Elective Abandonment: A Male Counterpart to Abortion

Abstract

Two of the most influential arguments in favour of the permissibility of abortion were put forward in the latter half of the twentieth century by Judith Jarvis Thomson and Mary Anne Warren. The implications of these arguments for unwilling putative fathers have largely not been considered. Some have argued that Thomson's defence of abortion might allow a man under certain circumstances to terminate his parental responsibilities and rights. To my knowledge, nobody has considered the implications of Warren's argument for men. I will consider the implications of both arguments for men. I will argue that if they are successful defences of abortion then they are also successful in justifying a male counterpart to abortion which I label ‘elective abandonment’. I will not be defending or attacking these arguments as defences of abortion, but will defend the claim that they apply as well to elective abandonment as they do to abortion.

KEYWORDS:

• Abortion
• elective abandonment
• fatherhood

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Professor Philip Stratton-Lake and Dr Iain Law for their helpful comments on some early versions of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Richard C. Playford http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3879-1357

Notes on contributor

Richard C. Playford is a lecturer in Religious Studies at St Mary’s University, Twickenham, UK.

Notes

1 This will be similar to the ideas expressed about acquiring and renouncing paternal responsibility put forward in Brake (2005) and McCulley (1998).

2 When Brake discusses Thomson’s argument, she largely focuses on Thomson’s thought experiments involving ‘people seeds’ and the principles involved therein.

3 Someone might object here that for wealthy men the burden of child support is relatively minimal. As a result, this argument cannot be used for these men. I would point out that the same can be said of some women. For a woman with an active lifestyle, full-time job, etc. then the burden of an unwanted pregnancy might well be a heavy one. However, for some women the burden of pregnancy can be much lighter depending on their physical health, financial situation and relationship status. As a result, if the wealth of the man makes a difference to the permissibility of elective abandonment then the health and lifestyle of the woman make a difference to the permissibility of abortion.

4 One could argue that they will gain a potentially rewarding relationship with their child. This may well be true, but at least at this stage they do not want this (indeed they actively don’t want it!) and the same could be said of women and abortion. Further, it seems worryingly contingent on certain facts about human psychology. Many men will find fatherhood rewarding but there may also be many who either get nothing from it or who find it actively emotionally unpleasant.

5 Further, the state and a foetus are very different entities and it does not follow that just because we can have responsibilities and obligations towards the state to pay taxes and so on (although some may even disagree with this) that we can therefore have responsibilities and obligations towards foetuses.

6 Here I have focussed on the prospective father’s right to his money, property and labour, and on the financial burdens inherent in enforced child support. We could equally consider the emotional implications of enforced child support. These emotional burdens may well be equally, if not more, demanding than the financial burdens so the implications of these burdens should also be considered. Here, however, I focus primarily on the financial burdens since these are easier to identify and measure.

7 Indeed, one could potentially argue that abortion is simply an extreme form of abandonment.

8 It should be noted that I am oversimplifying in this paragraph. In reality, there are a large number of different theories about the value of new-borns in the same way that there are different views about the value of foetuses. Similarly, most of the views which believe that foetuses do not have moral value, but that adult humans and children do would not claim that a foetus all of a sudden gains value the moment it is born. Instead they would argue that the value of the foetus and new-born baby grows as he or she develops. However, my general point still stands. If we think that foetuses do not have moral value (but that adults do) then gradually the number of duties we have towards the new-born baby, toddler and child will grow and increase as they develop and their moral value increases. As time progresses, killing or abandoning them will become steadily more and more impermissible.

9 Indeed, it could possibly be argued that there is something of a female equivalent to elective abandonment already in place. Women can choose to carry the child to term, refuse to tell the father, and then give it up for adoption. We might argue that this is not too dissimilar to elective abandonment in that she surrenders all parental responsibilities and rights to the child. From a practical perspective, there is nothing the father can do to prevent this because he is unaware of the situation, and as a result the decision is entirely her own. This option is unavailable to men, because they cannot give the child up for adoption if the mother wants to keep it, and yet they will still be liable for child support. This observation should strengthen the plausibility of the permissibility of elective abandonment. The disparity in freedom is now, arguably, doubled.

10 Instinctively I have issues with this sort of approach as it would mean that two near-identical foetuses have a different moral status simply because of the attitude that other agents take towards them. This would strike me as extremely odd and unlikely. However, for the sake of argument let’s accept that this is possible.