The Right to Have a Baby
In the latest issue of Touchstone, Acton senior fellow Jennifer Roback Morse examines the issues of procreation and property in contemporary society, and the seemingly growing opinion anyone can be a parent if they so choose. In “First Comes Marriage” Morse contends, “There is no right to a child, because a child is not an object to which other people have rights.”
She goes on to make a clarification about meanings of “rights” language that are often conflated:
Read the whole thing and subscribe to Touchstone here.
She goes on to make a clarification about meanings of “rights” language that are often conflated:
We must distinguish between “the right to have a child” in the sense of possession and the “right to have a child” in the sense of procreation. There is one coherent way to imagine a right to procreate. Two people of the opposite sex can come together to conceive a child, without permission from the state or anyone else. People do it all the time.
To put it another way: Every individual is sterile. No one can have a baby by himself. Each human infant has two parents, one male and one female. Therefore, any right to have a child should be held by a couple, not by an individual who wishes to be a parent.
Read the whole thing and subscribe to Touchstone here.
Comments
#1 2005-12-28 14:10 (Reply)
Hi from canada.
Yours blog is very interesting!
Keep on going .
and i,m from Acton Vale.