turpin@cs.utexas.EDU (Russell Turpin) (10/31/90)
----- In article <1990Oct29.234758.667@vax5.cit.cornell.edu>, w25y@vax5.cit.cornell.edu writes: > If a third party shows up with a contract saying that s/he has > purchased the child in question, s/he is charged with attempting to > purchase a human being in violation of anti-slavery laws. But this does not describe the case in question. A woman showed up claiming to be the child's mother, with clear evidence demonstrating this. She did not purchase a child: the child was naturally hers. What she purchased was a service, help in the creation of the child. > This standard might not be "genetically just", but it is hopefully > less ambiguous and more enforcable than what we have now ... There are many other ways for the law to evolve that would be less ambiguous and more enforceable than what we have now. Why should we prefer your suggestion over other alternatives. > ... and avoids the (in my opinion) dangerous precedent of > allowing the purchase of people. Calling a pig a horse does not make it one. I see no such precedent being set. Indeed, a lot of nonsense about this issue arises from the fact that our language uses a common set of grammatical forms to refer to two very different things. The first is the possession of parental rights and responsibilities; the second, the possession of other people as chattel. Your child; your slave. This common form derives in part from the fact that in the past, the two were not so dissimilar. (Compare: your wife.) As long as the mores and laws that prescribe parental rights and responsibilities make this relationship different from holding people as chattel, then no amount of tinkering with how they are assigned will return us to a situation where people are held as chattel. If, on the other hand, parents are allowed to treat their children as slaves, then it does not matter how parental rights and responsibilities are assigned, because some will do this. Russell