You are confusing ‘harm’ with ’statistical risk of death’. Two entirely different measurements.

This is an excellent example of the absurdities that pro-lifers have to argue in order to be consistent.

A pregnant woman is typically looking at a tenfold greater risk of death, a 1 in 5 chance of hospitalisation due to complications, virtually certain pain and physical damage from childbirth, and perhaps a quarter of a million pounds in direct costs over the next 18+ years, to which you can add much more in lost income due to diminished career and education prospects.

All of that is harm.

If you did all that yourself to a woman, then tried to explain to the judge that you didn’t really harm her, you’d be looking at jail time.

That was brief Frank!

What else is to say - you don’t want them to ban your influence over your children, but there is no such ban.

The state hasn’t “taken anything away”.

Having just read your exchanges on A Tangled Web I guess you’re a little tired…

You know what I meant by ‘influence’. I’m not talking only about the bit the state allows me but also the bit they’ve taken away.

And they don’t.

You put the parental desire to be involved with significant aspects of their children’s lives and the unnatural act of incest side by side as if they were similar things. They are not so an argument that equates the two falls at its very foundations.

I don’t expect the state to enforce my right to be a parent. I expect the state to simply not interfere. Remember, in a relatively free country all is legal until it’s banned. I want them to not ban my influence over my children. Yes, I used the word ‘right’ - do you know how difficult it is to avoid these days? But I am referring to a person’s liberty more than their rights (you may well equate these two disimilar ideas) and I am saying the government is over-stepping the mark in a fundamental and wicked way when it encourages children to make decisions without consulting their parents.

‘Rape’ - and one’s natural revulsion to it - is not a fad. Giving children such rights that, suddenly, parents may not know about their own offsprings most troubled decisions is a fad. We’ve not yearned for it for years and it’s a recent development that is much-maligned. Whereas objections to rape - and its illegality - are features - one way or another - throughout humanity.

DE,

Gary, you are saying that administering contraception is a matter for the family? This is a very close family you are talking about here.

Well, what I am getting at really is that (a) the health service should not be providing the means for under-age girls to break the law and (b) regardless of the child’s wish that the parents not be informed the state should recognise parental responsibility and not seek to dismiss this with their craven obeyance of state-induced ‘rights’ propoganda.

HSBguzzler,

I told you Frank would provide stats…!

Gary, you are saying that administering contraception is a matter for the family? This is a very close family you are talking about here.

Also I do not accept that giving birth is 10x more harmful than abortion.

From the leading medical textbook on the subject, Williams Obstetrics (1997
ed), page 1340:

Risks for Men and Women of All Ages - Chance of Death in a Year

Motorcycling: 1 in 1,000
Automobile driving: 1 in 6,000
Rock climbing: 1 in 7,500
Canoeing: 1 in 100,000

Risks for Women Aged 15 to 44 Years

Tampons: 1 in 350,000
Sexual intercourse (salpingitis): 1 in 50,000
Birth control pills (nonsmoker): 1 in 63,000
Laparoscopic tubal ligation: 1 in 67,000 [procedures]

Continuing Pregnancy - 1 in 11,000 [pregnancies]

Terminating Pregnancy by Legal Abortion

Before 9 weeks: 1 in 260,000 [procedures]
Between 9 and 12 weeks: 1 in 100,000 [procedures]

And, again:

The morbidity and mortality of pregnancy: still risky business.
Am J Obstet Gynecol 1994 May;170(5 Pt 2):1489-94

‘Despite impressive gains in safety in recent decades, pregnancy remains
risky business. From early in pregnancy until some weeks after its
conclusion, pregnant women are at increased risk of morbidity and mortality
compared with women who are not pregnant. …Although comprehensive data on
pregnancy-related morbidity are lacking, about 22% of all pregnant women are
hospitalized before delivery because of complications. …For most women,
fertility regulation by contraception, sterilization, or legal abortion is
substantially safer than childbirth.’

And notice this too:

Mortality from abortion and childbirth. Are the statistics biased?
JAMA 1982 Jul 9;248(2):192-6

‘Critics have challenged previous comparisons of mortality from legal
abortion and childbirth for containing biases in the crude data that
spuriously favor the safety of abortion. To evaluate this concern, we
reviewed the sources of mortality data on which these comparisons are based
and examined the completeness of abortion mortality statistics, the
completeness of childbirth mortality statistics, and the accuracy of the
denominators for both these events. We found the evidence to be consistent
in two directions: (1) abortion deaths appear to be more completely
ascertained than childbirth deaths; (2) use of different denominator
estimates has relatively little impact on the comparison. From this
evidence, we conclude that the crude data are biased in a direction that
overestimates the abortion risks for the women relative to the risks of
childbearing.’

“M is for Malapert” on t.a.
http://groups.google.com/group/talk.abortion/msg/825ca136c05c925f

“If a parent wishes to demand that their child either give birth or have an abortion, then too bad: that is no more a ‘family matter’ than if he demands that she sleep with him.”

In the first place, the parents demands can somehow be legitimised/contradicted by what highter authority?

The same authority that can contradict him when he demands that he sleep with her.

“Children also have rights, and one of them is that they are not the property of any parents, any church, any state, any person, or any foetus.”

Ah, rights. Whenever life refuses to do as required create some rights then enforce them, accusing others of contravening them […]

Invented rights, such as a “parent’s right to know”?

You whinge about having to petition the state for that “right”, yet you will still expect the state to enforce it for you.

I guess that makes you a “leftist”?

Do children have rights? They do if an adult deigns to ‘give’ them rights. Of course, such rights reflect only the latest fad rather than anything that’s fundamentally true.

Only if it is the ‘latest fad’ that says a father may not rape a child - nor force her to have an abortion, nor force her to give birth.

Regardless the parent that attempts to do any of the above may still have some explaining to do to the police and the courts.

As you say, welcome to the real world.

Advice is one thing. But administering contraception or encouraging/discouraging abortion is, to use a slightly too emotive term, incitement to actually act. That’s for the family who bare more of the consequences of the outcome than faceless bureaucrats.

Frank,

If a parent wishes to demand that their child either give birth or have an abortion, then too bad: that is no more a ‘family matter’ than if he demands that she sleep with him.

Hardly.

In the first place, the parents demands can somehow be legitimised/contradicted by what highter authority? The state’s? In an imperfect world do you honestly believe the state is best-placed to iron our life’s tougher wrinkles? Life is tough and no solution works for all people all the time. The next best thing is an accurate general principle and that principle is that family pulls together and works through its problems as best it can. Sometimes it’ll be crap, others it’ll be outstandingly wonderful. Mostly it’ll fall between the two extremes. Welcome to the real world.

Children also have rights, and one of them is that they are not the property of any parents, any church, any state, any person, or any foetus.

Ah, rights. Whenever life refuses to do as required create some rights then enforce them, accusing others of contravening them if they believe otherwise (not that you yourself were necessarily doing either). But nobody wants to feel they’re stepping on other people’s rights do they? Create a ‘right’ and, hey presto, you have a moral argument to support whatever it is you want to do.

Do children have rights? They do if an adult deigns to ‘give’ them rights. Of course, such rights reflect only the latest fad rather than anything that’s fundamentally true. A parent’s love for his/her child - and the attendant anxiety, ambition, concern and hope - cannot, inconvenitently, fit into the framework of leftist ‘rights’ culture but, by jove, that won’t stop the left insisting that children have these abstract figments of their imaginations.

We’re animals Frank. You might believe we’re something quite a bit better but we have the same brains we had on the savannah and attempts to circumnavigate our deepest human instincts with smoke and mirror rights arguments will serve only to disconnect us from what makes us truly human.

That’s fine if you’re on the left but for thos eof us who appreciate humanity for what it is these human constructs are exactly contrary to our natural desire to be social and family-related animals.

To explain my response; I don’t feel doctor/child patient confidentiality should be breached if at all possible, BUT I am not happy for an under 16 to have an abortion and sweep it under the carpet without her parents knowledge, and not giving them the chance to influence that decision. If, however, she has chosen to go ahead with the pregnancy, the doctor/patient confidentiality need not be breached, as the parents will find out in time anyway.
Also I do not accept that giving birth is 10x more harmful than abortion.

Done. A tad rushed so I may update it a bit later on.

Anyway, I’ll read it and that’s certain, so go ahead and write it.

Indeed, but there are limits to parental involvement just as there are limits to state involvement. If a parent wishes to demand that their child either give birth or have an abortion, then too bad: that is no more a ‘family matter’ than if he demands that she sleep with him.

Children also have rights, and one of them is that they are not the property of any parents, any church, any state, any person, or any foetus. None of the above have any right to command their servitude.

Like I said, if you’re interested.

I kinda doubt anyone else is interested in a philosophical discussion of the problem of evil, and I wasn’t about to post all that for my own benefit

I’m not sure where either the state or the girls parents come into this. The professional should be able to give advice and decide how to deal with the issue at hand, and the girl is entitled to communicate with adults other than her parents.

“There’s a lot I’d like to respond to in your post (including even the theological point!). I won’t do it here, but I will post it on my blog if you’re interested.”

All I can see on your blog at present is a spirited attempt to give David Vance an unwarranted drubbing and some excellent points on Chip and PIN and our tyrant government. A mixture of good and bad, which isn’t a bad thing in itself, but I feel I’ve been lead there under false pretences. The comments you promise are not there.

Frank, if I had to guess I’d say you’re not a parent. If you are I’d be interested to know how you instill values and trust into your child so completely that, come the horrible moment, she’s able to come skipping gaily to you for your advice. It is simply wrong to say that, because a child wants to do something without informing their parents that the parents somehow have failed. By that reckoning no parent can succeed.

Second and more important is that if she doesn’t trust her parents, she may well have a damn good reason.

Then again, she may not.

You and I can spend all day looking for exceptions. The overall point though remains, so far as I am concerned, that a parent is responsible for his child and the state should have as little say in family matters as is possible.

Labour’s decision to keep the parents oout of contraception/abortion issues for children is so they can make all the decisions. And their decisions are, as I’ve said, based on what’s good for them and their teenage pregnancy rate targets rather than on what’s good for the child.