The author compares the treatment of minors to the historical treatment of adult minorities and adult women. Minors have always had protections not offered to adults of any color or sex. As a society we have picked an age where privileges and responsibilities attach; at the same time we protect them from the privileges and responsibilities that we think are beyond their level of maturity. Would the author deprive them of these protections at 17, or 15, 13? If you argue they can make a life changing decision, alone, at 13, then are you also arguing that they should be charged as adults in the criminal courts?

Yes, it would be nice to look at every situation individually, and the maturity level of every teen individually. But that isn't going to happen; you can't make a law that applies to one 13 year old but not to the next.

As a minority woman, I find offensive that the author thinks that depriving a CHILD of the ability to make certain decisions on their own is the same as applying that treatment to adults.

Robbin:

If you argue they can make a life changing decision, alone, at 13, then are you also arguing that they should be charged as adults in the criminal courts?

I suppose you are sticking to the technicality of the "ability to produce children of their own" - that's why you keep using 13 years old as the example.... So yeah, grant you that many 13 year-olds can reproduce, but see that's where critical thinking comes in... most of us can tell the difference between the coping abilities of 13 year olds and 17 year olds... Don't try to confuse the issue by equating the two very different ages...

I don't think Robbin's equating the two ages at all. She is just saying that the law cannot judge each person by some vague, immeasurable notion of maturity. It has to pick an age at which children are legally treated as adults. 13 is obviously too young. 25 would obviously be too old.

Whether the age is 17, 18 or 19 is debatable and somewhat arbitrary. But Saletan's is implying that no distinction should me made between children and adults--that discriminating between adults and children is akin to discriminating by race or sex. And Robbin is absolutely right to see that analogy as ridiculous.

z

I think that when Saletan wrote "maturing minors," he intended to distinguish between people under 18 with reproductive capacity and those without. Pro-choice individuals believe that forcing a women who is already pregnant to give birth is a violation of her personhood, and Saletan is merely pointing out that this would be true whether she was 14 or 19. If it is wrong for any entity (the state or parents) to require pregnant females to give birth, the immorality of it does not depend on the age of the female.

It's interesting to see how laws governing the rights of parental minors vary by state. Some states say that once a minor has given birth she (and the father) have all the rights of adults. Others still subordinate them to their parents, which seems to effectively give the grandparents legal custody of the infant.

It makes perfect sense for Saletan to compare the treatment of minorities to the treatment of minors, given this topic and given that, historically, minorities have always been treated (at best) like children by the ruling classes.