[RD] Abortion, once again

I admit I am fascinated, seriously, by the hair-splitting that the answer to "can a minor consent?" differs depending on the subject. Not saying I know The One And Only Answer, but the flip-flopping depending on the situation is... well, fascinating to observe.

Not sure this is hair splitting lol. Say what you mean? Not sure I follow what you are arguing. I'm not even clear whether "minor" means below 18 to you, or some other age.
 
Would you feel the same if it was transporting a minor to go to a concert their parents didn't want them to go to? I guess I don't find your "life saving" analogy comparable (& you are free to find mine not comparable as well of course).

Because I don't think some random person should get to take a minor out of state or provide them with drugs (even OTC). Y'all are presuming too much benign intent on this hypothetical other person I feel. That's why I keep saying to take abortion out of the equation & imagine for a moment it was something else - no one seems to be willing to address the Nyquil/shopping question - are those OK as well? If not, why not? Or maybe I can just pick up someone's kid & take them to Disneyland, or give them Ritalin without their parents' knowledge/consent?
I am not assuming anything. We are talking about the provision of medical care, and the way decisions are made are quite well specified. Usually the decision is made in private between a doctor and the patient. Why in this case should another party have a say in a medical decision? You do not like the antibiotic or blood transfusion comparison (which are real things that children die because their parents deny them access to), what about covid vaccination? Should a parent be able to block their post pubescent child from accessing that? What other medical care should parents be able to deny their children?

You think going to a concert is a better comparison? Even if we consider this, are you saying it would be appropriate to criminalise a child's friends who take them to a concert, in the land of the free? And to complete the analogy, this is locking someone up because they allowed a child to use their phone to buy concert tickets.
 
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I admit I am fascinated, seriously, by the hair-splitting that the answer to "can a minor consent?" differs depending on the subject. Not saying I know The One And Only Answer, but the flip-flopping depending on the situation is... well, fascinating to observe.
Dental work is different to, say, Botox.

Agree? Or am I "hair splitting" again? :D
 
Dental work is different to, say, Botox.
Different in that that have different indications yes. Different in that one should get locked up if you give someone a lift to one or the other? I would say no. Botox can be a clinically indicated procedure BTW.
 
Different in that that have different indications yes. Different in that one should get locked up if you give someone a lift to one or the other? I would say no. Botox can be a clinically indicated procedure BTW.
Oh for sure. Sorry, I meant cosmetic Botox. But I didn't want to just say "cosmetic" because that can be taken the wrong way too. Was trying to get something specific that would be perhaps treated differently to something that is required medically.

Solely r.e. consent due to Rob's good faith and constructive call of "hair splitting" 😅
 
Ah, so you are saying that children should not be able to consent to cosmetic botox application? I am not convinced, given that it is applied by a doctor with a duty of care, but fair enough.
 
Ah, so you are saying that children should not be able to consent to cosmetic botox application? I am not convinced, given that it is applied by a doctor with a duty of care, but fair enough.
Jury's out for me. I lean to the individual seeking treatment in general.

This came out me saying a minor can consent, and Rob turning it into "hair splitting". All I tried to say was that the specifics are going to be (legally) different in different places (like how Arwon described how it was where he lives).
 
There is the medical concept of elective treatment. Elective means we choose to perform the procedure, it is not an imminent requirement. When most say abortion they mean elective abortion, as opposed to spontaneous or emergency abortion. Cosmetic surgery is an example of elective surgery, and most dental work is elective as it is more preventative than curative.

Elective or not is very important for consent, in that consent is always required for elective treatment in that way it may not be for urgent critical treatment. I do not see how it is relevant in the parental right to know and/or veto treatment. In a parent/child relationship the parent get right to consent on behalf of the child as they are supposed to know better and have the child's best interest in mind. In a very similar way in a doctor/patient relationship the doctor gets a right to decide what treatment a patient gets as they are supposed to know better and have the patient's best interest in mind. In the case where you have a doctor making the decision that a child gets a treatment, what role is the parent supposed to be playing?
 
I admit I am fascinated, seriously, by the hair-splitting that the answer to "can a minor consent?" differs depending on the subject. Not saying I know The One And Only Answer, but the flip-flopping depending on the situation is... well, fascinating to observe.
This is how it is everywhere? Adulthood, age of medical consent, age of sexual consent, age of drug and alcohol use, voting age, are all varied and often different even within a country or state. There are some things we’ve just learned work better. It varies, but in most states starting around 14 or 15, teens can see a therapist without the parent getting access to the therapist or being told about it, because when the therapist did inform the parent, it was overwhelmingly being used to continue to harm the child.
 
I take a very dim view of parental rights absolutists; your child is another human with rights, not your property.
Pro life proponents would probably entirely agree with this statement and say you make a compelling argument against abortions!
 
Not sure about the therapist comment. I am one, and am unaware of any therapists being yanked from school by pro life parents!

Also the sperm comment at least on the surface appears a complete non sequitur.
 
Pro life proponents would probably entirely agree with this statement and say you make a compelling argument against abortions!

Superficially this is clever, but the things being compared have very few properties in common, so its kinda not.

Edit: Just to be clear, I'm saying embryos/fetus fail to qualify sufficiently for the categories children/human imo.
 
I admit I am fascinated, seriously, by the hair-splitting that the answer to "can a minor consent?" differs depending on the subject. Not saying I know The One And Only Answer, but the flip-flopping depending on the situation is... well, fascinating to observe.
if the minor can't consent to sex, i don't think it's weird believing that they can consent to not having a child :)
 
Pro life proponents would probably entirely agree with this statement and say you make a compelling argument against abortions!

It's not my problem that they are incapable of thinking clearly
 
Not sure about the therapist comment. I am one, and am unaware of any therapists being yanked from school by pro life parents!

Also the sperm comment at least on the surface appears a complete non sequitur.
Besides the federal law for funding mental health services that 200 GOP congresspeople voted against:





Some of these are a direct “no more funding” while others are “we will make you violate your ethics” which is in effect removing therapists.
 
Okay if you had specified mental health services I might have got the reference. When people in schools talk about therapists (at least the ones I work in) it is normally more in reference to SLPs, OTs, PTs, SSWs, etc.
 
I admit I am fascinated, seriously, by the hair-splitting that the answer to "can a minor consent?" differs depending on the subject. Not saying I know The One And Only Answer, but the flip-flopping depending on the situation is... well, fascinating to observe.
Seems torturous signposting is required to make a point:

It makes sense that the answer changes and flops around. It's not based on the potential minor. It's based on what society wants from the potential minor. You are right, it's always interesting. Though the themes are gong to repeat and repeat and ...
 
I admit I am fascinated, seriously, by the hair-splitting that the answer to "can a minor consent?" differs depending on the subject. Not saying I know The One And Only Answer, but the flip-flopping depending on the situation is... well, fascinating to observe.
there's a lot of self-inconsistent rationale when it comes to this, and not easy answers. you're stuck weighing the person's rights with their capacity to make decisions for themselves...sometimes permanently life-altering ones. the law clearly applies broken rationale to it; people can get major surgeries of solely their own volition for years before they can legally decide to consume alcohol, and in both cases it's the state deciding for them what they're capable of/responsible for.

the other problem is that treating the topic consistently implies either majorly violating norms wrt age of consent, many which exist for good reason, or to effectively treat obviously capable people as sub-human in terms of reasoning capacity until they hit an arbitrary age. i'm not comfortable doing either of these things. i could be convinced that the drinking age for alcohol be lowered for example, but it seems like letting 20 year olds sleep with 13 year olds will cause way more harm to people's lives than good. even if we then turn around and let the 13 year old decide on medical procedures that could also seriously alter their life. in the latter case, both procedure and inaction are choices with consequences that last, and someone has to make that choice. even if the person in question isn't fully equipped to evaluate it like someone more experienced, it's hard to buy that they shouldn't have a say in what is more or less a forced choice scenario wrt their future.

i find myself questioning the rationale for letting parents block it even if we replace "abortion" with "elective surgery that improves qol", like correcting an issue that lets the minor walk properly or something that the parents don't want done then. we're going to tell that person they can't get it? maybe, but that doesn't feel right.

You think going to a concert is a better comparison? Even if we consider this, are you saying it would be appropriate to criminalise a child's friends who take them to a concert, in the land of the free? And to complete the analogy, this is locking someone up because they allowed a child to use their phone to buy concert tickets.
you're being fairly loose with "friends" here. it is easy to envision scenarios where it looks bad, and in many cases probably will be bad. law has to draw the line somewhere. like when the "child" is 10 and the "friend" is someone many times their age that the parents don't know. very different look from when everyone going to that concert is the same age or close.

Edit: Just to be clear, I'm saying embryos/fetus fail to qualify sufficiently for the categories children/human imo.
this has always been the fundamental question, even if courts and many people don't want to go there. everyone draws this line at some point, and the question is where the law should draw it. at some point, the fetus becomes "legally human". for most people, this is before birth...but how much before varies greatly and there's a lot more emotion in it than there are objective reasons to pick any particular point to draw the line.
if the minor can't consent to sex, i don't think it's weird believing that they can consent to not having a child :)
they can also (by logical extension) consent to having it, unless you want to legally force abortion in this context. it's one of those "even if they're too young, this is now a forced choice and it's going to impact the rest of their life either way" scenarios. sucks that the scenario exists, but since the choice has to be made, the person living with the consequences should probably have the most say.
 
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