Tales of the Talking Tiger

The box became available in an attempt to counter parents dropping off their babies in unsafe public places, and also to provide an alternative to abortion. How’s this for a sickening statistic – 290,000 Japanese babies were aborted in 2005.

The provision of this service follows an increasingly common rationale in society today. Let me explain.

- the provision of the drop off box is justified on the basis that “babies will get dumped anyway, so people might as well have a safe method of doing it”.
- the provision of injecting rooms for illegal drugs is justified on the basis that “people will use illegal drugs anyway, so they might as well have a safe way of doing it”.
- the de-criminalisation of drugs is justified on the basis that “people are going to take drugs anyway so we might as well make it as safe as possible and avoid them going underground and potentially getting ‘poor quality’, more dangerous drugs”.

I’m not sure about the “people will do it anyway” justification. People have done and always will do things that aren’t necessarily beneficial to themselves or society as a whole. Simply because they will, doesn’t mean that we should make it easier for them in order to minimise the risk.

Let me take it to the extreme. Do we allow the existence of assassins on the basis that “people will always kill other people so we might as well make it safe and reduce the risk of unintended people getting injured or killed”?

You reply “of course not”. But why? These are tricky, sensitive issues and I can’t pretend to how difficult it must be to have an unwanted baby, an unwanted pregnancy, a drug addiction etc. Yet I am not convinced that making it easier for people, by giving them a simpler way out, will serve them or society best in the long run.