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Yes. I'm unsure how a State's law would suddenly change human biology and make a 14 year old not a child.
By human biology, a 14 year old is sexually mature and capable of becoming a parent. The terms “child, teen, adolescent, adult” are all social constructs. We as a society have drawn arbitrary lines and even changed them over time.
That's incorrect in several different levels.
Partially.
The lines we draw and how we interact the world are curiously incapable of changing biological processes.
Could you elaborate? Throughout history people have successfully become parents at that age or even younger. Your flat denial is an extraordinary claim and you haven’t given any evidence to support it.
Sure, but only if you're actually interested in an honest discussion about the topic. If the goal is discussing US states or internal US politics and similar content, I'm out.
To begin with, sexual maturity is not synced across all populations nor individuals within a population. You'll certainly be aware of girls starting menstruation at nine years old, yet their cousins at sixteen. There has been a trend towards early puberty, but our species has existed for long before that.
It's also important to note that the start of menstruation and puberty does not mean the start of viable reproductive health. Sure, you can find many examples of girls becoming pregnant and having a child at 14... But if you look at mortality rates for these pregnancies, they're higher than the expected average for adult pregnancies.
Even with all of that taken into account, why exactly are you constructing "capable of having a child" as the definition of "no longer a child"? Our development is extremely slow, it's a key aspect of our species. We take a long time to mature in the womb, we take an absurdly long time to mature as early infants, and we take even more time to become fully grown adults. The fact that young girls might have the necessary apparatus to conceive a child does not imply in any way that they aren't children themselves - there have been reports of nine year olds having a viable pregnancy, can you argue they are not children?
Good old "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" is a fantastic quote, but only when it's applied correctly. No extraordinary claim has been made here.
Mortality risk in pregnancy never goes to zero. Many other species (such as salmon, octopi, many insects, arachnids) have a mortality rate close to 100% for either one or both parents after reproduction. Ultimately it is a tradeoff over resources between parents and offspring. Many other mammals have smaller offspring than humans though they lack humans’ large brain volume relative to maternal pelvis size. Scientists have debated about the reasons for women’s small pelvis size relative to the baby’s skull size and the rough consensus seems to be a tradeoff between intelligence and walking/running ability as well as agility.
Your definition of sexual maturity would seem to imply that the optimal time to have children is when a woman’s maternal mortality risk is minimized but that assumes all other risks remain constant over time. They do not, especially not in the past when famine was a much greater risk and all-cause mortality was much higher (including infant and young child mortality). This means the optimal time to have children would be much earlier given that famine or disease or other misfortune could strike the family at any time and that children matured into productivity quite rapidly (children didn’t always go to school for 12 years). It should also be noted that famine and the associated loss of body fat can halt the menstrual cycle in women of any age.
Lastly, I need to point out that many traditional and indigenous communities throughout the world have or previously had initiation rites to welcome children into adulthood and full standing within the tribe at or around the age of puberty. Contemporary society with its emphasis on more and more schooling has been the primary driver of the push to longer and longer periods of adolescence. The mental health and physical development effects of such extended adolescence are only beginning to be understood.
You are still not addressing the difference between "a portion of individuals will be capable of having a viable pregnancy at this age" with "adulthood".
So as mentioned earlier, some nine year olds have survived pregnancy, especially in the last few decades. The mortality rate is absurd, and pretty much all neurological hallmarks of adulthood are nowhere near complete... but they do fit your definition perfectly. They can conceive healthy offspring.
Would you call them adults? Would you lower the age of consent to 9? Assuming in good faith your answer will be "no" then you must, by definition, introduce other conditional aspects to "adulthood" that go beyond the ability to sustain pregnancy, which was my point.
My original comment never made that claim:
The fact that we may define adulthood at 16 or 18 or 21 (depending on the country or the context) but that indigenous cultures defined adulthood (subject to completion of the rite of passage) at 12 or 13 is strong evidence of the social constructedness of these terms. That’s what I wanted to illustrate along with the biology examples showing that maternal mortality is a tradeoff and not an indicator of sexual maturity.
WTF? And where is 14 state law? That's a slippery slope argument, and is logically invalid.
I'm replying to a comment claiming several states have the age of consent set at 14. Your reply makes zero sense.
Maybe read again, 14 states have 16 year as the age of consent.
Where does it say 14 year? The part you quote CLEARLY says STATES!!