WHTT Reproduction 2 - Obligation to control
It is important to elaborate on the obligation of society to prevent uneducated people from making babies. The process of society's control over socially irresponsible people's ability to make babies is not related to any effort to restrict or improve the genetic quality of the children. Control of genetics is important to prevent birth defects, but is not the issue for criminals or for uneducated people. Instead, the issue is parental responsibility, capability, values, and commitment to protection of the children's natural rights. Society has a duty to protect the natural rights of all, so society must make reasonable efforts to insure that potential parents have the ability and desire to assist in the protection of their children's rights.
In a free society, parents have almost full freedom in making many choices which directly affect the lives of their children. Parents are entrusted to provide the food, clothing, health care, and housing that the children require. But beyond those physical needs are a full spectrum of intangible values and psychological needs which children require to be able to achieve their natural rights of life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, and equal opportunity to achieve. Parents who have not completed the basic education freely offered by society are at best incapable of providing the guidance, encouragement, and learning environment which a child needs for proper development. At worst, uneducated parents can impose on their children a psychological "straight jacket" which permanently cripples the child's ability to learn, achieve, and pursue happiness and fulfillment. The natural rights of a child require that its early and formative years be filled with love and learning and positive encouragement. Society cannot provide those essential elements and must depend on the parents to fulfill those needs in their children.
It is unfortunately true that some educated parents fail in their responsibilities to provide their children with a loving and learning environment. That intentional failure by knowledgeable parents is a sad and difficult problem for society to resolve, and it is beyond the intent or scope of this work. The problem that is easy to solve is to recognize that uneducated people have neither the knowledge nor the ability to provide children with a loving and learning environment. Society has an obligation to prevent those uneducated people from making babies who can never hope to achieve their share of natural rights. It is not punishment to prevent uneducated people from making babies. Instead, it is essential that society prevent uneducated people from becoming parents so that society can fulfill its obligation to provide all children with a full spectrum of natural rights to life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, and equal opportunity to achieve.
Equally Protecting All Children Is Not Racist
There may be some who would observe that many of America's uneducated people live in urban poverty areas with high concentrations of a particular racial, cultural, or ethnic group. The author cautions all readers to avoid the false conclusion that the proposal to prevent uneducated people from making babies is in some way motivated by racial prejudice. Exactly the opposite is true. The author believes that every child deserves a full share of natural rights regardless of that child's racial, religious, cultural, or ethnic ancestry. No person has a right to make a baby and then prevent that baby's proper growth by not providing a loving and learning environment for the child. Uneducated people of any race, religion, cultural background, or ethnic ancestry do not have the capability to provide the necessary loving and learning environment for a child. To protect the rights of all children, society must prevent uneducated people from making babies.
Note too, that this proposal is not intended to be a form of population control, either for the groups discussed above, or for the country as a whole. Instead, this idea is simply a reaffirmation of the importance of education for all people, and especially for parents. There is no good reason why anyone should fail to complete the education freely offered by society. Indeed, society should redouble its effort to communicate to all the importance of an education. This proposal would affect only those individuals who choose to be socially irresponsible by failing to complete their education. Although the country's birth rate would initially decline as uneducated people stop making babies, the decline would be only temporary. As all potential parents achieve a full education, the nation's birth rate would again rise to its normal level. Furthermore, the children born to educated parents will begin life in an environment which greatly improves the chances that those children's natural rights will be protected.
One might note that many of America's successful citizens were the children of inadequately educated parents and quite reasonably ask what would have happened to the development of America if a proposal such as this had been implemented 50 or 100 years ago. The short answer is that some productive people would not have been born to uneducated parents, but many other people would have obtained a better education and subsequently provided a more loving and learning environment for the children they raised. Society would have grown stronger by virtue of the improved talents of all children and the enhanced productivity which would have resulted. Perhaps even more important, the individual children would have been far more likely to be happy, well adjusted, and successful by their own standards because all children would have had the benefits of protection for their natural rights to life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, and equal opportunity to achieve.
It is worth noting that the proposal to prevent parenthood by people who have demonstrated social irresponsibility is only a novel approach to a respected and established concept. In a free society, people have many freedoms to control their actions, until they demonstrate that they cannot handle that freedom by acting irresponsibly. Society then takes the appropriate action to protect all citizens from future problems caused by irresponsible people by restricting their freedom and control.
Everyone In Society Will Benefit
By using this proposal to protect the natural rights of all children, a nation will also achieve several major benefits for all its citizens. The education level will be improved throughout society as the value of education is emphasized to all people. Furthermore, the useless tragedy of the perpetually uneducated cycle (i.e., uneducated parents destroy their children's desire to learn, so those children grow into uneducated parents who repeat the cycle) will be ended. Uneducated people will no longer be permitted to damage the lives and natural rights of children. The quality of each child's education will be further improved by the additional support provided by a peer group who will also be sensitized to the importance of education. As the education level improves for all citizens, so too will opportunities become more equal for all. Society would be able to make great progress toward the goal of providing each person with an equal opportunity to achieve to the maximum of that person's ability.
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