This being the translation of the popular Genesis 9.1 recently offered by Robert Alter. An injunction with which we do not lightly interfere - so some governments have taken a lot of stick for trying to reduce the rate of multiplication, for trying to do something about the undoubted fact that there are far too many of us. But my interest today is in micro rather than macro policy: when is it right for governments to stop a particular person or partnership from having children?
There are plenty of people about who do not make very good parents. There are plenty of men who are careless about fathering children for whom they make no subsequent provision. There are some women who have children for the wrong reasons. There are a small number of women who have far too many children. But on the whole, we interfere in such matters with a very light touch, certainly without coercion and probably without financial penalty, this last to avoid further punishing the child for the sins of the parents.
But what about the fortunately uncommon case of where a handicapped person, let us say a lady, wants and is able to have a child, a child which she is not going to be able to look after in the normal way of things. Does she have a human right to have a child? Even if her partner is also handicapped? Should we aid and abet this right? Do we have the right - or the duty - to prevent the lady from conceiving, or if she does to terminate? Or to put out any child there might be for adoption?
The answer used to be yes to the extent that we sometimes fed oral contraceptives to young women for whom pregnancy was thought to be inappropriate. I am not sure that we still do this.
In the case of a severe handicap, perhaps some form of mental handicap, I am reasonably sure that it would be better if the lady did not have the child. The tricky question is whether installing the kind of machinery needed to stop her having a child, at least most of the time, while solving one problem would not make another by setting an unfortunate precedent for official interference in private affairs. There are also the possibly unpleasant details of what might be involved in such stopping. When is it right to force feed someone with oral contraceptives if persuasion fails? Would forcible adoption of the child being a better solution? What if the parents of the lady in question take her side in the matter?
My solution would be to give the social workers a license to interfere in such matters. To do all they can to get the right result by persuasion, but to have the power to use compulsion at the limit, with the exercise of that power being the subject of careful and more or less open monitoring. One would also need to add enough money to the mix to ensure that the social workers in question had the necessary skills and time - at which point does my solution start to fall apart? We cannot be giving licenses of this sort if we cannot be funding them, this last even though the costs of the cure may be a lot more than the costs of the prevention.
PS: it is something of a paradox that while I am all for governments interfering in the commanding heights of the economy, to the extent of owning the likes of hospitals and railways, I am much less keen on them interfering in our more private affairs. A paradox for explanation on another day.
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