i) Men can’t be responsible for all pregnancies given the reason two lesbians can go to a sperm bank. Or suppose we can even make synthetic sperm. Clearly, then a man wouldn’t be causally related.
ii) It seems like Shane operates on a false dichotomy. Men and Women can be morally responsible for their actions. Shane is under the illusion that women are never morally responsible for the children that may result from voluntary sexual actions. A woman can sleep with every man in the world and not be culpable for a child produced out of it.
iii) What if a woman agrees to get pregnant but changes her mind? Is it the Father’s fault she has an unwanted pregnancy? He doesn’t seem morally to blame for her change of mind.
iv) Ethics and causality are not separate things but they aren’t identical. Given certain theories of causation, a woman can be casually related to why she has a child.
A leading approach to the study of causation has been to analyze causation in terms of counterfactual conditionals. A counterfactual conditional is a subjunctive conditional sentence, whose antecedent is contrary-to-fact. Here is an example: “if the butterfly ballot had not been used in West Palm Beach, then Albert Gore would be the president on the United States.” In the case of indeterministic outcomes, it may be appropriate to use probabilistic consequents: “if the butterfly ballot had not been used in West Palm Beach, then Albert Gore would have had a .7 chance of being elected president.” A probabilistic counterfactual theory of causation (PC) aims to analyze causation in terms of these probabilistic counterfactuals. The event B is said to causally depend upon the distinct event A just in case both occur and the probability that B would occur, at the time of As occurrence, was much higher than it would have been at the corresponding time if A had not occurred. This counterfactual is to be understood in terms of possible worlds: it is true if, in the nearest possible world(s) where A does not occur, the probability of B is much lower than it was in the actual world. On this account, the relevant notion of `probability-raising’ is not understood in terms of conditional probabilities, but in terms of unconditional probabilities in different possible worlds.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/causation-probabilistic/
Suppose we use the counterfactual theory of causation: “If A did not obtain, then B would not have obtained”.
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2009/04/calvinism-determinism.html
We can just state: “If such a woman didn’t sleep with many men, then it wouldn’t have obtained that she would have gotten pregnant.” So, Shane is not exhausting conceptual resources about causation. So, here is a clear example of how a woman is a cause of her pregnancy. Shane can’t distinguish different kinds of causes.
v) In Shane’s worldview, everything is caused by natural events outside the control of the person. So, that means men were caused by extrinsic forces to do as he does. So, on Shane’s own view men wouldn’t be causally responsible for pregnancies.
Further Suggestions:
TheCouncil:
The Council 