This column about the octuplet situation highlights the different sides of the life debate. Women don’t have a right to a child, just the same way they don’t have a right to an abortion. It all comes down to this:
The child is not an object of rights, but a person who has rights of his or her own. The child is an end in himself or herself.
It’s a good article because in a different context than the abortion debate, it highlights how making babies ain’t a solo affair. Even in this age of reproductive technology. Especially in this age of reproductive technology.
by 
Purposefully having a kid (or kids) on your own is indicative of one of two things: one, you have some serious psychological problems, or two, you’re living one heck of a privileged life. (Or both.) For every affluent single woman who decides she’s going to have a baby on her own so she can feel “fulfilled”, or whatever her reasoning is, there are hundreds of tired, stressed single mothers with tight finances who wish to God they had a loving and supporting husband for themselves and father for their children. They’re the ones who didn’t set out to have a kid on their own, the ones who got divorced or never got married and whose children, for all intents and purposes, have only one parent.
I was watching “Judge Joe Brown” the other day, and he was frustrated with this woman who had four kids and no husband. There were at least three fathers between the four kids, she had never gotten married, and she was convinced she didn’t need any man to help her raise her children.
“You have four children, three of which are boys,” said the judge. “Who’s supposed to teach them how to be a man?” She didn’t know and didn’t seem to care, either. The judge pointed out that she lived in a city neighborhood that was notorious for crime and gang activity. That didn’t seem to bother her much. I can’t remember what she was in court for, but she was obviously living a life with more than the average amount of everyday turmoil. I felt sorry for the kids.
The quote that you highlighted describes our current mainstream values perfectly – in regards to children from conception to legal age.
I left a career as a child protection social worker due to this attitude. Everything was framed in terms of parental rights. I am a civil libertarian at heart, but the principle that underlies libertarianism and freedom is that your rights end where mine begin. Parental rights need to end where the child’s rights begin. If these are not defined at conception as a society, than it is a slippery slope from there.
People want the right to donate sperm and never have their offspring contact them? Does that offspring not have the right to have a mother and a father on their birth certificate? Do they not have the right to know their own medical history? The right to grow up wanted, cared for and loved?
Unfortunately the answer is no to all of those questions. The only ones with rights these days are hedonistic selfish fully formed adults who want a child only at the exact moment they decide and to fulfill their needs. They refuse to remember that they were once an embryo, an infant and a child with developmental, emotional and material needs.