosen to focus on the idea of sterilizing the "feeble-minded" as explained and argued by Grekul, Krahn and Odynak. The question of whether people could or should have full rights to procreate despite the social problems it can create or aggravate is a burning question for many people. While choosing who can procreate and who should not are very Nazi-esque to some, the idea of controlling who can have kids and who cannot is not a question that should be completely disregarded.

Analysis

One historical factoid about eugenics and who has been in favor of it should be looked at before going any further. In the United States, Planned Parenthood is seen either as a pariah or a bastion and bulwark for the reproductive rights and safety of women. Its founder, Margaret Sanger, was an unapologetic believer in eugenics. Eugenics was an active part of the birth control movement that Margaret Sanger championed. However, to label all eugenics as negative and improper would be a mistake. Of course, there are some eugenics proponents that are focused more on "fit" classes of children. Meaning, people that were fit to have children in terms of mental acuity, financial resources and so forth were not to be restricted from having children because they had the means to properly birth and raise a child. However, there are those that refer to people that are of "inferior stock" and thus should not be having children. The dilemma that arises is who gets to define who is of "inferior stock" and who is fit. That reason and that reason alone is probably the main reason that birthing of children is not restricted from a legal standpoint (PBS).

When it is argued in court, which happens from time to time, the lawyers for those that would be impacted often issue a clarion call and assert that the court has no right to be doing so and that, even if they did, they should not dare engage in such restrictions as it is a violation of the human rights of the person that would be restricted. While that may sound all well and good to some people, there are parents out there, both past and present, that do some extremely nasty things. Whether it be using drugs around children, abuse, having kids when the monetary and other resources are just not present, people that kill their children through neglect or intent and so forth all make the case that having kids, just like driving and owning a gun, should not be a basic human right because the damage that is rendered by parents acting badly or illegally can create very large social and other problems.

But as noted above, drawing that line between "fit" parents and "unfit" parents can be tricky. While it has been done in the past, no non-bigot or simpleton would or could argue that people of certain races or ethnicities are unfit across the board. This would be racist on its face and should be dismissed for the Nazi-sounding filth that it is. However, when it comes to things like intellectual disability, genetic defects and so forth, stronger arguments could be made. For example, there could quite easily be the argument that a person with Down Syndrome should not have kids, and for two main reasons. First, the chances that the person in question has the ability to lead an independent life with no major assistance, let alone having that person be responsible for another child, are not all that good. Second, it is a known fact that the person is a carrier for the disorder and thus it would seem to be unwise to chance someone else getting the disorder if it can be avoided. Indeed, there are many that argue that a fetus that is identified to have Down Syndrome should be aborted for that reason and that reason alone. Others suggest and assert that life is sacred and that such a factor should never be the impetus for such a decision. Depending on the morals and beliefs of a person, it could go either way. Even when dismissing personal ethics entirely, the idea of aborting a Down Syndrome or other afflict fetus would seem to go against the "do no harm" credo of medicine. On the other hand, preventing pregnancy in the first place through tubal ligation (women) or vasectomy (men) removes most (but not all) of the ethical implications and problems that arise. Again, many assert that restricting having kids outright is not ethical as it violates the rights of the person impacted.

However, the social problems being created by this lax regulation of who has kids and who does not is creating some massive problems. One can easily use the United States as a good point of analysis. The United States has a couple of things going on that are greatly impacting the prospects and fate of the country in the future. First, people that are poorer and less educated tend to have more kids (if not many more) than those that are educated and/or richer. Second, there are a lot of people that are clearly mentally ill that are having children and this creates an obvious domino effect whereby the child is afflicted with the same (or similar) mental illness as the parent through both genetic and environmental antecedents. Third, nearly half of all births in the United States are illegitimate as they occur outside of wedlock. When it comes to racial minorities (who are more likely to be among the poor and uneducated blocs mentioned before), the rates are even worse. Black Americans have an out-of-wedlock rate of about three fourths. These happenstances and many others are leading to a glut of children that are generally underserved when it comes to their upbringing, their schooling and so forth. When it comes to education, poverty is one of the major causes of poor performance in school. There are others but poverty is far and away the major one. Poor parentage and poverty combined (and they often intersect) are probably the major two problems by themselves (Akerloff).