Chapter 4

Wellman talks about the fight for certain rights have redirected the discrimination. Such as for equal pay for equal work; how some jobs now have become predominantly female orientated and how other jobs are dominantly male orientated. He says that even though most jobs have reconciled the difference between equal pay the whole of society and what jobs are viewed as jobs for women and vice versa become more segregated. But is this a real problem, if this were the case? Has the fight for equal pay made things worse for women?

Women have fought for equal rights under the law and have gained ground, but now the question Wellman brings to light is the fight for special rights and not equal rights because women and men have different needs for different disabilities. And as he goes to say that special rights may in fact lead to reverse discrimination towards women. This is more of an issue of social justice rather than a fight for a legal right. Social justice should base rights off of need and not equality. I think the best solution for this is issue is to make their needs apparent to employers and the public. And concerning morality I think that “care” better suits this situation and that it should be just the way society is toward women who bring us into this world.

The issues women are fighting for seem to be very contradictory because if they fight for equal rights, they are saying they need special rights for special needs: which is true. But perhaps fighting for equal rights is not the way to approach this fight. And if they are fighting for “women’s” rights then are they fighting for group rights or individual rights of each and every woman? And if it is a group right simply because they one is a woman then do rights as we know them apply toward a people group in this way? It seems to me that once one right is reached that the next right uproots the last right and needs to be reevaluated. I definitely think this is a problem but how and where to start might be the key question.

Abortion as Wellman states is the most controversial right out there. One of the interesting statements Wellman makes is this issue distorts politics by diverting attention away from our urgent social problems, and that this issue leads toward violence. I am taking it he is pro-choice? If he is making the argument that this is not an “urgent social problem” and it should not be an urgent issue. Most pro-life supporters say this is genocide: so is abortion genocide and if so is that an “urgent social problem?” And who has the right of an unborn child; the mother who carries the child or the mother and father who coherently brought about the child. Some argue the father does have a say since if the child were to be born they would have to support him/her. Others argue that the mother has sole control over the child. Wellman’s conclusion states that old and new moral rights must be considered when establishing new moral rights for an ideal society. Will this proliferation of “alleged” moral rights ruin current human rights we possess?