Ethics Case 1 Case Studies Examples

The issue of child pornography is always a complicated one, but the ethics of child pornography itself are fairly clear-cut with a majority of people. Where the issue gets tricky, however, is the concept of virtual child pornography, i.e. sexualized images of children that are virtually created. While the clear-cut ethical wrongness of child pornography chiefly revolves around the abuse of real children, the enjoyment of sexualized child images that are virtually created runs into other ethical problems, as no actual child was hurt or abused in the process of creating the image. To that end, examining the issue of virtual child pornography chiefly involves exploring the ethics of how the private consumption of virtually-created images hurts others or leads others to behave unethically.
The primary distinction being made in the argument that virtual child pornography is protected behavior is that, unlike real child pornography, no real children are being asked to commit acts. In those instances, there is a victim who must be made to commit traumatic and deeply abusive acts in order to create the pornography. Therefore, consumers of that pornography aid and abet this process by being their consumers. Virtual child pornography, on the other hand, is only drawn or conjured from the mind of an artist (presumably a consenting adult), and consumed by someone else. In that respect, there is no real child victim, as the child in the image is not real and therefore was not asked to perform any untoward acts. The virtual child has no agency or personhood, therefore the consumption of that pornography does not participate in a system that explicitly rewards the abuse of children.
That being said, there are still a number of problems with virtual child pornography, particularly related to their links to real child pornography. It is possible that those who consume virtual child pornography may do so as a byproduct of enjoying the real thing, and so it can act as a gateway or supplement to real child pornography. Just as drugs like marijuana are seen as gateway drugs to harder narcotics, so too can virtual child pornography potentially open up the gateway to consuming real child pornography. If virtual child pornography is rendered legal, it may also inspire artists to create virtual porn instead of real child porn, thus perpetuating the same industry but doing it legally. From a utilitarian standpoint, recent court decisions to declare virtual child porn bans unconstitutional stem from a desire to value free speech over the moral hazards of the practice; without empirical study of the issue, it is difficult to know exactly what the effects of more widespread virtual child porn would be.
In a similar vein, one reason child pornography is unethical is that it can inspire consumers of it to commit those same acts in real life; while virtual child pornography required no actual children in the making of that material, the effect could be the same. Even when looking at a virtual image of an eroticized child, those who consume that art may become tempted to seek out that kind of company in real life. From an ethical standpoint, the effect that both real and virtual child pornography has on the consumer itself is arguably similar, if not identical. However, this brings up problematic assumptions that a consumer or owner of virtual child pornography will inevitably abuse, and so this makes legislating against this as a crime very difficult to do.
Despite the effects of virtual child pornography on the offenders, it is necessary to put these issues in the proper context. It is not strictly unethical for virtual child pornography to be created, depending on its use; the artist itself should not be punished simply for creating this work, as they did not abuse any real children in the creation of the work in the first place. However, I believe that those who consume virtual child pornography could have that fact used against them if they were also found either committing pornographic or abusive acts against a child, or if they were in possession of real child pornography.