NationStates Jolt Archive

I'm interested in what people think of the concept of people requiring a license before they are allowed to breed.

Putting aside the obvious diffulculties of enforcing something like this, do you think it is a good or fair concept, or the height of fascism?

IMHO, it's probably not a bad idea - I firmly believe that there are people out there who are totally unsuited to being parents. I would require extensive physcological tests, physical tests and checks to see whether individuals have the resources to support children. It would also help with the massive overpopulation the earth is experiencing at this point in time (assuming it was a worldwide initiative).

I mean, you need a license to drive, to own a gun, and in some countries, even to own a pet. So why not a breeding license? China (among others) already has policies regarding couples having children.

All feedback welcome. :wink:

You've wandered into the prickly subject of eugenics. Who would decide who is fit or unfit to reproduce?

As for China, it's very gender-centric. Women will have abortions in order to have their one child be a boy. If, however, they carry a girl to term as a first child, they're allowed to try once more for a boy. In some rural areas of China, it wasn't rigidly enforced, people were having more than just the one child...and then the government decided to enforce the law after the fact. There are stories of infants being drowned in rice paddies as soon as they were born.

Do you want to be like China? A dictatorship? Think about it.

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R j00 b45h|n9 m3j3 6r4mm4r, ph45c|57?
Free your mind! (http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bright/berkman/comanarchism/whatis_toc.html)
I like big butts!
http://img63.photobucket.com/albums/v193/eddy_the_great/steatopygia.jpg

You've wandered into the prickly subject of eugenics. Who would decide who is fit or unfit to reproduce?

As for China, it's very gender-centric. Women will have abortions in order to have their one child be a boy. If, however, they carry a girl to term as a first child, they're allowed to try once more for a boy. In some rural areas of China, it wasn't rigidly enforced, people were having more than just the one child...and then the government decided to enforce the law after the fact. There are stories of infants being drowned in rice paddies as soon as they were born.In 50 years China will be country filled with a bunch of gay men.

Actually, the chinese policy could solve itself. They wanted to control an out of control population, and they may have done it. Because boys are the preferred children, and the ones born since the beginning of the policy are growing up, they're having trouble finding women to marry...and reproduce with.

Homosexuality, by the way, is a crime against the state in China.

You've wandered into the prickly subject of eugenics. Who would decide who is fit or unfit to reproduce?

As for China, it's very gender-centric. Women will have abortions in order to have their one child be a boy. If, however, they carry a girl to term as a first child, they're allowed to try once more for a boy. In some rural areas of China, it wasn't rigidly enforced, people were having more than just the one child...and then the government decided to enforce the law after the fact. There are stories of infants being drowned in rice paddies as soon as they were born.In 50 years China will be country filled with a bunch of gay men.

The chinese should go back to the old way of selling their daughters to the highest bidder.

People should have to get a breeding license. It shouldnt be based on anything besides wealth and abiltiy to support the child. The punishment for disobeying shoulodnt be too much but every child gone unborn is one less child in an orphanage.

In that case, I say I wouldn't mind being in a dictatorship like China with laws like that! Rock on!! Haha, jk, I like having my freedoms. If I want to light myself on fire and becoming a ravaging, flaming fagot someday, then I'd like to have that option. Hopefully, that day will never come.

OK, let me expand my thoughts on hypothetical conditions required to get such a license:

> Mental condition - individuals with a history of pedophilia, excessive violence would be required to prove beyond reasonable doubt to qualified physchiatric personnel that they would pose no threat to their potential child. Inidividuals with debilitating mental conditions which would prevent proper care of a child (alzheimers, acute schizophrenia, autism) could also be ruled unfit (as it stands, many countries would remove children from the care of these people anyway, after birth). Not to mention that there are poeple so stupid out there that I wouldn't trust them with a TV remote, let alone a child.

> Physical qulaifiers - indivuals with life threatening diseaes or ailments which would be passed to a child (i.e. AIDS, HIV) couldn't get a license. Indivuals with extensively debilatating physical or mental handicaps that would (most likely) be passed to the child would also be unable to get a license. (This raises the whole deabte on the ethicality of knowingly bringing a deformed or retarded child into the world - a difficult issue, I agree).

> Economic qualifiers - is a child going to be given sufficient resources when fgrowing up. Will they be properly fed, clothed and educated. If people do not have the resoucres to do this themselves, are there sufficient government handouts in place to ensure the childs wellbeing.

Aboce all, I would like to point out that this is a totally hypothetical issue - it's not something I would ever neccessarily like to see intorduced in the real world. :wink:

You've wandered into the prickly subject of eugenics. Who would decide who is fit or unfit to reproduce?

As for China, it's very gender-centric. Women will have abortions in order to have their one child be a boy. If, however, they carry a girl to term as a first child, they're allowed to try once more for a boy. In some rural areas of China, it wasn't rigidly enforced, people were having more than just the one child...and then the government decided to enforce the law after the fact. There are stories of infants being drowned in rice paddies as soon as they were born.In 50 years China will be country filled with a bunch of gay men.

The chinese should go back to the old way of selling their daughters to the highest bidder.

People should have to get a breeding license. It shouldnt be based on anything besides wealth and abiltiy to support the child. The punishment for disobeying shoulodnt be too much but every child gone unborn is one less child in an orphanage.

Penis, Ben. :D

Anyway, I think that's a bad idea. People will never follow this rule. It'll turn out like prohibition.

Ah yes, eugenics. That sounds like fun. :roll:

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R j00 b45h|n9 m3j3 6r4mm4r, ph45c|57?
Free your mind! (http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bright/berkman/comanarchism/whatis_toc.html)
I like big butts!
http://img63.photobucket.com/albums/v193/eddy_the_great/steatopygia.jpg

Actually, the chinese policy could solve itself. They wanted to control an out of control population, and they may have done it. Because boys are the preferred children, and the ones born since the beginning of the policy are growing up, they're having trouble finding women to marry...and reproduce with.

Homosexuality, by the way, is a crime against the state in China.

. . .Which is why there has been a dramatic uptick in the kidnapping of Laosian, Cambodian, and Vietnamese women in recent years. People are making quite a hefty profit in the slave trade in those nations because of this policy.

As for the main question itself, I think the idea to be fairly abhorrent on several different levels. On the one hand, you are basically giving the government (the only entity really capable of enforcement of such issues) carte blanche to intrude on one of the most fundamental interactions between humans, and I don't think that would be a good thing even were the consequences all rosy.

On the other hand, I think that the consequences are not so rosy at all. Let us suppose, for an instant, that such an action were taken, and all such parents actually did have to undergo such stringent testing. Do you really think that diseases like bipolar disorder or alcoholism would simply dissapear? Of course they wouldn't, but if anyone thought they would have, then they've only confused genotypes (gene markers) for phenotypes (expressed genetic traits).

Even if such genotypical testing were included, however, I would still have to question the wisdom of such testing, because of what is known as pleotrophy. Pleotrophy, in layman's terms, is the tendency for certain genes to cause both beneficial and harmful genetic effects. A good example of this is the genetic disease of cystic fibrosis, or what in effect is a disease that causes the lungs to produce too much extra mucous and fluid, to the point that the victim actually smothers in his own secretions. The problem with an organized campaign to destroy such a genetic trait, however, is that while having double-recessive genes causes a disease that can kill you, having one dominant and one recessive gene gives a person a substantially improved resistance to cholera, a disease that causes what might be colloquially known as "sonic diarrhea", or such a massive purging of the digestive tract that people have been known to die of dehydration in less than 24 hours after drinking water contaminated with the disease. Destroy cystic fibrosis, and you also ready your population for a pandemic.

This pleotrophic effect is hardly limited to single-gene traits and diseases. The same genes thought to contribute to alcoholism, for example, are also thought to contribute to genius IQ and creativity. Destroy those genes, and you might curb alcohol, but you also might prevent the next Mozart or Hemingway.

I don't support such an idea, and I believe that if my government ever tried to introduce or force such an idea upon the people than a revolution is in order. It suppreses the basic human right to reproduce.

We're born to be free, or as free as we want to be.

I say there be a law that all males and females must see a doctor when their bodies are ready to produce, if they fail a battery of tests, they are castrated or their tubes are tied.

It's for the good of humanity.

You've wandered into the prickly subject of eugenics. Who would decide who is fit or unfit to reproduce?

As for China, it's very gender-centric. Women will have abortions in order to have their one child be a boy. If, however, they carry a girl to term as a first child, they're allowed to try once more for a boy. In some rural areas of China, it wasn't rigidly enforced, people were having more than just the one child...and then the government decided to enforce the law after the fact. There are stories of infants being drowned in rice paddies as soon as they were born.

Yeah, that's it - what penalties would apply? What happens to children who are conceived or born in spite of regulations? It is becoming more and more apparent, though, that upbringing and family environment have a subtle and permanent effect on an individual's development of personal social environments.