Reply #13: well ...

[iverglas]

But what if the 11 year old really DOES believe she is carrying a fully human baby?

And what if an 11-yr-old believes that the cancer in her eye is an angel from heaven?

Are we going to prevent the parents from having the child's cancer removed?

I really don't mean to be rude -- but is what an 11-yr-old believes about something like this really something that should be determining the course of the rest of her life?

The courts do face these difficult decisions occasionally. The child who does not want to have medical treatment -- maybe for loony religious reasons, maybe because they child has insight and reason and has decided that s/he simply does not want to be put through ordeals, even if it means death. Whether the child has *enough* insight and reason to make that decision when the results are irreversible and serious is always the question.

So: what if the 11-yr-old really believes what you say? (It's hard to phrase in a way that it makes sense: of course a fetus is "fully human", but it isn't a baby. Maybe we could just say that the 11-yr-old believes that terminating her pregnancy would be wrong, an issue that can't be settled by argument or reason.)

Well, as you say (with the necessary changes):

People still have the right to believe <terminating a pregnancy> to be <wrong>.

The child does indeed have the right to believe anything she wants. (That's almost a tautology; one can't force anyone to believe anything s/he doesn't want to believe. ;) )

But --

... if they feel that way an abortion shouldn't be forced on them - ?

Where do issues of competence come into it? If someone believes abortion is wrong in the same way s/he believes the devil is hiding in the closet -- as a result of delusional thinking that manifests itself in adherence to bizarre beliefs -- what then? What if a 6-yr-old believes it is wrong to euthanize the dog she was given for her birthday, but the parents know the dog is in severe intractable pain?

Do 11-yr-olds really have the knowledge and experience and reasoning skills to determine whether something as complex as this is "wrong"? Don't we abhor the anti-choice brigade's practice of inculcating such notions into their children's mind by showing them pictures of little aborted baby things? What basis does an 11-yr-old have for thinking that something that she can't possibly understand the complexities of is "wrong"?

Why would an 11-yr-old even have an opinion about this, if the opinion hadn't been stuffed into her head by her parents, her church, her school, or what she is told in society at large?

She can't even grasp the effects that a pregnancy and delivery are going to have on her (or anyone's) body, let alone the effects that parenthood will have on her (or anyone's) life. Children aren't little adults, and we do know quite a bit about the brains of children and adolescents and how they work. They jump off high places. They walk on railway tracks. They do things that are not in their best interests, because they just don't grasp the risks and possible consequences.

The *reasons* why children want or don't want to do something are sometimes a good thing to consider in deciding whether to prevent them from doing it or make them do it. Sometimes, they really aren't.

If the hypothetical girl does feel that way, won't she go through the rest of her life (assuming she does not change her opinion on the status of a fetus, I certainly haven't since I was pretty young and saw a picture of an embryo and wondered how the heck someone thought that was a baby) feeling as if her parents murdered her child?

Well, we do have one of those situations where there's no perfect solution ... kinda like the situation scads of women with unwanted pregnancies find themselves in every day, for sure.

Would she be better off thinking her parents are murderers, or giving birth at the age of 11? Would some sort of intervention, along with the maturing process, not likely solve the first problem more easily than anything can solve the second?

If she gives birth, she may become the mother of a child she'll never see again, if it is relinquished for adoption. And -- who gets to make that decision? If the parents decline to rear the child, and the girl wants to, who has to support her and her child then? I'm not saying that the rest of us ("the state") shouldn't do that, I'm just wondering how it would be in her best interests to become a stray in a group home with a kid at the age of 11 or 12. If the parents agree to continue rearing her, but not her child, what happens and who decides? And why is it better for someone else to decide that the child must be taken into the care of the state for adoption (as one might expect would happen) than to decide that her pregnancy should be terminated?

An 11-yr-old can't make a plan for how to deal with parenthood. And she has no resources to carry out any plan she might come up with. So her options may not be abortion vs. live happily ever after with my new baby who loves me. But she'll probably keep right on thinking that they are, if, for whatever reason, she's opposed to terminating the pregnancy.

She's a kid, that's what they do. The options aren't stay here on the railway bridge vs. jump off and break both my legs, if I'm lucky enough to survive. The options are stay here on the railway bridge vs. jump off and find out how good it feels and get some bruises and be acclaimed as the brave hero by all my friends.

To me, that's the question. What are the real options, and is it really more in the child's best interests to allow her to make a decision that may have any of a variety of seriously bad consequences for her, and is far less likely to have good consequences?