….but I’m thinking that Richard Bowen isn’t going to get my vote. I wish someone could explain to me why an individual is required to secure a license to go fishing, own a business, or drive a car, but any troglodyte with motile sperm and a partner with a functional uterus can create a child? Our prisons are jam-packed with men and women raised in broken homes by parents who, even if they were present, didn’t give a damn. How much money do we spend warehousing people who were brought into this world by people who couldn’t raise an eyebrow, much less a child?
Yes, I understand the drawbacks of eugenics, and the idea of qualifying parents is redolent of official oppression. Even so, it seems clear that the current system (what system?) isn’t working. When this sort of thing happens, and a child is injured- or worse- by a parent thinking only of themselves, we shake our heads, cluck disapprovingly about how terrible it all is, and then proceed to forget about it. I’m not about to say that I have the answers, but couldn’t we at least have a dialogue about how we as a society care for our children? Or are we really OK with simply waiting until a child is injured or killed and then emptily opining about what a terrible tragedy it all is?
I suppose I could make a lame joke about Bowen thinking with the wrong head, but that hardly begins to explain his self-absorbed drugging of his 9-year-old daughter so he could be with his mistress. If there’s any justice, Bowen would be stripped of his parental rights and forcibly sterilized. Yes, I realize the legal implications of that, but I’m just venting my anger here. I find it difficult to believe that we can, will, and do countenance a system that allows this sort of tragic child abuse to occur with regularity. Bottom line, the “rights” of parents trump the welfare of children. I can think of nothing that better illustrates the reality that we as a nation revere babies but hate children.
Our children deserve better. Not that they’ll ever get it….
