I'll get to nobody's perfect in a few. I'm still trying to decipher the thought process that leads from "my child has autism" to "I'll squirt bleach up his ass. Can't hurt."
It was late a "few" ago mate! Am focken' pisst agin.
I think "thought process" is giving too much credit where
noneis due. In fact, a punishment rather than credit is due here. ...There
arewarning signs on bleach bottles in the USA, right?
The argument -- that really doesn't need spelling out on this forum -- goes something like this: your child had no choice on whether he was born or not. You did. They are, due to inescapable factors, entirely dependant on you for survival and proper development. Since they cannot provide for themselves, and no-one else but you had the choice to have sex (yes, this means rape and deceit are special cases) and thus create this human being who has the same intrinsic worth* that every other human being has...
From Locke: your exercise of your liberty has caused this person with unalienable rights to exist. If you shirk your responsibilities as a parent, either your child's life, health, and liberty are less than they, as a human being, have a moral right to. Either the society as a whole or you as an individual ought to see to the needs of this child. Since you had immediate control over their existing, you have a moral obligation to provide for the child (so that their development follows the path of optimal development).
From Kant: providing as best you can for your child can, and indeed ought to be the universal maxim. Providing less than is optimal can obviously not be the rule everybody ought to follow. Thus it is every parent's obligation to provide optimally for their children.
From utilitarianism: human beings need good care to develop in good health. Unless letting children develop all kinds of malfunctions and suffer for them returns a greater utility than obligating parents with the care of their progeny, all parents have a responsibility to care for their children.
From Rawls: who, not knowing whether they were a child or a parent, would agree to the a member of a society where parents had no obligation to provide for their children as best they can?
As we can see, utilitarianism is the only one of these where we can make the conscious choice to sacrifice the well-being of children -- but this is contingent on showing greater utility from that choice. This situation of one theory of ethics allowing for different choices than others gives rise to ethical pluralism: the acknowledgement that what is ethically acceptable depends on which theory, which principles, we adopt. Now, the important thing to notice is that this has nothing to do with ethical relativism: relativism claims that ethics is just a matter of opinion, while pluralism means the acceptance that sometimes, following different principles means different concrete actions are the recommended choice.
Seeing that different, and widely recognised as hard to discredit**, ethical theories seem to point towards parents having a special obligation to see that their children are provided for and develop well, it follows that not taking the time to find out whether there is evidence that squirting a substance that has a warning sign on the bottle up their ass is helpful or harmful is neglecting a moral obligation, and thus not only not useful but also
wrong.(and ought to be punishable, if you ask me, but then, I'm very much pro children.)
DRUNKEDITED *I don't think you can argue plausibly that human beings *DO NOT HAVE* intrinsic worth - and now we run into a metaethical problem, what does it mean to have worth? It is something metaphysical or is it just shorthand for humans in general finding something to have worth? This isn't the forum or stat for that discussion. Because then I will reply that I don't see you as having any worth, and therefore, I should have the right to kill you if I can. Which is ridiculous. (Or, rather, depriving you of human value should be my right, if the circumstances make me have any power over you)
** we don't give these ethical theories special regard because they are famous: they are famous because we've had a devil of a time trying to discredit them!
And with that, I'm gonna get proper drunk and hope to God I'll not drunk post this time