Description:

Abstract: Thomas argues that legal obligations of parents towards their infant children and criminal protections of infants against abuse are justified within a system of law where all claims derive from the protection of the rights of individual adults to liberty. Given Rand's Objectivist argument for rights, infants cannot have rights in the most basic sense. However, the right of adult children to bring (tort) claims against neglectful parents or abusive adults provides the justification for criminal protections of children. The positive obligations parents bear toward their infant children are meaningfully analogous to positive obligations toward (adult) victims of willful harm. The creation of an independently viable infant is taken as the starting point of parental obligation; thus abortion rights are conserved. It results that it is both just and in the interest of adult citizens to enact minimal but significant protections of child welfare. Retrieved and converted from: http://home.roadrunner.com/~wrthomas/papers.htm 1/25/2013