It’s not a duty, it’s not legally required, it’s a moral responsibility. The parents legally can give up the child to adoption. But they can’t legally kill him, or abandon by a side of the road. The child has rights, but it is not yet fully independent to utilize them fully. The parents have the legal responsibility to grow him into an adult or to pass him onto adoption.
The legal responsibly comes from their decision to give birth to the child, to bring him into the world — a new being with rights.
But an embryo has no rights, rights start at birth
No. She let him into her body, he enjoyed the sex. But she still has full control of her body after sex. For example, she can be on a pill, and won’t get pregnant at all. If she does, but aborts anyway a growth of a few cells, it makes no difference.
I cannot see why this moral responsibility should be any more important than any other responsibility towards strangers
Strangers are adults, fully autonomous and ready to take on the world.
They didn’t bring these strangers into existence
Abortion is an act of conversion, without the father consent
Why would that change anything?
Because a person is responsible for consequences of his actions
Yeah, but the child is an independent person, aren’t they?
Not fully , he will be only when he reaches adulthood
He is a dependent individual with rights he can’t fully exercise
“Conversion” is a tort that involves an intentional exercise of dominion or control over another’s personal property, which interferes with the owner’s right to possess it; co-ownership implies that no co-owner may unilaterally dispose of the common property in a way that affects its integrity without the consent of the other
It’s not man’s property , it’s the woman’s .
There is no co-ownership
How come he’s got special rights after he’s out of the mother but not before?
He has no rights to the child, only responsibility
That’s not true, there’s an “accession” through the sperm
How about after the birth? If before it was only the mother’s property, then it is only the mother’s responsibility after
But he can expect to receive his sperm back, he used it up by enjoying sex. The only sufferer is the woman in sex.
In fact, he is the co-owner of the product (i.e. the fetus)
Wait, wait: what if he wants the woman to abort the foetus? Does he still have responsibilities there?
You might have a case here, yes.
Tbh, I don’t know what to think of the topic: it’s too complicated
But that’s also why woman wants an abortion — she also regrets it, just like the man.
Yeah, but I cannot see why she should bear any responsibilities after the birth
I can make it simple to you. A growth of cells is not a person, so a woman can abort it, it’s just like the morning after pill.
Alright, but then we’ve got the problem of parental duties towards a child: if said child is a person, he cannot claim more rights than others over his parents’ property
The fact that the fetus has 50% of the father’s DNA is biological proof that it is not solely the mother’s
If it’s a viable embryo, are you going to keep a pregnant woman in house jail, and force feed her, so that she doesn’t kill it by starving or suicide ?
But the mother is the one who the foetus has to live off
What?
The relationship is not in the genus of ownership. It’s biological similarity. Just like siblings do not own each other.
Guys, I respect your point of view, but I don’t think anyone may claim property rights over another living human thing
That is slavery
The fetus is the result of a process in which both parties contribute material, and therefore there is co-ownership
I do not claim it. I am saying patents have responsibility to raise the child until adulthood,
Literally production
Why do they have it? And why the father?
Ownership is not determined by material contributed. Ownership is determined by cultivation/homesteading
Naw
I agree that the mother has the right to abort: she is the one who bears the child, therefore she’s the one who must choose. Once the child is born: the father is absolutely out of the problem (he couldn’t control his child’s birth, so he doesn’t have responsabilitues), but I cannot see how the mother would have any responsibilities
If we both contribute materials and there is no contract, then it is co-ownership
Let’s say the woman carries as a surrogate another woman’s egg and another man’s sperm in the egg. She has full ownership of the embryo
You can’t own a human living thing: guys, it’s slavery: you can’t debate human rights on the ground of human rights’ denial
We are discussing an embryo, not a born person.
It’s still living and human
It’s not
Only if the man had agreed to a contract to donate it with no future claims on the fetus
It is living because it’s made of living cells and human because it is the reproductive product of human beings
A dog is also living, a tree is living . So? Also, It’s not human . Is a cut off kidney human ? Who cares, it has no rights.
I specified that it is the reproductive product of two human beings: it must be human, it’s one of Biology’s pillars
The fact that the woman has the right to abortion doesn’t come from the absence of rights of the foetus, but from the right of the woman to her own body
If I build a house with you, and I contribute materials that I own while you provide materials that you own, then the house belongs to both of us
Yes, but a human being is not a house
If the parties have differing intentions, they formalize their agreement through a contract
And if you build your house all on your own on my land without my consent, it doesn’t give you the right to use it
It’s not a being
It exists, thus it is
Yes, if there’s rape you can abort without the father’s consent
I’m sorry, but it isn’t consistent: the foetus lives off the mother’s property: were it independent, I would agree, but it isn’t; moreover, it is a human being
However, the mother cannot terminate the fetus, as doing so would infringe upon the ownership rights of the father
It’s human dna, it’s not a human, as a person. Don’t equivocate on the word “human”. Human as a noun , or human as an adjective ?
If she chooses not to continue the pregnancy and opts for an abortion, she should provide financial compensation for the loss
Absolutely not. The house belongs to the person who has land title. The material doesn’t matter for ownership.
It’s living and we can all agree on this, right? (/rh)
And it is the reproductive product of two human beings. Now, in merely biological terms: the product of the mating of two individuals of the same species is another individual of the same species.
Therefore it is a living organism which has the characteristic of being human not just as a random cell from one’s body, but as the result of mating.
Hence, it is a human being.
Why? By your logic , man has has co-ownership of the growth.
Not until it’s born.
If you still my money and buy a car, is the car yours?
This is arbitrary
Also, it’s rationalism, a combination of words. You simply combined the words living and human, but you equivocated.
She never consented to the construction taking place on the land
It’s not rationalism: there’s nothing more empirical than that. To claim that a child is not a person until it is “born” is rationalism, because it allows one to associate birth with beginning of life
Look at it this way: a woman is building a house. A man walks by and gives her a plank. The woman incorporates the plank into the house.
The house is on woman’s land, the house is hers. She also provides 99.99% construction material.
Not true, if the man provides food, etc.
The woman can do anything she wants with the house during construction. But, when the house is finished, the bank takes the title.
The plank is the man’s, though
So what?
This would be nice, if I could give out planks to houses being constructed, the sue them all for not giving me my share
So he does own a percentage, however small, of the house. A foetus is not property, it’s a human being, and only as such it’s possible for a woman to have the right to abortion
He doesn’t own anything at all.
Of course he doesn’t! No one can own a human being
If anything, he is just attempting to blackmail the builder
An embryo is not a human being. It’s a part of woman’s body, like a kidney
This one was good
No: it’s the product of mating of two human beings. It’s not the same. Or else, it should be treated as mere physical property and @participant-7471 would be right
50% of the genetic material
50% of the house
Not really if you consider that mothers also give mitochondria, while fathers don’t; but it’s irrelevant: nobody owns other human beings
Moreover, if the foetus were just property, the woman could in fact abort, she’d just need to give the man half the aborted foetus. You’re using the fallacy of the stolen concept: you’re claiming that the father has the right to choose on whether to abort the foetus or not: why would it matter if the foetus weren’t alive? The only thing that would matter would be giving the father half of it
That’s not how biology works. The woman replicated the dna in the sperm. Her body did.
The fact is that the planks are removable—they don’t form a new, inseparable good
It’s physical property until birth, owned by the woman in the form of a growth on her body.
An apple pie is more like a fetus
This is just arbitrary, my friend
Absolutely no difference
If you know the term “stolen concept”, you are not new to Objectivist writing. So I invite you to read more Objectivist literature on the topic.
Ayn Rand is wrong about abortion, just like she is about the State. On everything else, she’s the best, literally my spiritual gran