Guidelines Right to a Child

The concept ‘right to child’ can be poorly handled by students. Part of this is because it is mentioned in the syllabus together with abortion and so, as indicated below, some candidates just talk about abortion (not really relevant) in the context of the question. However, the syllabus has indications of what we are meant to interpret by this phrase – “the issues of infertility and the right to a child; whether a child is a gift or a right; the application and the different approaches of the ethical theories listed above to abortion and the right to a child” (OCR specification H572). So to answer questions effectively in this topic area we need to do three things:

1. Examine the idea of a ‘right’. For example, a Christian would see children as a gift from God, not a right to be demanded. The concept of right also implies obligations on someone else to guarantee that right. But who has the obligation to give you unlimited IVF treatments at £1,000 a cycle?

2. Discuss ‘infertility” – itself is an interesting concept. It means something different to a woman aged over 40 (fertility much lower than a 25 year old) to a 22 year old. Should each have a different ‘right’ depending on whether it is a natural function of the menopause or a medical condition that e are discussing?

3. Look at practice – fertility treatments are not offered equally across the country (see UPDATE section here) – some hospitals offer one cycle and some more than one on the NHS – the age limit is usually 37 years old. Should there be an age limit? What does unequal provision mean for concepts off airiness and utilitarian measures of mother’s happiness?

Q 1 a Explain some of the differentforms of utilitarianism.  ©OCR AS June 2014

There were a number of very good responses and on the whole this question was answered very well, with many candidates able to give sound explanations of the ideas of Bentham, Mill and Singer. Some candidates showed good mastery of the detail involved in distinguishing between the three, and explaining the differences between act and rule, and weak and strong rule Utilitarianism. PB – Mill’s is usually seen as a weak form of rule because his is a two tier system – you generally follow the rule determined by the wisdom of a competent judge but then revert to being an act utilitarian when you face a moral dilemma. These soft rules are like guidelines and are very different to the hard rules of Kantian ethics.

The hedonic calculus did pose a problem for some candidates who either listed it or listed some of it with no idea what it meant. Better responses used an example to give a quick and simple explanation of how it might be applied. PB – producing lists is never a good idea! Much better to take two or there of the PRRICED acronym (two RRs for reliability and richness – see my handout here) and see how this might be applied for example in the decision to have an abortion or as in part b, the decision to go for fertility treatments (which themselves have a risk of pain, mental anguish and disappointment).

Some candidates were limited in their responses by simply defining Utilitarianism as the ‘greatest good for the greatest number’. This prevented a full development of Bentham’s approach based on ‘pleasure’ and Mill’s based on ‘happiness’. PB – Mill doesn’t like Bentham’s hedonic, pleasure-based definition, although his essay is confusing as he starts with Bentham’s definition and then changes it as the essay develops into something closer to Aristoteles eudaimonia (a richer idea of personal and social flourishing). See my book on Utilitarianism for a full explanation, or  a recent blog on the conversion of JS Mill in the BLOG section.

Some candidates limited their explanation of Mill to higher and lower pleasures, with little reference to his concept of ‘competent judges’ as an approach to the understanding of the differences between higher and lower pleasures and the establishment of general rules. PB – Mill’s are guidelines determined by a consensus of social wisdom passed on by ‘competent judges’. A key point – Kantian rules operate in a very different way to Mill’s rules. The term ‘rule utilitarianism’ is never used by Mill but was introduced by JO Urmson to try to get us to talk sense about Mill!

There were some very good explanations of preference Utilitarianism, using Hare, Singer and Brandt; however, many candidates had limited knowledge of this approach. There were some very general comments about the maximisation of preferences and some even saying that a person’s own preferences should come first. PB – for some reason candidates don’t seem to study preference utilitarianism, or find it difficult. In essence it’s quite a simple idea, instead of maximising pleasure or happiness, which have problems of definition and measurement, you ask people which of two choices or more they prefer and then add up the first preferences.

1 b Assess the view that Utilitarianism is the best approach to the right to a child.

There were a number of good responses showing good engagement with the question, often by contrasting the approaches of the different forms of Utilitarianism or contrasting one form of Utilitarianism with other ethical theories. Many responses, however, failed to show any evaluation and simply stated what Utilitarianism would do. PB – you analyse in part a. of the AS question and evaluate in part b. There are essentially two ways of evaluating, one is to point out the logical or practical weaknesses of an approach and the other is to contrast one theory with another. Of course, here you could either contrast one utilitarianism form (Bentham for example) with another (Mill) or you could line up utilitarianism against Natural Law or Kantian approaches. Main thing is, as you study ethics, to constantly practise making the applications and comparing the reasoning of one approach with another. In my books I call this ‘applying the ethics toolkit’ as each theory has a slightly different ‘toolkit’.

Some candidates’ responses showed a very limited idea of what ‘right to a child’ meant, despite this being in the specification. Thus some candidates wrote about abortion or a child’s right to a loving home. PB – the examiner has muddled students up by placing ‘right to a child’ together with abortion in the same section. If you study the syllabus carefully you will see that there are really two issues we need to address – right versus gift and right applied to IVF treatments. See my introductory comments above.

There were, however, some excellent responses from candidates which showed the ability to think through a variety of issues in response to the question, such as whether ‘rights’ existed or whether there should be any differentiation at all between individuals dependent on, for example, their financial background, age or the status of their relationship. PB – it’s interesting that according to the Human Embryology and Fertility Act everyone who applies for IVF treatment on the NHS has to go through the ethics committee of the hospital and has to be passed as ‘suitable’. They don’t seem to apply the same test for example to teenage pregnancies (this would seem a rather totalitarian idea!) so this practice raises questions of justice and rights – whether rights are or ever can be universal on issues such as this.