Reply #115: "Driving" is not a "right"; it is a privilege

[Tansy_Gold]

If you are under the legal age to obtain a license and you drive, you are breaking the law. At the legal age, you do not automatically have a "right" to drive. You only have a "right" to take a driving test. If you do not pass a driving test, you do not get a license and you cannot legally drive.

If you repeatedly break the laws concerning driving, such as running through stop signs, exceeding the posted speed limit, parking in front of fire hydrants, you will lose your driving "privilege." You will have your license suspended or revoked, and you will not be able to drive legally.

What this judge's decision does is to make child-bearing a "privilege" that will only be granted to those who pass muster. Are you a drug addict? Sorry, you can't breed. Are you poor? Sorry, you can't breed beyond what we say. Unless, of course, you have some rich momma who wants to pay you to have children for her. Are you not particularly bright academically? Dropped out in the ninth grade? Well, you can't breed either (even though there has never been proof that intelligence is hereditary and many kids drop out for economic reasons, not just inability to maintain grades). Yeah, yeah, yeah, we know there are bright folks who have some really dumb kids, but we got rules, y'know.

If this case holds up in court, it will be used as precedent in other cases. And the burden will fall predominantly on women, who are economically disadvantaged to begin with.

I've worked with women who have been incarcerated on drug charges, and every one of them who has kids is just desperate to get back to them. She loves her kids as much as you or I, and she knows the crack is bad and she knows she needs to kick it, but it just ain't as easy out there on the street as we might think it is, we who are sitting here comfortably in front of our computers.

Once again, look at the logistics of enforcing this verdict. How does this woman keep from getting pregnant? Will she be sterilized? Will she be given contraceptives? How will the court make sure she takes them? What if it's against the law for her to be given contraceptives paid for by public funds? Could her case be used as a precedent to get public funding for contraceptives for any woman with children in foster care? How does one make her take contraceptives if she has a medical reason not to? What happens if the contraceptives don't work? What happens if she gets pregnant? Will the court force her to get an abortion? Will they take the child away from her? Will they then put her in jail? Putting her in jail for bearing a child makes bearing a child a criminal offense.

Would this case then become a precedent for jailing other women for having children? What if the woman is poor and her child is determined to be special needs? Is that child going to be any more of a financial burden on the tax payers than a "normal" child in foster care? Does the court have a right to tell a woman who is carrying a special needs fetus that she has to abort rather than burden the taxpayers with its lifelong care?

It seems to me that more of the argument here is about "I don't want to have to pay for this broad's kids" than it is about the rights of women in general and children in general. It's more about "my right as a taxpayer to not have to support X number of 'undeserving' people." IMHO, that's a rightwing "property rights vs. human rights" argument. I'll take human rights every time.

Tansy Gold