Is This Morally Right

Is it morally right to have children?

In my experience, many of the individuals that do not wish to have children do so for selfish reasons. They state that they want their freedom or that they want to live a life without the restrictions that children create. In comparison, when you have children (intentionally), you have made a decision to pour a significant amount of your time, energy and money into a human being who may or may not appreciate it, and may or may not turn into a juvenile delinquent.If you state that it is selfish to want to reproduce, I would agree that it is selfish just as much as it is to want to feed your face and occasionally defecate. These are all biological urges that are necessary for our survival as a species.In order to answer your question about whether it is good or not to have children, I would answer it depends. You see, in many countries within the developed world, populations are actually shrinking as people delay marriage and childbirth. So much so that some populations in Europe actually financially incentivize their citizens to have children. The population explosion you describe is primarily in third world countries where education is scarce and to your point, creates an endless cycle of poverty.If you are educated and responsible, I beg you… please have children. Nothing will stop the uneducated from popping out children, and we need intelligent people having children as well to offset some of this. I refer you to the movie “Idiocracy” (a Mike Judge movie) that gives a fictionalized account of what happens when only the poor and uneducated are having children. It is actually not that far off from reality…

What is a moral right?

Legal rights come from your legal community. If you live in different countries, depending on your race, you will have different legal rights. They are written down. The fact that they are written down does not make them easy to understand or administer. Legal details and specific legal situations can be very unique, requiring legal interpretation, and sometimes challenges and re-interpretation.Your moral rights come from your community. If you live in a Catholic community, or a Muslim community, or a Mennonite community, or a tribal community, you will have different moral rights. Moral rights might be written down, but in many cases they are not written down. They are also typically interpreted by a community leader - not by a legal system.However, most, perhaps all of us live in multiple communities. We live in a civic community, a state community, a country community, a sports community, a labour community, possibly a professional association, a family, an extended family, and so on… So most of us, perhaps all of us, have different moral rights, depending on the situation. When you are with your family, your father might expect the right to be respected. But when he is with his peers, he might expect to be challenged. And when he is in the kitchen with his wife, he might expect the right to be treated as an equal. But if he is in the hospital, he expects the moral rights of an invalid. Moral rights are not hard and fast, they change according to the circumstances.We might like to think think that there are fundamental rights, like the rights to life, liberty, etc. But these rights do not exist in themselves. They are granted by communities, upheld by communities, and sometimes they are taken away by communities - of which we are a part, or sometimes by communities of which we are not a part.It is also worth noting that legal rights are not upheld by the law. They are stated in law - actually in Bills of Rights, which are not exactly laws. The bills or statutes can be used as a foundation for a challenge in a court of law. But rights are not laws. There are no police out there looking to uphold your rights. They are only looking for legal offences, your wrongs.

Ethics: What does it mean to be morally right? Or morally wrong?

I am an old guy now. Many years ago I was a member of the police force. Take the following situation:I had my district in an area where there were both the very rich and the very poor and as is usual they occupied opposite ends of town.Now Ben, who was from the well healed side of town was reported to me for theft. Tommy was from the other side of town and did the same thing. No problem you say? Well I wish it was so simple morally. Ben was was middle class , married with two children, well looked after, and whilst not rich, managed to make ends meet. Tommy unskilled worked hard. but sometimes he and his young family were hard pressed to pay their debts and put food on the table. One day Tommy was taken for taking food from the local supermarket. When questioned he said it was to feed his children. I found this to be very likely true.Both broke the law. The crimes were similar, the punishment according to law was equal. Now Ben just said he was sorry and accepted his rather hefty fine.Tommy however, who earned very little to keep his family, could not afford the fine. A prison sentence would not of helped. In fact would have made things worse. Social services can be slow and in any case do not usually pay fines.So folks, did Tommy have the moral right to provide for his family, no matter the consequences? What would you have done if your family was starving. Was Ben morally wrong, but Tommy morally right.?Morals depend very much on the situation and and a persons judgement at the time, and does not aways add up to right or wrong.Social services were informed and Tommy and family, eventually sorted themselves out, but the moral questions remain.It was this sort of dilemma that eventually decided me to find find work I could live with. Morals are largely a matter of judgement according a persons experience in life.This is just my feelings about the question, and probably not yours :-)

Who gets to decide what's morally right and wrong?

Who gets to decide what's morally right and wrong?I do. You do. We all do.No matter whom you name — yourself, your favourite philosopher, your god — their moral opinion is subjective: the views of the subject. The search for an absolutely objective morality is a fool's errand.This is why morality must be intersubjective to have any value: if you look for the absolutely objective you'll fail, but if you stop at mere personal opinion you achieve nothing. What we must do is find moral axioms we can all agree on and reason from these axioms, as best we can.And if someone disagrees — saying, for instance, that their right to sadistic pleasure outweighs our rights not to be murdered — we have to enforce our position: it may be slightly less comfortable than if we had access to objective absolutes, but this is what we must do to achieve the best thing available. And this provides prudential reasons for you to play by the intersubjective rules, if empathy is not enough to motivate you.

What is the example of something that is morally right but ethically wrong?

Ethics - what a set of societal rules, standards, professional body, church, etc says the right way to behave for members of said society, profession, church, etc. Or the guidelines you follow to be able to say you adhere to a certain code.Morals - what you personally believe to be right.Example - Generally, people believe it is morally wrong to kill. Ethically, society says motive determines whether it is right or wrong (self defense vs premeditated killing for example).Now to the specific question posed:A doctor is ethically bound to do what he or she can to save a patient but if the patient is a criminal who will go out and kill someone else once fixed up, his morals may tell him it is wrong to save the patient.To be clear, the morally right and ethically wrong thing is to not save the criminal.Here is another example. A lawyer is assigned a client accused of molesting children. There is shoddy evidence. The client tells the lawyer that he committed the crime and if found innocent will repeat with another child. The lawyer can easily get his client exonerated.For the lawyer (as a person), the morally right thing to do is use the information his client gave him to allow the authorities to find him guilty. As a professional (and lawyer), the ethically correct thing to do is defend his client and get him exonerated.It's trivially easy to come up with examples where the ethics of one's profession and one's morals will clash.