On “Financial Abortions” and Unequal Rights to “Walk Away” from Parental Obligations

Let us imagine that, one night, you are driving a car while intoxicated and cause a terrible collision.

As a result of this collision, another person is badly injured and will require extensive medical care and time to recover. Until then, your victim has been rendered *helpless* by your choice to drive while intoxicated.

Following this crash, you are assessed by the courts to be financially liable for the care of your victim. Because you created the condition of your victim’s helplessness, you also created a *positive right* for the victim to claim your care.

During the assessment by the courts, you attempted to explain that you should not have any obligation to care for your victim, because the victim’s mother could have aborted her pregnancy, which would have prevented your victim from ever existing at all as a distinct person. Therefore, you argued, it’s really the victim’s mother who should provide care for your victim. The court, rightfully, laughed at you and held you in contempt for wasting its time with such an obviously bad faith argument.

*That’s what your arguments about unequal rights to walk away from parental obligations sound like*. You contributed to the existence of another person, against their will, in a helpless state. That other person therefore owns positive rights to your care. Another person’s rights and choices play *no role* in the obligations you created through your actions. Your obligations to Person A are not affected by the actions or rights of Person B.

Try this one: you and a woman decide to push a random child into a pit, together and simultaneously. The child falls into the pit and begs for help getting back out. You call down: “It’s not my responsibility! Sure, I pushed you at the same time that she did, but she *could have* decided not to push you at the same time, so all the responsibility to help you out is hers.”

Through your actions, you created your own obligation to another person. That claim to parental care is not owned by the mother; it is owned by the *child* and applies equally to any parents. You possess no fewer rights than anyone else by being subject to obligations you yourself created.