Parents who have engaged in voluntary or accidental conception resulting from voluntary actions are considered thus responsible for the well being of their offspring at least until they reach a certain maturity level.
And parents (that is, mothers) who were raped cannot be held morally responsible.
What’s wrong with that?
Putting another way…
All children have equal rights, but not with respect to equal things.
Each child has the right to be taken care by their legal guardians.
Unfortunately some kids don’t have a legal guardian to be found, to whom that law can be enforced.
It’s like saying that each individual has the right to dispose of his property as he wishes, but not every individual actually owns property.
The lengths to which some libertarinas want to stretch their arguments in order to justify their liberal predispositions towards nasty stuff like abortion and child abandonment is utterly disgusting…
Hmm. Good point. If there was no prior arrangement for who would be responsible for the child in the event of the father’s death, I suppose no one is legally responsible for the child (i.e. no one can be forced to take in the child). Of course, in a free society, I think orphanages would play a major role in child care/protection, and would likely jump to take the child in.
But I have another question about a party to a contract dying. What is the usual libertarian way to resolve that?
(As in, if today Joe pays Bob $50 to mow Joe’s lawn Wednesday and Bob dies a day before he is supposed to mow Joe’s lawn)
The issue is whether or not the implicit contract between two consenting biological parents (or only one in the case of rape [Edit: see A at bottom]) is a valid contract. A lot of libertarians (Rothbard, Block, etc.) argue that no implicit contract is valid.
Although, I agree that the conversation seems a bit repugnant. I think it’s important to keep that in mind. I also agree with your conclusion that parent(s) do have positive obligations to his/their children.
[A] It is also possible that neither biological parent consented to the sex if a third party forced one to rape the other, or if the third party just threw them in a room and forced them upon one another. In this case, neither biological parent would have a positive obligation to the child; the third party – the consenting party in this case – would.
All children have the equal right to be taken care by their legal guardian. However some children don’t have legal guardian to whom this right would apply.
It’s exactly the same thing as saying all men have the right to paint their castles blue, but not every man has a castle to be painted blue.
Interesting take. Just note: It’s important to clarify what you mean by legal guardian (that you don’t think a non-consenting party to the sex that resulted in a child’s conception has to be a legal guardian, though can choose to be). That is capital.
I don’t want to overload the thread with ideas, but what if the rapist himself was a child, and then died? Would the rapist’s parents be responsible for the child who was conceived as a result of their kid raping a woman? Consider that parents are generally responsible for the actions of their children until adulthood.
The judeo-cristian ethical tradition and foundation for the Western Civilization is based upon individual responsibility.
And individuals that engage in actions whose implications can be foreseen and prevented are considered responsible.
It’s not my conclusion. It’s the custumary notion. You are morally responsible for the consequences of your actions to the degree that those consequences were predictable and/or cautionary measures were known and affordable.
This will depend upon the custumary understanding and other circumstancial factors guiding the judicial mechanism invoked to solve the problem.
In modern western societies, most people will not consider a victim of rape responsible for any offspring resulting of the assault. And so they will give their support to a judicial mechanism that allow pregnancy abortion as lawful acquitance in such cases.
But this can become complicated if the allegations of sexual assault are introduced at later time and the circumstances are considered foggy or non plausible.
As for the kid rapist case, again the particular circumstances of a real case scenario would be of more relevance than a general principle.
The parents would probably be considered as potential culprits, but in any likely scenario a minor that is developed enough to sexually assault and sire will bear the larger amount of the responsibility by himself.
The rationale being that a kid that is forceful enough to carry out a sexual assault on a woman is likely to be beyond any reasonable control of his parents.
Of course, if the circumstances are such that the woman in the case is another child, or someone disabled, and the kid is just a puberscent boy and not a muscular drug-fueled thug aged 17, the burden of responsibility of any legal responsible increases accordingly.