Question for all of us to ponder, discuss and argue in a civil manner....
 

Should those who cannot afford to have children (by any means natural or otherwise) be allowed to have them?

By "afford", I do not mean just in terms of finances ... time, money, effort, mental capacity, the whole lot.

For the sake of this thread, let's go with "the child must not be left wanting" as a minimum standard, so the child must have enough to eat (not to the point of gorging), access to education (that would be enough for him/her to become a contributing member of (the local) society and opportunities to improve him or herself (again, in terms of the local society).
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I ask this because, yet again, I am being "bombarded" by images of children in great suffering ... children who did not ask to be born. Images of 5+ children to each parent, who are themselves little more than children themselves (the mothers, anyway). It would be easy to argue that it is a basic human right (or a variation of one) that we (or maybe, just me) are talking about here; I suppose that right supercedes the right of the child to food, shelter, education, etc, so yeah, go and procreate and let the future take care of the offspring.

And I'm not talking about children born during times of plenty and then plunged into a period of suffering ... I mean those who were born when times were already unpredictable, to parents who can barely survive on their own.

Well that depends, are your standards the same throughout the world?

E.g Kids being born in Africa are going to have a lot less to work with then those born in Europe or America.

I would treat this topic as if your asking the question to a civilized country.

This is a difficult topic because how do we force people to not have kids? Sure its fine to put in laws to say that you need to be making X amount of money and must be have stable living conditions to have children. Are you though proposing that we make it so that you have to submit a petition to be able to have a child? In which point we have to have our babies essentially sterilized at birth, otherwise accidents will happen.

Or are we going force people to use contraception? And if so will we fine people who have babies illegally?

How about in the United States, most people who would be able to afford babies are white, African Americans might have a problem with what they may conceive as racial profiling and the white man attempting to get rid of there race.

I think there are too many unknowns to think about here. It also gives the government too much power.

The only thing I submit as an answer for your topic is that in the event when overpopulation starts becoming a concern, that measures such as limiting who can have babies by making sure they can provide for them would obviously be a requirement.

However at this point in time I would say I would be for having measures to make sure people have enough money to support there children.

Though at the same time, the measures needed to make those laws work would be too much for me support, and I would come out against it until we had progressed far enough technologically to come out with better solutions.

My solution would be to support the education of the use of contraception's, easier access to those items, and education on how much money it takes to support a child.

Unfortunately we were on a good path until Bush took over and all but banned the talk on contraceptives. For some odd reason people stupidly think if we don't talk about sex kids wont have it.

LOL jonno

I believe that in this day and age, if you do not have the ability to provide for a family, no matter where you're from you shouldn't even consummate.

Nothing to see here, just trying to get my username on the front page of every subforum (other than archives)