Child was found severely malnourished, unable to walk or speak and had never seen daylight before her rescue
I know it could never be fairly implemented… But there really should be a class or test or something people need to pass to be allowed to have kids
the irony is that versions of such a test are enforced in almost every country when a parent wants to adopt a child. the framework is in place already – its scope just needs to be expanded.
although how much such a test would help avoid the scenario in OP, i don’t know.
Unlike adoption, you don’t have a pre-defined list. So expanding it to the whole population would require China or North Korea level people tracking to know who is planning to have a kid to be able to enforce any kind of test.
You think we don’t already have that kind of tracking? We have cameras tracking cars on almost every major road. We have at least half a dozen devices in every home potentially spying on every word we say, 1984 style. For shit’s sake, major tech companies are helping government officials track who is going to abortion clinics.
We also still have doctors forcibly sterilizing minorities. We don’t have a society healthy enough to limit parenthood.
one doesn’t track who is going to conceive a child beforehand, one uses carrots and sticks as needed once the child is born and allows the rest of the population to modify their behaviour accordingly.
(ironically in the context of this response, a system used with great success by china to enforce their one-child policy at the end of the last century without anywhere near the level of tracking which is commonplace in most countries today.)
Even if it was enforceable, that would be a slippery slope akin to having to pass a test to vote.