I'm now going to address some of the objections to my obligatory parental provision argument detailed in this post. One line of argument is to deny that obligatory parental provisions exist. Due to the fact that a mother has the right to give her child up for adoption, all parental provisions are in some ways voluntary. Since a mother after a child is born can voluntarily refuse to provide for her child by exercising her right for adoption, a pregnant mother should be able to do the same prior to birth. Unfortunately, since the only way the mother can exercise this right is to procure an abortion, this should be allowed.
How do we respond to this? I believe the answer lies in the nature of the adoptive process itself. In other words, why does the process of adoption exist in the first place? Does adoption protect the right of mothers to not provide obligatory care for their children, or is there another reason why adoption is tolerated if not promoted?
The answer is clear: adoption exists because our culture recognizes that although it is ideal for a child to be raised by their biological parents, situations do exist whereby that does not occur. For that reason, and for the mercy and beneficial care of children, we allow parents to gift their child for adoption. When a mother allows her child to be adopted, she is not exercising any "right" that she has to not provide for her children. Such a right does not exist. Instead, our society has developed a system (although imperfect) to provide for children whose parents are unable or unwilling to care for them for the benefit of the child.
We cannot use a system that has been developed for the benefit of children that may not be desired in order to justify the intentional killing of a child that may not be desired. In fact, the opposite is the case. The process of adoption shows that our society can make a system to provide and care for children when their parents are unwilling or unable. Does this support a mother's right to kill her offspring? Absolutely not.
Adoption is allowed and encouraged but what if it wasn't available? What if there was no one willing to adopt your child? This would be parallel to pregnancy where adoption is not available. Would we say in such a case that you could kill your newborn or two year old?
ReplyDeleteSo the lack of the availability of adoption in no way justifies killing the innocent. First one would have to show that the unborn don't count as human rights bearing individuals before this argument would have any validity. It simply begs the question.