General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Girl, 14, Sues Family to Stop Abortion [View all]cthulu2016
(10,960 posts)A person's control of her reproductive capacity must coincide with her biological reproductive capacity.
The fact that we do not consider some reproductively viable females to be legally competant actors in other contexts does not make it sensible to say that choice develops at some point after choice becomes biologically meaningful.
It cannot. The basic reasons for choice are all applicable here. Nobody can compell a female to have a child, or to terminate a pregnancy.
Some people will choose poorly, which is unavoidably built into the very idea of choice. If we can make "right" decisions for a 14 year old then we ought to be competent to decide for a 30 year old as well.
The logic of choice rejects "but she's making a mistake" arguments. People often make mistakes with their rights to self-determination.
The strict application of choice, conceptually, will lead to some freak-show bad outcomes and fine-tuners will seek, with the best of intentions, to try to create a social concensus around a process.
But that social concensus is not choice. The implications of what I am saying are uncomfortable, but rights are not about good outcomes. The point of rights is that they trump bad outcomes until those outcomes are a dramatic present danger to the public welfare.
This girl deciding, however wisely or poorly, is not an uendurable threat to the public welfare.
A corollary to choice is that your choice cannot sensibly impose obligations on others who do not have that choice. Her parents ought not to face any legal compulsion to raise or support the child.
That's ugly, but it is also built into choice.