What Are Our Rights to Children?

I'm going to make a wild conjecture and say that if you aksed the average person whether or not they had a right to have children, that they would say yes.
Now, some of us might say that some people shouldn't have kids but, unless you work for the government of China, it seems a pretty absurd argument to deny a person the right to children.
But what would such a right, if it exists, actually entail?
It seems to me that the most logical and plausible definition of this right would be a right to conceive and bear children through the process of male-female sexual intercourse, and that any person has a right to bear a child already conceived.
That is, no person or institution should be allowed to tell an individual that they must prevent conception during heterosexual activity or that they must terminate a pregnancy (regardless of the process of conception).

Maybe I'm just stating the obvious, but it seems to me that such a definition is needed if we are to fully grapple with issues of homosexuality and illicit fertilization methods. People who desire children but who, for whatever reason, find themselves unable to have children certainly deserve our compassion and sympathy. I'm certainly not trying to suggest that the Church or the law tyrannize such people.

However, to speak fairly and justly, it is necessary to consider that while we do not have a right to interfere with the reproductive process once it is in motion, we also do not have a right to demand artificial means by which to procreate.

I suppose another way to say this is that the right to have children is really the freedom to have children. It is not the same as a right to food or shelter. If we lack these, society has an obligation to provide them for us. My neighbor has a social obligation to share his resources of food and shelter with me (which he does through taxes). My neighbor does not have an obligation to lend me his children on the weekend; nor does he have an obligation to pay for my fertility treatments.

But it is not an unbounded freedom.

Even with a right to an object, you don't have a right to any object of that type. You might have a right to shelter, but that doesn't mean you can force entry into a mansion and claim it as your own.

Likewise, you might have the freedom to buy any house you want in the country, but it doesn't mean that the real estate agent is required to sell it to you for less than what it is worth just because you want it but can't afford it. And certainly, we can imagination situations regarding the acquisition of land that might not be illegal but that certainly involve moral violations.

Are there people who would make great parents who will never be able to have their own children? Of course, there are, and there are horrible parents who nevertheless have more children than they want.  This seems unfortunate to us, but parenthood is a vocation...and the funny thing with vocations is that God seems almost never to distribute them based on who would be obviously right for the task. That is part of the challenge of our callings.

Comments

[Kevin Jones]

Rights language is such a blunt instrument. Isn't there a better way of phrasing the just regulation of such a natural fact of human life?