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Originally Posted by lookout123
any comment on how that definition of childhood then applies back to parental notification on abortion?
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Lookout123 is using binary logic to confuse the issue. The world is ternary. Obviously 4 year olds that kill multiple people (ie playing sheriff with what turns out to be a live gun) are not eligible for capital punishment. Some 16 years old also may not be. But by 18, people are expected to be sufficiently responsible to be eligible.
As for abortion, obviously an 11 year old cannot make a decision. Many 16 year old are more than able to make that decision. Most all 18 year olds are expected to be able to make that decision. Once we eliminate the intentional distortion by Lookout123 using binary logic, then his question - based only in binary logic - becomes irrelevant.
Now, from Lookout123's perspective, the decision by a 16 year old to have an abortion is too major. But that is Lookout123's need to impose his religious beliefs on others. In law, we use pragmatic reality - not religion - to make the rules. Lookout123 would deny all 16 year old girls - even those responsible enough to drive a car - the right to make pragmatic decisions about her body? Pragmatic - not religious - reasons are what good people are more concerned about. Her rights - and not the distortions and lies that come from religious beliefs or binary logic - are most important.
Yes some 16 year olds are not responsible enough to make decisions. And some 21 year olds are not responsible enough to drive cars. But we do not deny all 16 year old girls and 21 year old drivers their rights only because some might not be responsible. They both lie in a third category that Lookout123's binary logic denies existance.
As Happy Monkey noted, the court set arbitrary age guidelines even on the death penalty. They did the best they could do considering one major and glaring fact. The system has repeatedly demonstrated that it is too perverted to make death penalty decisions. A system so perverted that it cannot be trusted to make death penalty decisions concerning 4 year olds and 15 year olds. Currently we have not yet decided whether the system is also so perverted for 25 year olds. And yet the US is the only major nation to continue killing people using a system that has repeatedly been found perverted.
Let’s keep this in perspective. I believe the death penalty could be a powerful tool for law enforcement. I also believe many 16 year olds are responsible enough to qualify for capital punishment. But repeatedly demonstrated is prosecution and judicial system failure that has so perverted that function. Capital punishment has been applied so irresponsibly that it will probably (eventually) be removed from the US legal system altogether. Not so much because the death penalty is barbaric. The US judicial system does not have a capacity to implement the death penalty responsibly.
Only eliminated from the death penalty were those that would not (group 1) and might not (group 2) deserve capital punishment. Group 3 - a future decision is pending. Again, eliminate binary logic to eliminate the distortions.