A Scottish MP (a Labour one for the record) has been out and about coming up with great ideas like adding oral contraceptives to methadone prescriptions so that recovering addicts (female ones that is, no mention of compulsory vasectomy for the men) can't have children. This apparently is in reaction to the death of a toddler who drank his parents methadone and died last year. So I suppose he's saying it would have been better for that child to have never existed in the first place. How about putting the stuff in child-proof bottles or, and this is super-radical, offering high quality support and help with childcare to people in that unfortunate situation.
We in the "civilised" world think it's wrong to control people's fertility by force but we do have in place the statutes to allow us to take into temporary or permanent care children whose home environment is unsuitable. Clearly this is such a case. But of course that costs money...
The tabloids meanwhile have been focussing on the 11-year-old girl who's announced she's pregnant. Tut tut tut. As usual it's round after round of finger-pointing. No-one seems to have noticed that kids have fathers and fathers have to have sex with mothers and having sex with 11-year-olds is a crime - statutory rape. Now in this case the father's only 15 himself so there's an issue of criminal responsibility but of course no-one is tut-tutting him (or his parents). The girl is a victim of a crime and deserves sympathy and support ... isn't that obvious?
Friday, May 12, 2006
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Yes it is obvious. We have made it unlawful for her to consent to have sex, the focus should be on the rapist. It would be if he were 40, or 18. 15 is clearly enough to know bbetter, assuming he's not "exceptional". (That appears to be the replacement euphemism for "special".)
And here, it would be child rape, not statutory. Statutory, a low level offence, is a crime only for adults who have consensual sex with minors with more than a 4 year age difference. So consensual sex where everyone is in the 17-13 band is no offence. But ANY sex with an under thirteen is rape.
PS- I'm a firm believer in offering a thousand pound bounty for anyone 18-30 to get medically sterilised. We'd save millions.
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