RE: legal sex with 9 year olds
May 16, 2013 at 10:26 am
(This post was last modified: May 16, 2013 at 10:28 am by Ben Davis.)
(May 16, 2013 at 9:50 am)paulpablo Wrote: Should 9 year olds legally be allowed to have sex and get pregnant and skip education if they want to?I voted 'No' in general principle but your question conflates the separate issues of sex & education. So...
Q. Should 9 year olds legally be allowed to have sex and get pregnant if they want to?
A. No. In fact, the overwhelming majority of 9 year olds will be prepubescent therefore incapable of having babies. On the grounds of prepubescence, I would also consider sexual activity as unethical; their bodies are just not ready yet. In terms of consent, I agree with Napoleon that people of that age will not have developed enough knowledge or matured enough, intellectually, to give informed consent.
Q. Should 9 year olds legally be allowed to skip education if they want?
A. No. A useful simplification of the parental role is 'to provide survival & survivability to their offspring'. We understand that modern education is extremely useful in achieving those aims and in a modern social context, allows us to 'optimise' the survival & survivability rates of our offspring. Further, given humanity's complexity, we provide our offspring with greater opportunity for quality of life by insisting on a minimum level of education. The European & American models for education seem to have struck the right balance by insisting that children are included in the education process until 16/18 years old.
Sum ergo sum
