Should older minors have rights?

I have a hard time getting my head around your way of thinking. However, I am NOT in favour of moving the age of consent backwards. I am NOT in favour of teens making life decisions on their own. I am NOT in favour of making young teens available to those who think like you. As long as a teen lives in the parents house, it is the parents who are responsible and should make the decisions as they affect the teen and the family.

even in the case of pregnancy, were the choice greatly impacts the current kid for life? it is their life right? Why should the parents get that much control of what happens after they reach the age of majority?

You were talking about before the age of majority. Are you now changing your position?

You didn't get his response. The child will likely grow up while the teenager is an adult and the decision impacts the adult's life even if made as a minor.

Then that is the way it is.

Is is any different than a child saying they will not go to school because it is their right. They then grow up with no education; no job; no way to make a decent living etc. when they are an adult.

Like I said. I have a hard time getting my head around the way that Hawkeye thinks.

Bob gets it.

Yes. But, does he agree with you?

He has only criticized my post. He has not stated his opinion on your position.

what age do we let kids drop out of school?, it is before the age of majority, yes?

I hardly care if he or anyone else agrees or disagrees with me, it is the process of discussion and reaching mutual understanding that I am interested in.

It is different in at least that having an abortion isn't as likely to cause the social problems you describe, and that the failure to have an abortion might.

It is different in that a parent ordering or prohibiting an abortion is action against a much more personal space than whether or not the kid goes to school.

Sure, there are grey areas and the tradeoff between rights and responsibility are tough to balance but you can't pretend that all of the rights are created equal.

This thread's title is misleading in that all minors do have rights. It's really a question of which ones should they have and the abortion dilemma is a very arguable case. It's simply not the same as whether parents have the right to tell their kids what to do in general because the parents don't have a right to make their kids do some things and there is no such blanket parental right.

I don't know about where you live, but here they cannot drop out without written consent from the parents.

according to NPR the number of states that have gone to 18 years is 19.
http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=9004703&m=9004704
considering that most states were once at 16 is another example of how teen rights have been steadily removed over the last 40 years.

It will be interesting to see the thoughts of others. That is, if everyone doesn't have you on ignore.

I don't really care what Hawkeye's positions are, and don't tend to follow them too closely because they seem to contain a lot of unstated misogyny that I wouldn't subscribe to.

But my own positions on the things he's brought up here are:

No parental consent for abortion: agreed, but possibly with the caveat that they should undergo a process of emancipation to gain this right

No parental notification for abortion: disagree, I can imagine a lot of very bad things happening because of this but the parents at least have a right to know as they can't be expected to perform their responsibilities as a parent without even being notified when their children are having abortions.

Age of consent: People often mean different things when they talk about this, so I'm going to be very specific. I think that if the age of consent involves parental consent it should be at most 16. This means, that if parents and the child both consent to a 16-year old having a sexual relationship it should be legal. But I think there should be an age discordance limit for minors to prevent them from sexual predation where adults abuse their position of authority or the discordance in maturity for sexual gratification. So in my societal ideal, statutory rape should require significant chronological discordance to be illegal. A 18-year-old having sex with his 17-year-and-364-day-old girlfriend should never be considered "rape" but I'm willing to consider it illegal without minor emancipation. The age of consent itself is something I think should have a minimum age of around 16 but require parental consent.

I can think of cases where the teenager may deserve the right without the parental consent and it's once again a situation where I think they should have to emancipate themselves to gain both the responsibility and the rights at the same time in cases where they are at odds with the parents, the parents' responsibilities and the parents' rights.

But all that being said, in the US political system I think this is the perfect kind of law to be dealt with at the state level, allowing for less rigidity in the application of what's essentially a very culturally relative law.

And along these lines you'll hear me come down in favor of emancipation a lot when there is a conflict between the rights of the parent and the rights of the child. With the power should come responsibility and minor emancipation is a good legal instrument to use to resolve these things and it should be overhauled to become more commonly granted and for more reasons than it currently is.

Sounds reasonable.

You and Spendius are the only people who've ever called me "Bob". When you guys started doing so today I do a double take wondering who you are talking about. I suppose I'll get used to it and it will sound more natural to me with time.

do you like it better than "the creator" or "the regime"? Doesn't matter, I will have a new one soon.

Whatever floats your boat. I'd rather not sidetrack the discussion into your use of nicknames for me any further.

Re your second sentence - ha ha ha

Re your first one, my opinion is that every family, every child (teenager), every situation is different. One kid at 16 could be less responsible and mature than another at 13. I don't agree that the age of consent that should be moved backwards because kids have a right to a childhood and that would infringe on it.

Parents have the right, currently, to parent their children, where we live anyway, Intrepid. When that right isremoved, then those that remove it should step up to the plate. So, if these laws are going to be made at the State level, then the State should take responsibility for what occurs, when it does.

This, of course, does not take into consideration all the other ramifications of such actions, such as the family dynamics, the psychological state of the teen, the ability of the teen to make such a momentous decision, the participation of the father of the soon-to-be-aborted child, etc.

I'm not religious, but I see this concept as a real problem to strongly religious faiths.