Interesting to see these ideas all in one short post:
Trust the feds.
Trust microsoft.
Forget about privacy (the above will decide whether you need it or not).
Forget about security (the above will decide whether you need it or not).
Part of the problem is the issue of consent. You can consent to donate your body to science or to an organ donation program, but a fetus obviously cannot. As you note, we usually accept parental consent as the equivalent of child consent for legal purposes, but there are reasons why this does not work for an aborted fetus.
There are significant limitations on prental consent. For example, parents cannot consent to sexual relations on behalf of their children. In general parental consent does not justify actions that would clearly harm the interests of the child. Roughly speaking the idea of a "trust" is at work in such cases. We assume that parents will pursue the best interests of their children, so we accept their decisions so long as there is no obvious conflict between those decisions and the interests of the child.
This brings us to the heart of the problem. If you think of a fetus as a child then the decision to abort a fetus is in effect a decision to kill a child. This would normally count as a pretty serious breech of trust. Typically parents who attempt to kill their children are deprived of custody, and lose any right that they had to make decisions on behalf of their children. So, while we typically accept parental consent in place of child consent, it seems that we cannot do so in the case of aborted fetuses, because the parents of such fetues are not entitled to custody.
Of course this all depends on whether you think of the fetus as a child, as President Bush does. If you think of the fetus as a tissue sample, or a biopsy, as many pro-choice people are inclined to, then presumably you would also think that the mother has the right to decide what is done with it. This is why the debate over fetus stem-cell research has tended to divide along the same lines as the debate over abortion itself. People on one side view aborted fetuses as victims of murder, and as wards of the state. People on the other side view them as the property of the mother.
Slashdot Mirror
Interesting to see these ideas all in one short post:
Trust the feds.
Trust microsoft.
Forget about privacy (the above will decide whether you need it or not).
Forget about security (the above will decide whether you need it or not).
I hope it was a joke.
There are significant limitations on prental consent. For example, parents cannot consent to sexual relations on behalf of their children. In general parental consent does not justify actions that would clearly harm the interests of the child. Roughly speaking the idea of a "trust" is at work in such cases. We assume that parents will pursue the best interests of their children, so we accept their decisions so long as there is no obvious conflict between those decisions and the interests of the child.
This brings us to the heart of the problem. If you think of a fetus as a child then the decision to abort a fetus is in effect a decision to kill a child. This would normally count as a pretty serious breech of trust. Typically parents who attempt to kill their children are deprived of custody, and lose any right that they had to make decisions on behalf of their children. So, while we typically accept parental consent in place of child consent, it seems that we cannot do so in the case of aborted fetuses, because the parents of such fetues are not entitled to custody.
Of course this all depends on whether you think of the fetus as a child, as President Bush does. If you think of the fetus as a tissue sample, or a biopsy, as many pro-choice people are inclined to, then presumably you would also think that the mother has the right to decide what is done with it. This is why the debate over fetus stem-cell research has tended to divide along the same lines as the debate over abortion itself. People on one side view aborted fetuses as victims of murder, and as wards of the state. People on the other side view them as the property of the mother.
FUD. What's new?