On the APSA Panel that Stressed Me Out

First, there was a remarkable talk by a feminist who works on disability. This strikes me as an incredibly important and under-theorized area. In fact, it seems to me that this is a new angle that could be really important for the abortion debate--unborn babies are members of the community who aren't able to take a role in the community and so need to be represented by others. Plus, there is the whole issue of testing for disabilities while infants are still in the womb, and then aborting based on the results of these tests. It seems to me that while abortion for any reason is terrible, this is particularly terrible. In America we abort 80 percent of babies prenatally diagnosed with Down Syndrome; this means that a whole group of people is being killed for something that they had no control over.

The other papers, however, stressed me out. It is evidently called "infusion" when a parent teaches a child something; "infusion" is always least somewhat problematic because children can't voluntarily choose what they'll be infused with. Granted, all sorts of things that parents teach children (or ways in which the parents act on the child's behalf) can be wrong--I'm thinking here of Jehovah's Witnesses not allowing their children to receive blood transfusions or certain religious sects that don't believe in medical care (embracing some sort of faith healing instead). Indeed, probably the government is right to intervene in these circumstances. On the other hand, I think that the first and primary place of children's education is the family, and that, consequently, even when the parent's teach something wrong (within reason) this right ought to be protected.

One of the audience members asked a question as a Catholic who wouldn't think of passing her religion on to her children. What are we freaking raising? Blank slates that are not taught a thing until they're 21?! For crying out loud, you have to start somewhere. The things that parents teach their children are the starting point from which they approach the world (and often the things that they rebel against later).

This is not to say that society and communities shouldn't exert some influence on the families with it. Probably society is a check against the extremism of some parents. On the other hand, if society is not a local and personal place for discussion and exchange of ideas, but rather advocates a (universal and abstract) ideology itself (for these panelists freedom and equality were the primary virtues), then I'm not sure how it could offer a beneficial corrective. One panelist, for instance, argued for the need to normalize lesbian marriage (interestingly, not homosexual marriage--just lesbian marriage) as an outworking of her affirmation of equality (someone raised a very insightful question on this point--why not do away with marriage recognized by the state, since recognition of marriage itself is a form of equality?). Poor Tocqueville--he would be dismayed by the way in which people continually seek to eliminate difference.

At least one of the panelists suggested something called "parental licensing," which means that the state could determine who could and who couldn't become a parent. I've never heard of "parental licensing" before, but this is incredibly scary to me.

Another panelist suggested that it is our responsibility to ensure that the values of the public sphere (namely freedom and equality) are infused in the private sphere, breaking down the differences between the two realms. As an Arendtian, I have so many problems with this.