The Age of Consent

This is a very contentious subject matter. And yet, over time the lines of legality have shifted from younger to older.

The first recorded age-of-consent law dates from 1275 in England; as part of its provisions on rape, the Statute of Westminster 1275 made it a misdemeanor to “ravish” a “maiden within age,” whether with or without her consent. The phrase “within age” was later interpreted by jurist Sir Edward Coke (England, 17th century) as meaning the age of marriage, which at the time was twelve years of age.

Wikipedia

Our morality has drifted in the last couple of centuries, from a more lenient (supposedly enlightened stance) to a more repressed one, ‘for the sake of the children’. The underlying social impulse was the idea that young people don’t have the slightest clue as to the effects of their choices, so they must be protected from unscrupulous individuals who would seek to exploit them. (Sound familiar?) But biologically this is a nonsense, because when the body matures enough to become a sexual being, the natural impulse is to procreate. (As of November 2022, the population of humans on this planet reached 8 billion.)

And yet, Republicans voters in the United States want to make it more and more difficult to have legal abortions. So, we have conflicting and counterintuitive impulses occurring at the same time.

What’s a body to do?