Posted on March 10, 2010

by

Daniel Clark

A Port Charlotte, Florida deputy and a pair of bystanders are now being treated as heroes, for having stopped a woman from drowning her two children in a pond. Well, where do they get off?

Nobody has the right to force a woman to raise unwanted children. The people who pulled them out of that pond had no business getting involved, unless they were willing to adopt those kids themselves. Even then, the mother has a right not to put herself through the psychological trauma of giving up her children, without knowing what would become of them. If she'd succeeded in drowning them, then at least she would have had closure.

There may be those sentimentalists among us who would argue that children are people too, and are thus deserving of protection. Let's get real. There's more to being a person than simply, by virtue of a biological technicality, being a living member of the human species. There's also the requirement that one possess superior intelligence to that of other animals.

Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of bioethics knows that there are such things as "non-human persons" -- those animals, like dogs, pigs and dolphins, that are intelligent enough to attain personhood without being human. There are also "human non-persons" -- human beings of such inferior intellect that they cannot be classified as people. These Florida kids, the older of which is only two, obviously belong in this latter category. Just compare their intelligence to that of the beaver, for instance. Ever seen a two year-old child build a dam? Well, then.

Furthermore, the mother, being the legal guardian in this case, is empowered to make any difficult life-or-death decisions involving those in her charge. At least that's the precedent that's been handed down to us by that unsung freedom-fighter, Michael Schiavo. If he couldn't be stopped by legal appeals from his wife's blood relatives, then there's no reason why this woman in Port Charlotte should be forced to yield to three total strangers.

It's hypocritical of people to pretend to care about children under the age of three, when they obviously have no concern for all the children who survive beyond that point. Until we've shown that we truly care about all the children, by providing them with a full range of social services like they have in Cuba, then expressions of compassion for a couple toddlers involved in an isolated drowning incident are bound to ring hollow.

To the degree to which we do provide for the children, there is a need to be practical, insofar as the equitable consumption of resources is concerned. If some children are born into circumstances that increase their chances of becoming burdens on society, then the actions of people like this Florida woman might in the long run be the most compassionate thing for all parties involved. With two fewer mouths to feed, and two fewer pairs of carbon footprints scarring the planet, the world that they left behind would be more sustainable for the rest of us.

In fact, the misery that is brought on by overpopulation demands that we eliminate unwanted children whenever possible. Rather than narrowly focusing on the individual, we need to consider the greater good that would be served by culling the herd. If our choices are that the next generation consist of either a manageable number of happy people, or an unmanageable number of unhappy people, then the decision to create the greatest overall amount of happiness ought to be an easy one to make.

Unfortunately, this point of view is not shared by those science-fearing Southerners who are so fervently bent on establishing a theocracy. Today, they interfere with a woman's right to free herself from her familial bonds. Tomorrow, they may put up a Christmas tree in the public square. Can the Inquisition be far behind?

Tragically, history is rife with examples of what can happen when such people are able to impose their will on others. In Nazi Germany, for example, a woman who drowned her children would have been thrown in prison. Do we really want to goosestep down that same path again? For shame!

Perhaps you are still not persuaded that drowning children is ethical. You might even think that this has been an entirely specious series of arguments, thrown up as a rhetorical smokescreen in order to defend a completely indefensible act. But then, that's just the kind of response that would be expected of someone like you. You fascist.

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