Remove the emotion from the 'spanking children' debate

There is a mighty furore going on over the government looking to change legislation banning parents from spanking their children. Recently Pierre de Vos wrote an article explaining the constitutional implications of this (http://constitutionallyspeaking.co.za/sparing-the-rod-what-it-really-entails/), I feel that maybe there is another angle that we need to be looking at. While I am in agreement that the argument ‘it is in the bible’ is problematic, there are problems with the current line of argument as well. In his article, Mr de Vos states that South Africa has such a high rate of child abuse and thus a big driver for the banning of spanking by parents is to reduce child abuse. While I agree with this in principle, there are some glaring issues. Firstly, Mr de Vos does not state any evidence to reduction of abuse when child spanking is removed. If we are to be scientific, studies need to be done on countries where child spanking by parents ahs been outlawed and do a correlation of child abuse from before and after the banning. Secondly, it is problematic for me to ban something outright if a few people are abusing it. That line of argument taken to its end would say that rape is prevalent in South Africa and so we should ban sex, or that teachers take advantage of students so we should ban teachers. Personally, I would like to see in-depth studies done in countries where child spanking by parents has been banned to study the consequences. It would be interesting to see the rate of juvenile delinquency, social service intervention in children, discipline in schools, violence in schools, violence against the aged etc in these communities. Once we have an accurate assessment of the social implications, then maybe we can decide, scientifically, if banning parents from spanking their children is feasible in South Africa. If we are to introduce such legislation into South Africa I feel we need to take a more scientific approach, rather than an emotional agenda pushed by minority groups in South Africa.