Extraordinary case
And the correct decision, I believe (at least part of it; I’m not so sure about the part about making the parents pay—although if they don’t, the taxpayer will).
I have the following question: how would this case have been decided if it had occurred in a more liberal state than Texas?
As for what this says about the girl’s parents, it seems very sad to me that they would insist on her compromising her own integrity and beliefs, and try to coerce her to abort a child against her will. And it says something chilling about their own attitude towards their prospective grandchild.
I’ve written before on my own attitudes about abortion (especially here). And I do support the right of parents of minor children to have some control over those children. But the type of control these parents tried to exercise goes way too far and amounts to a form of abuse.
It’s interesting, though, to contemplate the opposite type of case, that in which the 16-year-old wants to have an abortion and the parents want to stop her from doing so. At what age should a teenager be able to make such decisions? And does it matter which decision she favors, and which the parents are trying to force her to accept?
And what of the father? Shouldn’t he have a say? Or should he?
[NOTE: Somewhat related post here.]
so your saying a child is equivalent to an adult and parent… if so, then why obamacare going to 28?
or do you realize your still spouting deep left ideas from Margaret Meade and the sexualization of children a la kinsey?
“compromising her own integrity”
either a child has it, or not.
if yes, then hell with parents and kick them out – they are adults and need nothing.
and if you have the parents take care of it, and they have no choice, then they will be like husbands… forced to pay, even if not their own, and no way out, which is why the men who know better are sterilizing their family, and the women are left hanging with thousands of articles of “where are the guys”
oh.. and if parents have no choice, then the only choice is not to have kids.
ie. this is a part of democide
they place men in a no win situation, which says, risk it all, or do not bother at all
now its double jeopardy since the above is for wife and kids, and now doubly kids.
best thing a man can do is not to have kids…
there are easy ways to handle this, but NONE of them are liberal, and all of them pressuppose not changing society by writ of king and pc to paint innocents into a corner and have the court torment them.
here is what the eventual solution is.
have a baby, get instant adulthood…
your out of your parents care… end of story..
want the parents to pay? too bad…
and if thats not good, then send the bill to the VIEW, feminists and colleges to pay, as they are making the cultural changes, are responsible, and should pay for the advice they give…
you make pamplets and have sex days and work out how kindergartners can have anal sex and fisting with love, then you have to pay for their kids.
ultimatly, here is whats going to happen
white men will die out
white women will whine as they slowly die out while the minorities vote to have them treated like coptic christians in egypt…
and the rest of the state can live soviet style..
and it really dont matter any more from that moment on, as no one is responsible, and we can start loading them into the ovens with pitchforks.
“compromising her own integrity”
by the way.. we USED to know that sluts, whores, biatches, gold diggers, and lots of those ugly names feminists reclaimed… had no integrity..
feminists gave them integrity by fiat
then feminists can pay for what they do
the only reason they do this is no one makes them pay, but their victims pay out the wazooo… they pay with familial extermination, familial damaging of the genes in various ways (marry late, do drugs, stds, bad mate selection, etc)… divorce, support, affirmatie action… red dress cancer and such for women (big time)
let them pay.
i am just waiting to die without any hope
killing time till time kills me…
I wonder what the pro-choice side more generally (which I know includes Neo, who is more intellectually honest about this issue) thinks about this. My guess is they hate it because they’re really pro-abortion and not pro-choice.
I should say just “intellectually honest” not “more.” Sorry.
I particularly liked Neo’s ‘what if’ the case had been heard “in a more liberal state than Texas”.
Which really goes to the heart of (geographic) moral relativity.
Odd. isn’t it, that in the USA the feminist Left has caused the murder of perhaps 55 million fetuses, while the Left trots out all of this tax-raising crap “for the children” (which it never is), and blithely ignores our coming demographic crisis.
holmes-
They are never “pro-choice”, but it sounds a lot more palatable than “anti-fetus” or “pro-death”.
Just like “assault weapons” are palatable to oppose. The Left is surely an able marketer; they dominate our use of language, and they talk in codes.
artfldgr: again, you misinterpret what I write.
I do not know at what age I would say a child is an adult in this regard. That’s why I asked it as a question.
However, I do not think that just because a child of eleven, let’s say, has a baby, that that child (the 11-year-old parent, that is) automatically becomes an adult. Nor do I think it means the 11-year-old’s parents can decide everything for her, including whether or not her own child should have been aborted.
Your keep misrepresenting what I think and what I say.
I also made it clear that I take some issue with making the parents pay. But that I recognize that if they do not, then under the welfare system as it is structured, the taxpayer will pay. There are no good or easy solutions here.
And integrity is not a black and white, either/or proposition. A person can lack it in some arenas but can draw a line in the sand in others. This girl’s decision (although the article does not give us her reason) was probably the result of integrity asserting itself when she was faced with an especially intense situation, a moral dilemma that affected her on a level deeper, perhaps deeper than she had ever faced before.
“And integrity is not a black and white, either/or proposition.”
Yes, it is. A person who lacks integrity in some areas lacks integrity. Is a person who is “usually” honest an honest person? Someone whom you would trust absolutely with your money or your deepest and darkest? Honesty and Integrity are absolutes, IMO. Akin to our forefathers’ Sacred Honor.
Well put, Don Carlos. “Pro-choice” rhetoric is usually anything but. The choice has to be abortion; any other option is not supported.
artfldgr, I suspect you won’t read this, and even if you do you’ll not care. Nonetheless, if only for the benefit of other readers, I feel compelled to point out that your long winded extraordinarily negative diatribes against the female gender have become wearying. Is there ever an issue you don’t respond to with a rambling screed against the evils of women? You used to offer interesting (if often tedious) bits of information; lately it’s invariably hostile rants. And I’m tired of having to scroll down to avoid them.
Maybe if I wasn’t a woman I’d be more tolerant of your misanthropy. Or something.
“Is there ever an issue you don’t respond to with a rambling screed against the evils of women? ”
There was one back in the blue snow winter of 1998 but it had to do with scrotal vulcanization and has been, mercifully, lost to human ken.
It seems to me that the coercion is bi-directinal here, not just the parents coercing the child to change. Paradoxically, the greater their love for their daughter, the more their own lives will be altered and the more understandable their anger. The parents may well appreciate what they will be called on to do in the future–and what they will do. The coercion by the parents is obvious in the here and now. The coercion demanded of the parents, including by what they feel love and duty demand, may continue for years. I think there is not a good and a bad side here.
Yes, it is. A person who lacks integrity in some areas lacks integrity. Is a person who is “usually” honest an honest person?
sure, there are people who you can trust with your wallet, but not your wife.
the left has lots of solutions to pile on top of solutions
the one thing you cant do, is go back…
[a falshood of the left is that one has to understand a principal of operation to know. this is not true, humans have brains, and brains can tease out relationships without having formula and process. even today, neural nets spit out answers but cant tell you how they got them. so abandoning what we did because they think (or pretend) that its not good cause we had no working principals. i would say that so far, its better than what they are doing, given they study principals in isolation. but since this game is destruction, you just refuse to do what you know worked in the past, and you can be sure that destruction follows. we dont have a spending problem is code for hang on, we are going over the cliff!!! look!! i see thelma and louise below… ]
OBAMA SUPPORTED INFANTICIDE IN 02 AS SENATOR…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=hSNGJd3wCes#!
“Maybe if I wasn’t a woman I’d be more tolerant of your misanthropy. Or something.”
Artfldgr is highly intelligent and simultaneously obsessive. He is very tedious and often over the top. (Me too.) While I can agree that feminists are usually the same, he paints with too big a brush. However, there are tiny flakes of wisdom in some of his posts. Its like panning for gold…. a lot of sand and gravel and occasionally a tiny flake that glimmers.
BTW, BHO does support infanticide. Leftists glory in the blood of the innocent. Russia, China, Cambodia, Cuba, and so it goes.
Well, the old solution would be for the two teenagers to marry. Unfortunately, we somehow think that’s not a good option these days. I can tell you that my stepson had a child while in high school. He gets to pay for his son, but the mother is withholding access to his son. Because they didn’t marry, he has no rights without going through court. And the grandfather also has no rights.
Children belong to a family. 16 used to be old enough for marriage in some states and may be old enough to become an emancipated minor. I do not think her parents should have the right to force her to abort a child against her wishes, nor should they have the right to bully her into it. So I do agree with this decision.
Teri Pittman: actually, it can be a good option, and it is still done at times. But it’s not usually done in the old way (barrel of a shotgun pointed at the teenage father).
I don’t particularly care about the problem in and of itself. Solutions will never be allowed to exist so long as evil is allowed to bar the way. First get rid of evil, and the solution will manifest naturally.
I think at the end of the day if the parents want their baby, there’s nobody that should be able to force them to abort him/her. Maybe we have lost perspective altogether. 300 years ago 14 years old was pretty common to start a family. The idea that children are children until they are in their early 20s is a new one, and not all that healthy in my opinion. Our culture seems to be fostering a generation of perpetual adolescents. Would I want my kids to be in this situation? No, but I would support their decision. Life is full of unpleasant lessons and making mistakes – some people learn from them, some never do. You can’t fix that about people..
And every parent knows those kids will find life is harder for them with a child, but is that such a terrible thing that the parents need to force an abortion?
Parents are responsible for the character and moral standards of their children. They should bear responsibility for their children’s bad choices, including the costs of those choices. Otherwise, those costs fall upon the rest of us, and the rest of us should have little or no say in how parents raise their children. Thus, parents should have the right to negate their childrens’ bad choices.
This is quite a story. I admire this teen mom-to-be for taking a stand and protecting her child.
I find myself wondering what kind of relationship, if any, these grandparents will have with their grandchild (who will eventually learn about what prompted the court case). Wouldn’t be surprised if they come to regret this battle deeply.
Related issue regarding parental notification laws etc…..I always find it ironic that you can’t send aspirin or cold medicine to be taken by a minor child in school without also sending a note of permission, but many on the left think its perfectly OK for a teenage girl to have access to an unregulated and potentially dangerous medical procedure such as an abortion drug or procedure without notifying her parents. There’s a disconnect, to say the least.
And finally, as this case demonstrates, many young women in this situation face intense pressure from parents, boyfriend, etc. to get an abortion which doesn’t really make it seem like much of a free “choice” at all.
Re artfldgr:
I greatly respect, and thank him for, his encyclopedic knowledge and database re Leftism and Feminism. That he is frustrated that others do not know/do not wish to know often leads him to a form of “pressured speech” on this blog, where it pours out at unedited length.
There is a profound difference between anti-feminism and misanthropy, and he is not guilty of the latter.
There was a photo of the father of the child to be, with comments to the effect that now they were going to be able to marry – and intended to do so. So there seems to be some responsibility of intent there. The question is whether good intentions will be sufficient.
I can understand the position of the parents to some extent (I wouldn’t support abortion, but would support placing the resulting infant into an adoption). As a parent, we know that young people make some really bad decisions that can be life changing.
On the other hand, there have been times when I thought that a solution would be for young people to have babies and give them up for adoption to older settled married couples, and then have the right at a later age to adopt as many children as they had produced. I don’t know of any way to make something like that work, but we sure seem to have turned our society around with regard to child bearing. Young women are more physically able to have children than women in their mid to late thirties, but that seems to be the preferred model these days.
First have the children, then have the career – instead of first having a career, then having the children.. JMO…
Don Carlos: actually, although Artfldgr keeps saying people disagree with him and reject his message, I haven’t seen that happening much at all. Mostly they reject the length of his message, and the redundancy of its repetition after it already has been received.
Also, I’m not sure I understood your last sentence. Did you mean “misogyny” instead of “misanthropy”? Because of course one can be anti-feminist without hating human beings (misanthropy). One can even be anti-feminist without hating women (misogyny), but isn’t that what you meant to write?
Abortion is still legal but the choice should be by the woman carrying the fetus – not by anyone else. Not the parents, not the husband/boyfriend and not the government. I support her decision.
[I’m a liberal by the way who is pro prevention as opposed to pro choice].
Unfortunately we still live in a culture that wants to deny the fact that 15 year old’s have sex. I think when we accept that fact and not try to force them to be celibate or ‘moral’ or whatever tactics adults and teachers use to cloak denial we can prevent more teen pregnancy. But nonetheless good for this girl. It’s her baby. Her choice.
Capt Rusty – the only problem with your postion is the definition of bad choice. Your definition of a bad choice wasn’t based on the parent’s definition, it’s based on what you think their definitioin should include — that is that the rest of us have to pay for their choice. First of all, that’s not certain.
And the other problem is if the parents are always the judges of what is a good or bad choice, it would have to allow for any interpretation. If they think their child is wasting his/her time pursuing a high school diploma, are the free to pressure the kid to drop out and get a job? In your argument, no, because we might have to pay for their failure, but then we are back to it being our choice and not the parents or the child’s choice.
I see your point, parents are responsible for their children, but that has to include being responsible for the bad choice, and not just making it go away that’s convenient for them. The horse is out of the barn.
I not a liberal, and I’m not exactly pro-choice,but the problem I’m having is that parents or anybody should be able to decide for their daughter they MUST have an abortion, which forces me to accept the opposite argument, that the girl should have some right decide for hereself, whatever it is.
I feel bad for these kids, but I can’t think of many more ways to make it worse than her parents have already done, all for the sake of what they think is in her best interest. I wish them luck and if my taxes go to paying to help her out, I’m not going to lose sleep over it – lots of other kids are living off taxpayers and never tried to do the hard thing. She deserves credit for that, not law suit.
MDL –
Eh. Taking a value-neutral “open” approach (always in practice a more or less celebratory approach) to 15 year-old sex leads to more teen pregnancy, regardless of how many condoms and pills you cram into their purses, backpacks, and lockers.
The reason is simple: kids are stupid and irresponsible. A policy of telling them to be responsibly stupid and irresponsible is not a winning one. Telling them the plain truth, on the other hand, is sufficient: being stupid and irresponsible about sex can have dire consequences beyond pregnancy and disease; obviously abstinence is the only certain way to avoid them; if you can’t do that, then minimize the risk. “Responsible stupidity” is the last option, not the first. Best to just be extremely careful about the decision in the first place.
You may only mean to criticize something like 100% abstinence-only education, in which case we might not actually disagree all that much; but in my experience, usually when liberals start laying into the concept of “abstinence” education they mean that they don’t even want it mentioned as an option (they view it as a shoehorn for the religious right to start meddling, and your language suggests the same, to say the least); that’s the problem I have here.
There is a truth in this matter, as noted above, and it is that abstinence is always the safest, and almost always the most intelligent and responsible, path for a teenager to take. That truth also happens to be basically the last vestige of a challenge to build character and virtue that we are allowed to lay down to kids before they hit their years of peak narcissism and degeneracy. We kick it away at our peril.
Lastly, I’m having trouble processing this: “we still live in a culture that wants to deny the fact that 15 year old’s [sic] have sex.” Not seeing it. At most we’re ambivalent about the fact that they have sex, which isn’t the worst attitude to have (the worst is to just state the fact as if there’s no problem at all, with a celebratory undertone). I wonder what a culture that satisfied the liberal’s demand for non-denial would look like? Saturnalia 365?
Neo-
Yes indeed misogyny was what I intended. Duh (to me) re gyn and anthro in my haste!
Artfdgr is guilty of neither that nor misanthropy, happily!
But perhaps you agree with my thought re ‘pressured speech’.
Don Carlos: good thing you’re not a gynecologist :-)!
Kolnai has returned! (Weren’t you missing?)
Neo: Yeah, triple Board-certified, but not in gyn! The gyn side is rather cool, a mix of procedures and cognitives, but I passed on the OB after my med school experience.
Hi holmes,
Yes, thoroughly MIA. Down but not out, bent but not broken, shaken but not stirred.
Thanks for the welcome back (hopefully I’ll be able to comment more, if not immediately, then soon).
I find it convenient that MDL mentions not at all the cost factor. It’s as if it isn’t a factor at all, that someone has to pay for it. As if there is no limit on a person’s freedom of choice.
That is the same as people going around inverting freedom and slavery. A person that does not have to suffer the consequences or pay for anything, is not free. They are closer to a slave than a freed man/woman.
Perhaps the goal was it after all.
“There is a truth in this matter, as noted above, and it is that abstinence is always the safest, and almost always the most intelligent and responsible, path for a teenager to take.”
The Left’s model for truth, beauty, and health is Hollywood actors and actresses. In so far as the Left has a goal for educating children, it is to make them into carbon copies of the famous.
The fact that this results in a lot of broken husks once called humans, doesn’t seem to matter much to em.