Head-scratcher roundup
By Sean Aqui | Related entries in Discuss, Education, Health Care, Law, NewsThree stories that explore the boundary between what’s reasonable and what’s not, what’s criminal and what’s not, and what’s ethical and what’s not.
What’s reasonable?
A California school district has taken to billing parents who take their kids out of school for nonmedical reasons — like a family ski trip. The price? $36.13 for each day missed. The reason? State aid is calculated based on daily attendance. So that’s how much the district figures it loses when a kid goes absent. It’s not really a bill — parents aren’t required to pay — but some parents pay up either voluntarily or because they think it’s a bill.
What’s criminal?
Two Texas men were found guilty of mailing an obscene video. The video found to be obscene showed a woman being pierced with needles, but no sex. Meanwhile, the same jury said a rape video wasn’t obscene — even though the video had been deemed obscene in a 2003 trial. A third video featuring bodily functions was also deemed unobscene.
What’s ethical?
South Carolina is considering a bill that would let inmates cut their sentence by cutting out a kidney. Voluntary organ and tissue donations could shave as much as 180 days off of a jail term. While we’re talking voluntary donations — unlike, say, in China, where prisoners have been executed so the state could harvest their organs — there’s a question of whether prison is a coercive environment and whether prisoners fully understand what they’re agreeing to. In addition, there’s a legal hurdle: a federal law prohibiting organ donors from getting paid in any way for the donation.
All three situations raise interesting questions without any clear, easy answer. My initial reactions:
1. Parents can take their kids out of school if they want to, and a trip to Hawaii is arguably at least as educational as a week of school. I don’t have a problem with the school educating parents about the importance of attendance and the costs of truancy, but the billing thing seems a little over the top.
2. I guess we’d have to see the videos in question (no thanks), but I have a hard time understanding how a video that shows no sex can be considered obscene, while the other two are not. Disgusting? Yes. Illegal? Why? At the very least we have a vague and muddy legal standard — meaning the definition of what’s illegal could vary by day and by jury. That’s no way to run a legal system.
3. I’d be very, very wary of taking this step. I don’t have a problem in principle with compensating donors. The problems are all practical. It only works if the entire transaction is fully transparent, and everyone is fully informed and truly a volunteer. The possibilities of abuse are high. And it exploits a vulnerable population. It’s one thing to donate a kidney or bone marrow, even though both operations have their risks. What about muscle tissue or nerves or things like that? Suddenly we’re in a grey area where we’re mildly crippling prisoners. Do we really want people to start thinking about what body part they’re willing to trade for freedom?
This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 13th, 2007 and is filed under Discuss, Education, Health Care, Law, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
March 13th, 2007 at 8:56 pm
[...] Sean Aqui talks about the slippery slope here. [...]
March 14th, 2007 at 12:23 am
Sean, your web site is n0ot responding.
#1. In the 50s, there was a lot of heated discussion Federal aid for education because it would eventually take decisions away from the local school districts & voters. Sounds like the nay sayers were The blackmail that comes with outside financial aid leads to dumb decisions like this one.
#2 The courts have ruled against such laws. That is the way it needs to remain. To make the issue go through the courts again is financial blackmail due to attorney’s fees. Dumb idea.
#3 Those who refuse to donate a body part will pay for that decision, dearly. That is just the reality of prison life. Like Sean said, also a very slippery slope, legally. Refer to #1 for an example.
March 14th, 2007 at 1:33 am
[...] Sean Aqui argues out that this is a rather slippery slope and points out that the organs of people executed* in China are regularly harvested (his word) for use. He continues I’d be very, very wary of taking this step. I don’t have a problem in principle with compensating donors. The problems are all practical. It only works if the entire transaction is fully transparent, and everyone is fully informed and truly a volunteer. The possibilities of abuse are high. And it exploits a vulnerable population. It’s one thing to donate a kidney or bone marrow, even though both operations have their risks. What about muscle tissue or nerves or things like that? Suddenly we’re in a grey area where we’re mildly crippling prisoners. Do we really want people to start thinking about what body part they’re willing to trade for freedom? [...]
March 14th, 2007 at 3:28 am
Interesting post.
As to what’s reasonable, I find it amusing that parents might find themselves in the situation where they are being billed for not availing themselves of a service for one or more days. Billing might make more sense if the parents were also getting a tax refund for the days missed. I can understand that the government, and the schools, seek to maximise attendance, and incentives to avoid missed days are reasonable in that sense. But where I come from, sending bills which are legally optional (i.e., where there is no actual financial liability), is called fraud.
As to what’s criminal, a contradictory standard – or contradictory body of precedent, in the absence of a decreed or agreed standard – as to what constitutes obsence material seems to be a frail structure on which to base judicial decisions. IMHO the standard should be that recordings of non-consensual indecent assaults purveyed for other than official or academic purposes constitute obscene material, but that’s just my view.
As to what’s ethical, prisoners are clearly the weaker partner in an imbalanced power relationship, just as employees are in their relationship with employers. Just as this imbalanced relationship makes a sexual liaison unethical between employer and employee, the relationship between prisoner and corrections system puts the prisoner at risk in any such decision, even where coercion is not applied, because the prisoner’s ability to make a reasonable decision is under pressure simply because they are are prisoner.