Tag: consent

UN report calls for decriminalization of all sexual activity, including between adults and children

A new report from the United Nations has called for all forms of drug use and sexual activity to be decriminalized globally.

Written by the International Committee of Jurists (ICJ), UNAIDS and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the report was released on International Women’s Day, with the goal of guiding “the application of international human rights law to criminal law.” Called the “8 March principles,” the report calls for offenses related to “sex, drug use, HIV, sexual and reproductive health, homelessness and poverty” to be decriminalized.

The United Nations experts say that criminalizing offenses related to these issues constitute an attack on human rights.

“Criminal law is among the harshest of tools at the disposal of the State to exert control over individuals… as such, it ought to be a measure of last resort however, globally, there has been a growing trend towards overcriminalization,” Ian Seiderman, Law and Policy Director at ICJ, said in the press release. “We must acknowledge that these laws not only violate human rights, but the fundamental principles of criminal law themselves.”

While on the surface, it may seem relatively uncontroversial, the report calls for sex between adults and minors to be decriminalized, so long as the minors “consent”:

With respect to the enforcement of criminal law, any prescribed minimum age of consent to sex must be applied in a non-discriminatory manner. Enforcement may not be linked to the sex/gender of participants or age of consent to marriage. Moreover, sexual conduct involving persons below the domestically prescribed minimum age of consent to sex may be consensual, in fact, if not in law. In this context, the enforcement of criminal law should reflect the rights and capacity of persons under 18 years of age to make decisions about engaging in consensual sexual conduct and their right to be heard in matters concerning them.

Pursuant to their evolving capacities and progressive autonomy, persons under 18 years of age should participate in decisions affecting them, with due regard to their age, maturity and best interests, and with specific attention to non-discrimination guarantees.

Minors, of course, cannot truly consent to sex with an adult — something these so-called experts should know. 

Keep reading

Medical Journal Floats Concept of Using Braindead Women As Surrogates Through “Whole Body Gestational Donation”

An entry from the Journal of Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics is prompting outrage from women on social media after theorizing that the bodies of vegetative or braindead female patients could be utilized as “whole body gestational” surrogates.

The article, originally published in November of 2022, is titled Whole Body Gestational Donation, and floats the concept of utilizing vegetative women’s entire bodies as surrogates for “prospective parents who wish to have children but cannot, or prefer not to, gestate.”

Written by Anna Smajdor, a Professor of Practical Philosophy at the University of Oslo, Norway, the article proposes that it may be viable to utilize the donated bodies of women for gestational purposes in the same manner as donated organs are used.

“I suggest if we are happy to accept organ donation in general, the issues raised by whole-body gestational donation are differences of degree rather than substantive new concerns,” Smajdor writes in her abstract.

“As with many surrogacy arrangements, commissioning parents may prefer to create an embryo for implantation using their own gametes or those of donors. Thus, impregnation could be a surgical affair, preceded and followed by appropriate hormonal therapy to ensure maximal chance of success.”

Referencing previous theories by Israeli medical professor Rosalie Ber, Smajdor considers that the bodies of female patients in persistent vegetative states (PVS), or those who have experienced brain death, could be used as “whole body” incubators for surrogate children.

Keep reading

12-year-olds could get vaccinated without parental consent under bill proposed in Connecticut

Connecticut state Rep. Kevin Ryan has introduced a bill that would enable kids aged 12 and up to be vaccinated without parental permission.

“Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives in General Assembly convened: That the general statutes be amended to allow a child twelve years of age or older to receive a vaccination with the consent of such child’s parent or guardian,” the text of the measure reads.

Connecticut House Minority Leader Rep. Vinnie Candelora described the proposal as “very disturbing.”

State Rep. Holly Cheeseman pushed back against the proposal, raising the prospect of a scenario in which a person’s child experiences “an adverse reaction” but the parent does not know what has happened to the child.

“Minors under the age of 18 cannot be vaccinated by a healthcare provider without parental consent,” according to portal.ct.gov. But the proposal put forward by Ryan would rob parents of this authority.

Keep reading

Senator in 2010 deposition: 13-year-olds can consent to sex

Before he became a leading voice for conservative causes on Capitol Hill, U.S. Senator James Lankford spent more than a decade as the director of youth programming at the Falls Creek Baptist Conference Center, a sprawling campground about 80 miles south of Oklahoma City that attracts more than 50,000 campers in grades six through 12 each year.

The Republican lawmaker’s tenure at the camp is a prominent feature of his political profile, noted in the first paragraph of his official Senate biography. That experience is also coming under renewed scrutiny as the Southern Baptist Convention, which is affiliated with the group that owns the camp, faces a reckoning over its handling of sexual abuse cases.

In 2009, while Lankford worked at the camp, the family of a 13-year-old girl sued a 15-year-old boy who was alleged to have had sex with her at the camp. Lankford, who was not in Congress at the time, is not alleged to have had any direct knowledge of the alleged assault, has not been accused of any wrongdoing and was not a defendant in the lawsuit, which was settled for an undisclosed amount before it was scheduled to go to trial.

But in a 2010 deposition in the case, given a week after he was elected to his first term in the U.S. House, Lankford testified that he believed a 13-year-old could consent to sex.

Keep reading

Illinois Bill Would Make Drunk Sex Illegal

A proposed bill in Illinois would make it illegal to have sex while intoxicated, classifying such an act as a person being “unable to give knowing consent.”

The ill-conceived bill was introduced in the Illinois House of Representatives at the end of January by state Rep. Mark Walker, a Democrat, and has since gained nine co-sponsors, including Republican Rep. Chris Bos. The text of the bill would amend the Criminal Code of 2012 to update the Sex Offenses Article of the Code to include a new definition for “unable to give knowing consent” that “includes when the victim is intoxicated, but the accused did not provide or administer the intoxicating substance.”

This means that someone who willingly drinks alcohol but then has sex with someone, possibly due to lowered inhibitions, can automatically claim to be a rape victim.

Defense attorney Scott Greenfield lamented the bill on Twitter, calling it “a nightmare.”

“Intoxication, rather than incapacitation, would make sex a crime for lack of consent, even if both are drunk. Whoever goes to the police first wins,” Greenfield tweeted. “This will be a nightmare.”

Keep reading

Bill Gates-Linked Lab Developing Vaccine That Spreads Like a Virus To Vaccinate Anti-Vaxxers

A team of Bill-Gates linked research scientists have announced they are developing a needle-less vaccine that spreads itself like a virus, meaning people will “catch” the vaccine like they would a cold or flu, without the need for needles and injections.

The research is being subsidised by high-profile funding organisations, including the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), which has longstanding financial ties to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

An international team of researchers are working on an experimental self-spreading vaccine that could stop the virus leaping from rats to humans — a phenomenon scientists call zoonotic spillover.

The drive to develope self-spreading vaccines is not without controversy. The DHSC paper notes: ‘Self-spreading vaccines are less lethal but not non-lethal: they can still kill.

‘Some people will die who would otherwise have lived, though fewer people die overall.

‘The other issue is there is no consent (for vaccination) from the majority of patients.’

But some ethics experts say there are parallels for ‘treating’ mass populations for public health issues without first getting individual consent.

For example, the fluoridation of mains drinking water to prevent tooth decay already happens in some parts of the UK and the Government is considering extending it to all of England.

‘Nobody is asked whether they give consent, even those who disagree with it,’ says Professor Dominic Wilkinson, a medical ethics specialist at Oxford University. ‘Instead, we entrust elected officials to examine the likely health benefits and make decisions based on the evidence.

‘I don’t think that there is anything intrinsically different when it comes to the idea of self-spreading vaccines.’

However, some scientists have serious misgivings about the risk that weakened viruses could mutate into a more potent form once they are free to spread in the population.

Keep reading