nyos

Excuse me, I didn't lower any requirements as those are the only requirements necessary to sustain a human life (and why would I lower anything when my position hasn't changed in the slightest?) Whatever your conception of what my requirements were must have been off. Most certainly the government should tell a woman not to deform another human being. For the exact same reason it can tell her not to rob, steal property from, or murder another one. If a woman wants a baby, then the woman must provide for its physical well-being.

But how could I have attributed rights to something that hasn't been born? The answer is, of course, that I haven't. What the government would be doing is withholding the yet-non-existent rights of parents to show that they could indeed sustain a human life if conceived. The only analogous example I can think of is getting a car license. Just because you own a car (have the capacity to drive) does not mean that you can drive and endanger the lives of others. Similarly, just because you have the capacity to reproduce does not mean that you have the right to endanger the lives of others (your children). As for the welfare comment, I'm sure it cyclic. Having unsupportable babies causes people to feel sorry for the children, which makes them give the parents money, which causes them to be even more lazy/unproductive and have more babies. Last year in government class my professor gave lectures about American welfare statism and how most Americans only somewhat support it because of the children of such unproductive people. I'm not going to go googling for references, so take it for what it's worth.

My apologies, I didn't read this last part. We're talking on an extremely low level of child-caring here. Nobody is considering banning someone from having a child if you can't send them to Harvard. All that would be required to do would be provide proper food and nutrients, along with protection from harm (physical or psychological). Enough to allow a child to develop into a rational adult. As low as that may seem, some parents don't even do that. I also have reservations about a woman's rights during pregnancy. So many pro-choice people get so angry at the pro-life camp that they take completely irrational measures, thinking you can deform a fetus in any way that you want. It's true that a fetus has no rights, but a baby does. Smoking and drinking will affect the baby if carried to full term. In line with "Nobody has the right to starve someone", I would also add "Nobody has the right to make anybody else deformed".

Why are you bringing up the issue of fetuses? Did I ever mention a fetus? We are talking about babies here, as in human beings who have been born and are biologically independent of the mother. Whether she can support a baby while carrying a fetus is irrelevant (though probably a sign she won't be able to support a baby). The governement is NOT interfering with a woman's "rights" by disallowing her to starve another human being. Nobody has that right. I thought it was obvious from the context, but when I said regulate reproduction I meant in the capacity to NOT allow someone to procreate. And this is perfectly acceptable if the parents are unwilling to sustain the life of a yet-to-be conceived human.

Causing the condition of the vulnerable baby isn't what obligates the parents to ensure it's taken care of. Having the baby is what obligates the parents to ensure its taken care of. When you become a parent, you take on an obligation (enforced by law) to provide for the human whose condition is under your complete control. Children have rights, the main one being the right to sustenance until they are old enough to sustain themselves. Your idea of "I had this baby but what's it to me?" is ridiculous. Babies are not born from a void, they are born from parents who are the sole reason they are here and are thus their natural providers. Whether government can regulate reproduction, I would say most definitely yes. Anybody can do whatever he wants as long as it doesn't interfere with the rights of others... and having a child without having the means to take care of it is definitely interfering with the rights of the child. Behind every skinny, starving face lay hidden two people who are breaking the law by not providing for what they couldn't take care of in the first place. Just because you have genitals does not mean you have the right to harm another human being. Fact is, lazy people's children are the main reason most people give some half-hearted support to all these socialist programs. Eliminate the children and ta-da, no more real reason to keep the socialism. (not that there ever was a real reason)

Thank you aequalsa, this was the point I was getting at. But I'm stumped at how to accurately define beauty when race is such a fluid thing. How can anyone establish a proper standard? @softwareNerd Because they wouldn't be meeting a certain standard. For example, at dog shows dogs are marked off by a judge based on the degree from which the dog deviates from the judge's visualization of the standard for that breed. I think a human face would be found less attractive the more it deviated from its racial standard (keep in mind that attractiveness also has a second dimension of how it's actual elements interact to make the face, at least I hypothesize). This makes me recall a specific event a few years ago. My friends and I were talking to a girl about her friend. She asked us if we found her friend pretty, and all three of us remarked that no she looked 'weird' or something to that extent. Then she said her friend was half white half japanese. With that new information, I reconsidered the girls appearance and concluded that she was actually very pretty (my two friends changed their minds as well!). Perhaps we were initially judging against a standard that was not applicable, we changed what we thought she should look like for a white/japanese person, and re-evaluated her.

Thank you to everyone for their replies! Let me try an example. I would not consider beautiful a black woman who did not have the standard black lips, or an Oriental woman who did not have the oriental eyes. So beauty indeed seems to be linked to race. But on the other hand, let's take Halle Berry (half white, half black). She deviates considerably from both standards. Judged from the white standard she should be ugly, and judged from the black standard she should be ugly...but I find her attractive (as I think many people do). The elements of her face complement each other. Therefore, I'm still confused as to how race plays a role in one's perception of what is a beautiful face.

Hello everybody! I'm new to these forums, so please be patient with my newb questions. I remember reading Rand's comment about beauty once. She said that there were standards of beauty divided by race, and what would be attractive on one face wouldn't be found attractive on another face of a different race (she also said beauty was defined as the harmony of a face). Anyways, I don't quite understand her first comment about beauty having certain racial standards. For example, someone with an oriental father and white mother would deviate considerably from both the standard white and oriental face, but they could still be considered beautiful while having both oriental and white elements in their face. Could someone help me with Rand's statement?