Philosophical Vegan Forum

Here is an interesting question I came across at school:
"If a male is raped by a female, and the female gets pregnant, should the male be able to demand abortion?"

I'm not sure. I'd like to hear some thoughts on it.

Currently, he's not allowed to. Ans also, he owes child support for the next 18 years. @_@
Unless he gets custody, which is very unlikely.

This video explores a related topic from an ethical viewpoint.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZzI5D84cd4

Regarding child support;
It has been argued that an inseminater should be able to terminate responsibility to the child, so in cases when a gestater wants to keep the child, but an inseminater does not, the inseminater is not legally (or morally) obliged to pay child support. However in the end the child is the one who pays for it, in terms of wellbeing. Its not contentious to claim that the children of single parents often have lower wellbeing, nor is it objectionable to claim that financial support has an impact on this. It is however assumptions of me to think Brimstone believes the child of the rapist does not deserve child support, from the victim of the encounter.

Brimstone also brought up the very interesting idea of the victim getting custody. Do you think this would be wrong? Lets assume the mother is a violent criminal, does the state have a moral obligation the the child to assure that said child does not have such a woman raise her? Should some people to be aloud to reproduce/raise children?

"Moral duties" is rather deontological.

bobo0100 wrote:However in the end the child is the one who pays for it, in terms of wellbeing.

The child also pays for it when a complete stranger who had nothing to do with its birth or conception isn't randomly forced to pay child support.

bobo0100 wrote:It is however assumptions of me to think Brimstone believes the child of the rapist does not deserve child support, from the victim of the encounter.

Why would it?
Why would anybody, anywhere, "deserve" anything?
How do you define "deserve", and by what metric do you evaluate these cases?

I agree with you in regard's to utilitarianism VS deontology, however when looking at laws and regulation you must be reduced in many regards to rule utilitarianism.

The child also pays for it when a complete stranger who had nothing to do with its birth or conception isn't randomly forced to pay child support.

I would argue that the ideal child's well-being is likely to be far more effected by the mother being in a bad economic situation, most documents I've read agree that this is likely why the children of single parents experience less overall well-being. You are misunderstanding me if you think I am thanking a deontological approach. This is likely to be stressed if the mother is likely to be in and out of jail, which may well be the case considering her past. I think a better solution is to have government take the place of the rape victim regarding financial aspects of fatherhood, and to a degree this happens through welfare, which in the western world mines a few European countries is a mess. However the ideal I would suggest, in many cases, is to have custody removed from the (rapist) mother. Although I acknowledge that the adoption service is already stressed and not the ideal situation for children.

Why would it?
Why would anybody, anywhere, "deserve" anything?
How do you define "deserve", and by what metric do you evaluate these cases?

Sometimes you surprise me brimstone, its a strange reaction considering you know my stance on meta ethics, and the context of these questions. In cases where the financial situation of the mother is likely to reduce the wellbeing of the child, is the farther morally obligated to pay child support?

I was referring to the video you linked to.

bobo0100 wrote:I agree with you in regard's to utilitarianism VS deontology, however when looking at laws and regulation you must be reduced in many regards to rule utilitarianism.

One must examine the consequences of the law, but also consider how it is viewed -- e.g. as just or unjust, since that informs the consequences somewhat. The latter is mainly an issue of spin and rhetoric, though.

bobo0100 wrote:

The child also pays for it when a complete stranger who had nothing to do with its birth or conception isn't randomly forced to pay child support.

I was saying the consequences are the same, regardless of whether the father pays for it, or others pay for it.

Why should we prefer to put this burden on the biological father, rather than any random person, when it was not in any way more the fault of the father that the child has come into being?

Also, we may be making an error in assuming that this is a good usage of government resources at all.

As you said, taking the baby away and putting it up for adoption by a couple with financial means is probably a better result all around. Women who are rapists may not be the best influences for children. And this is a case where taking the children away would discourage women from raping.

bobo0100 wrote:Sometimes you surprise me brimstone, its a strange reaction considering you know my stance on meta ethics, and the context of these questions. In cases where the financial situation of the mother is likely to reduce the wellbeing of the child, is the farther morally obligated to pay child support?

I don't know what you're trying to say.

No, the father is not morally obligated. Duty, entitlement, these are usually deontological concepts.

Consider this:
The father's money might be better off spent feeding homeless people; shouldn't he be more morally obligated to do that instead, since the consequences are better?
We should prefer to put our charity into the most effective causes. It's unlikely that child support is one of those.

Consequentialism doesn't usually deal with obligation, it deals with better and worse actions and outcomes.

Creating an obligation as a form of punishment can sometimes make sense as a rule. The consequences, for example, of having to pay child support may make some men more cautious (it's not clear if this is true).
However, in a case where the man was raped and did not have a choice in the matter, it doesn't really make sense to punish him in hopes of that discouraging other men.

Also, punishment only makes sense in the context of its usefulness, not JUST in terms of its ability to generate income. The two should be considered independently.

E.g. cigarette taxes. The increased price encourages people to smoke less, and where does the money go? Usually into social programs relatively unrelated to cigarettes.
It wouldn't make sense to spend the money made on cigarette taxes to pay the medical costs of people who get lung cancer from smoking (essentially wasting the money).

That's what most child support is; punishment, and the money being used in very wasteful and ineffective ways.

The rape victim doesn't 'deserve' punishment, since he didn't do anything, and the child does not 'deserve' that money, as long as it can be put to better uses.

I think we are in agreement on the vast majority of things. All but two. "Moral obligation" is not the same as "deontological duty". If we assume utilitarian ethics, we are obligated to act in ways that are utilitarianly good, and not act in ways that are utilitarianly bad. This is true even if we hold negative utiliteranism. In practice on utilitarian grounds we are morally obliged to be vegan (in the vast majority of cases). this is largely just terminology, would you see ought as a more fitting term?

I also disagree with you on the punishment quality of child support. I'm do not hold that child support does not provide a deterrent (I prefer this term to punishment, because people wrongly associate punishment with revenge disguised as justice), only that this is not its primary purpose in the eyes of the law. If it was we would expect child support to be reduced or non-existent in cases where a child had been produced regardless of appropriate use of contraceptives. I'm not sure, but I doubt this is the case. It also does not make sense to denture, couples that later get devoiced, form procreating. But you would expect to see these thing's if child support was intended to protect the child.

The father's money might be better off spent feeding homeless people; shouldn't he be more morally obligated to do that instead, since the consequences are better?
We should prefer to put our charity into the most effective causes. It's unlikely that child support is one of those.

This is the logic behind affective altruism, and I largely agree with it. However the effect is that when cretin issues are completely ignored they tend to become more of an issue. So more weight should be given to issues that would be eradicated by your support. I also acknowledge that this objection is not relevant to the issue of child support.

The man from philosophy tube is more of a literature review sort of guy, he informs the viewers of what others have said on the topic, not what he thinks. Because of this he is often re-reviewing issues with other objections in mind. Maybe it is worth bringing up the effective altruist argument to him.

bobo0100 wrote:would you see ought as a more fitting term?

Ought is better; obligation implies duty, but ought could too, in the wrong context.

The issue is that one element of specific positive action is being identified as a thing that ought to be done, and that's not necessarily the case. It's even worse when it ought to be done IF you are such a person arbitrarily associated with and assumed to have some kind of responsibility for that thing.

Either a thing is good to do, or it isn't. It should have nothing to do with your being arbitrarily biologically linked, or the DNA having come from you in some way.
And if it is good to do, it can get in line and compete for the same limited resources everything else competes for.

I think you were arguing that some things are very useful to a point and then have diminishing returns, and that is true, but it's already part of any reasonable fiscal moral calculus.

bobo0100 wrote:I also disagree with you on the punishment quality of child support. I'm do not hold that child support does not provide a deterrent (I prefer this term to punishment, because people wrongly associate punishment with revenge disguised as justice), only that this is not its primary purpose in the eyes of the law.

Deterrent may be more specific. Although in this case, it could be noted that punishment may work as recompense too, so it's arguably more flexible/encompassing terminology.

If you tag a wall, and as a result you are put in a stockade for eight hours, that would be a deterrent, but wouldn't be useful to undoing the offense.
If you tag a wall, and as a result you are made to clean that wall, which takes eight hours, that would also be a deterrent, but would also undo the offense.

The question I would ask is whether it would be better to just say screw literal recompense, leave the wall as it is, and apply that effort to feeding the poor, or something more useful than cleaning a wall (a more general social recompense).

One thing we have to recognize is that, with punishment, beyond mere deterrent, we have the opportunity to make whatever we take from people useful. Maybe not for righting the exact thing that those people did wrong (since that may not be very productive), but at least to making the world a little better than it would have been in some more useful way.

It's a special opportunity to take more from people than society in general would normally tolerate, because those people have violated some social rule, and others see it as acceptable to do so.
This is not possible to do for somebody who did not violate such a rule, or did not consent to the action which is being punished -- or deterred, and which triggers a requirement of recompense.

bobo0100 wrote:Well, If it was we would expect child support to be reduced or non-existent in cases where a child had been produced regardless of appropriate use of contraceptives.

Using contraceptives, which are known to have a failure rate, is not the same as being raped or deceived into procreation.