Judge orders couple not to have children

Okay, fair enough. My debate lies in the following comment:

That's not entirely true, the judge simply suspended their 'privilege' to procreating via court order - I don't recall procreation being an explicit entrenched right, see here. The couple most certainly can procreate if they wish and, if they do, will be held accountable to the court - keep in mind that a punishment has not been handed down.......yet! When and if the couple decides to disobey the court order then, and only then, can we engage in a debate about the couples rights and/or liberties, if they have any with regards to procreation.

At present, I would argue that a persons right to 'liberty' may be infringed due to the burden placed on them [society] to care for the couples children.

In a warm and fuzzy kinda world we wouldn't have this situation, everyone would rise to the occasion and care for those kids without objection but, we don't live in a warm and fuzzy kinda world - we live in a world infested with fuq-ups. How do we deal with fuq-ups? The same way the judge in this case did, slap them upside the head and tell them to get their act together.

 

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And some of them are inalienable human rights, enumerated in the Constitution by the Framers. Free speech, firearm ownership, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness - all of these cannot me infringed upon by any government, state, federal, or municipal.

 

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As far as I know, the Constitution doesn't say anything about life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness. Those are in the Declaration of Independence, which is not a legal document.

As to firearm ownership, the Constitution just says you have the right to bear arms, not necessarily own them. And that has been abridged.

Free speech has been abridged: try yelling "bomb" in an airport sometime.

What does that have to do with this thread? Well, it just goes to show that we don't really have rights, we have priviliges. And all it takes is some asshat to come along and do something stupid and we no longer have those priviliges.

Same thing goes with childbearing. We get someone like this woman (who should have been thrown off the cliffs at Sparta upon being born) who does something so incredibly selfish and stupid that the courts now must set a precedent to deal with people like this...except you get other people who abuse this precedent and use it to hurt everyone...bleh....

 

*ahem. both of them have been ordered not to breed.

 

even better.

 

The ninth amendment states that the enumeration of some of these rights does not mean that these are our only rights. The supreme courts job is not to abridge those rights but to determine which rights have precedence. Is your right to life more important than my right to free speech? People die in riots and panics every year.

 

[/QUOTE]The ninth amendment states that the enumeration of some of these rights does not mean that these are our only rights.[/QUOTE]

*pulls out pocket constitution*

"The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." (U.S. Constitution, Amendment IX).

Actually it seems to me that any amendment to the Constitution which could deny a previous right could not be used to deny that right. That is, even though an amendment may be added, anything in the amendment which could be used to deny a right would have no legal weight...I'm not sure if that's what you're saying or not...

I can agree with that; that the Supreme Court defines the hierarchy of which rights override others, though I fail to see the implication that exercising free speech creates riots and panics. While exercising free speech certainly can create riots and panics, riots and panics aren't normally implied from the exercise of free speech, granted there are exceptions like yelling "BOMB!" in an airport but in the general case exercising free speech does not usually result in riots and/or panics...

 

Earlier you stated that the constitution does not cover reproductive rights. I was just stating that it does cover those rights as well as privacy and a host of other to be enumerated rights by denying them to the federal government. The constitution does allow itself to be changed and it has been changed several times: giving women the right to vote; taking away the right to own slaves; taking away the right to buy and restoring the right to buy alcohol. Some times the deadliest weapons are words. The deadliest ones I have heard are these two “get em”. You scan destroy someone’s careers with slander and their lives with libel. I was using the extreme worst case but there are many levels of control, which is why it is so dangerous to surrender any more control to the government than is absolutely necessary.

 

Like I said before, the problem here is that in the US judges just don't have this sort of authority. Of course it's in everyone's best interests if these people don't have any more children, and I wouldn't really have a problem if the legislature set up some sort of system to prevent obviously unfit parents from having children, but that doesn't give a judge the power to simply decree it without any sort of legislative backing. Judges are supposed to work within the context of the law. If this couple violated some sort of law by having children, then yes the judge could punish them for it. As it is, the judge appears to basically be saying “I think this is a good idea, so you have to go along with it, even though there's no law that requires it.” Sorry, but judges don't get to do that.