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your parents' signature. Is there a real reason for that? Librarians say it's because without a parent's signature, the library can't collect on the money that a minor owes them if the minor loses a book. But couldn't minors just put down a cash deposit for whatever book they're checking out, and get it back when they return it? Besides, if the law doesn't let libraries collect debts from minors, isn't that the law that should be changed?

If you want to know whether minors can handle a particular right, like the right to read whatever books and watch whatever movies they want, why not just look at how people under 18 handle it already? Can minors handle the responsibility for their own library cards? Why not just ask the ones who already have one? Or, if you had told people 15 years ago that someday there would be a global computer network that kids could use to access ALL THE PORN IN THE WORLD right from their OWN HOUSE, many people would have been horrified. Now that it's been around for 10 years, there's no evidence that it has affected kids' well-being - so having a "debate" about whether people under 18 can handle being on the Internet, is a bit silly at this point, because we already know that they can.

On the other hand, some moral questions can't be answered by studies. Take a controversial topic like abortion for minors without parental consent. Now, as for the morality of abortion itself, this seems to me like an unanswerable question - if you believe that killing a 1-year-old child is murder, but using contraception is not, that means somewhere in between those two points you have to draw the line where you think "murder" begins, and no matter where you draw it, someone could ask why you don't move it a week earlier or a week later. But surely, whether it's murder or not, doesn't depend on whether you have your parents' permission! I remember a Christian Coalition press release about a state's new parental consent law which said, "The decision to terminate a pregnancy - and indeed a life - should not be made without parental involvement." It's probably safe to say that whoever wrote that sentence didn't actually mean what it said - that the decision to "end a life" is OK if your parents sign off on it? I guess that means that if you get arrested for shooting a convenience store clerk, you'd better have that note from your Mom. Abortion in a given situation is either right or wrong, but it's absurd to say that it's only wrong if you're under 18 and your parents object.

I don't have final answers to any of these questions, but the point is to spark discussion of civil rights for minors in terms of benefits, drawbacks, evidence, and reasons other than "We've always done it that way." Personally I think that if we followed these principles, then all students would be able to get accurate sex education, responsible teenagers would be able to get their own bank accounts, abortion rights would not depend on age, and everybody would have their own library card. You might argue for different conclusions. But at least weighing the pros and cons gives some framework to the discussion that allows it to get somewhere.

Learn more about this author, Bennett Haselton.
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