Debate, Essay Example

You need a license to drive, a license to fish, heck, you even need a license for your dog. But any [idiot] can be a parent. You don’t need approval from anyone to get pregnant and become a mom. On the other hand, if you want to adopt a baby, you have to go through a pretty intense application process. Among other things, you have to be fingerprinted, provide recommendations, give evidence of your physical and mental health, and sometimes you even have to be a certain religion, or be married for a certain amount of time.

It makes little sense to require a license for relatively unimportant activities such as fishing, cutting down a Christmas tree or climbing a mountain. Meanwhile anyone is allowed to have a child. This situation is unacceptable.

The future of America rests in large part on the role that the parents play in their children’s lives. Just as getting married (which does require a license) should carry with it a lot of serious thought and questioning, so should having a child. Too often, people have children for all the wrong reasons: their parents are begging for grandchildren, their biological clocks and the continuation of their name determines the decision; their religion does not allow for birth control and, perhaps most often, their hormones got the better of them and they were not protected.

If it were up to me, parenting classes would be required before conception, as would psychiatric evaluations. I think you should be reviewed to insure you are reproducing for the right reasons, and not income tax refunds. Each prospective parent should have a good work history, and the means of supporting their children. If you can’t feed them, don’t have them. If you can’t provide a suitable home and life for a child, you shouldn’t have any.

It is really sad that so many children are abused, neglected and unwanted. If we were controlling who had children, we would see less child abuse, less dead beat parents, and less dependency on the government to provide for the children.

I absolutely do believe that people should be required to have a license to have children. I think many of society’s problems could be solved with this one simple measure! Although, it’s not a realistic idea… but a great idea, nonetheless.

People need a license to do far less important tasks. Drive a car, put an addition on your own house, and perform open heart surgery. There are way too many people on this planet. Our life expectancy gets longer and our population is constantly increasing. At this rate, we’re not going to even have any wildlife or forests or even land to farm on. We’re ruining the planet with so much abuse and misuse of its natural resources. How long can the planet survive when we’re all shoulder to shoulder knocking the weak and old into the ocean which will be a rotting cesspool? 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. As Roger McIntire notes, “We already license pilots, salesmen, scuba divers, plumbers, electricians, teachers, veterinarians, cab drivers, soil testers and television repairmen. Are our TV sets and toilets more important to us than our children?

But even if we do have the right to be a parent or to parent, no right is absolute. My rights end where your freedoms begin. The real question is under what conditions do we have those rights and, then, under what conditions are those rights violated. Why, for example, should the right to be a parent depend on the means of becoming a parent? People seeking access to new reproductive technologies are screened for genetic anomalies, infectious diseases and other “high-risk factors”; they must read and understand information about the risks, responsibilities and implications of what they are undertaking; and they must undergo counselling that addresses their values and goals.

Most horribly, Adolf Hitler imported American eugenics to Germany, first sterilizing over 400,000, then engaging in “euthanasia” of 275,000 more through 1945, and during World War II, engaging in the mass executions of millions. Killing the “unfit” as government policy was never implemented in the U.S., but many doctors and mental institutions did it informally anyway through neglect or poisoning. Thus was the lethal injection born. Had it not happened in Germany, it might have happened here.

On the flip side, requiring parents to be licensed to have children goes far beyond 20th century eugenics. Even if one could decide that a class of individuals was unfit to have children, government is well known for screwing up anything it does, and a mistake involving forced sterilization cannot be fixed. We cannot travel this road again.

References

Should Parents Need a License to Have Children Retrieved December 1, 2009 from, http://www.helium.com/knowledge/40371-should-parents-need-a-license-to-have-children

We License Plumbers and Pilots-why not Parents Retrieved December 1, 2009 from, http://www.seattlepi.com/opinion/192826_focus03.html

Should People Need a License to Have Children Retrieved December 1, 2009 from, http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/433212/should_people_need_a_license_to_have.html?cat=9

Licensing Act 2003 Retrieved December 1, 2009 from, http://www.bradford.gov.uk/NR/rdonlyres/9035A8B2-195C-4A93-831B-6B673D6D18F3/0/PremisesChildren.pdf