So, guess who forgot that Monday was yesterday.
This guy.
As a result, I present you with Tuesday's blog post.
With Roe V. Wade sitting directly forty years behind us, abortion has been a hot button topic.
Reddit even had the pleasure of hosting workers at an abortion clinic for an AMA (ask me anything- it's a community interview) seen here
I've read many not-so-compelling arguments against abortion and lots of attempts to boil down the argument to its single-value-essence, like "ultimately, the question is when you define life as starting."
I'd like to clarify that there isn't just one of these value-essences- there are several. Off the top of my head:
1. When do you define the beginning of life?
2. Is the freedom of one person more, less, or equally valuable as the rights of a dependent person?
3. Is human life priceless, or can you put a value on it in certain circumstances?
4. Can the price of human life (if it exists) be translated into a currency other than "lives"?
All four of these questions can result in a fundamental position-shift on the topic of abortion depending on how you answer them. The follow-up "why" question after each one also exposes cognitive dissonance and poorly-crafted philosophies.
The first question is an almost entirely arbitrary and subjective question that you can't do anything with. It's impossible to determine a consensus for life's origins because it's such a continuous and nebulous process. In other words, not an argument worth having.
The second question is far more interesting since any answer has serious implications on many other opinions. Dependents come in many forms- children, fetuses, the elderly, the physically/mentally challenged, intended, unintended, forced, etc.
It brings to mind the thought experiment of the Violinist. The meat of the experiment is if you wake up connected to a famous violinist and you're told he'll die if you disconnect yourself from him, do you have any obligation to stay connected to him? He'll be cured in nine months, but you cannot move and you're the only one that can save him. You were not consulted prior to becoming connected and instead, you were kidnapped.
The idea is that if someone is truly dependent upon us for survival, do we actually have any moral obligation towards them? What if we had no say in that dependency (rape)? What if we did everything in our power to prevent that dependency (birth control/condom)? When and why does that line get crossed where we're no longer responsible?
There's always a shortage of blood, so donating blood will always save lives. Does that mean we have an obligation to donate? Someone's life is dependent on it, right? But... wouldn't that mean we're always obligated to be donating blood constantly?
Obviously, it's a bit of a slippery slope towards catastrophe if we're always obligated to help someone who's currently dependent upon our actions.
This brings us to the third question, the one I consider the most important. The third question aims at determining how consistent a view is towards life. Is it truly priceless?
The only way that abortion could never be an acceptable route is if all life is equally priceless and there's no way of determining if life has a specific value to it.
You would never kill a life to save a life.
At its heart, this is a position of utilitarianism vs. deontology (as I'm sure I've pushed before). Morality as a mathematical calculation or as a universal constant?
However, consider this position:
You're the last guard in an over-crowded prison and you just got a call. You're desperately needed for someone that will likely take all night. No one will be at the prison for many hours. There are no spare cells and no rooms available to house prisoners.
Suddenly, on your way out, the cell of a violent criminal starts melting (or bursts into flames, or has a gas leak- pick your poison). There's nothing you can do to stop it. Your two choices are to either let the prisoner die inside the cell or free the prisoner.
If you let the prisoner go, he said he will murder others.
In the end, your choice is to cause a death or indirectly allow other deaths by his hand.
This particular experiment is the nightmare of deontology- forcing someone into a position in which they cannot follow their ideal moral path. It forces a person to admit that life is not inherently priceless. Life can be worth more than other life. It sucks and it's super duper uncomfortable to admit, but the vast majority of people would let the criminal die rather than allow him to make good on his promise. So, the life of an innocent is worth more than the life of a guilty party.
But that's just one philosophical step, which leads us to our next question.
Can we translate the price of life into any currency other than "lives"? Right now, the criminal couldn't be spared because his life would have come at the cost of other life(s). But what if that wasn't quite the case?
What if this criminal was a serial rapist who did not murder his victims?
He's promised that if you let him out, he'll rape again.
Suddenly the stakes are not a life for a life. It's a life for pain, misery, and trauma.
Would you let him out now?
What if he is assured to commit a hundred rapes if you let him out?
Is a single life worth a hundred instances of that tragedy?
Is there a line for you? How much pain and suffering is worth a life?
At some point, one of two things happens-
1. You admit that life has a price and it's not measured in other lives necessarily.
2. You cling to the pricelessness of life, even if it were to cause the suffering of every single human being on the planet.
If you choose option 2, you're philosophically consistent, but I'd be forced to label you as an idealistic dreamer.
If you choose option 1, then we're getting somewhere. From here on out, you're in a stance of utilitarianism- we're creating a mathematical formula to determine the worth of life.
Lives are capable of being priced in pain, anguish, and suffering. From here, it's a simple matter of asking where and why you draw a line at how much suffering is required before a life can be ended to prevent that suffering.
Once you've drawn that line, it's easy to remind you that your single arbitrary position is what created that line. Other people have different lines that they've arbitrarily created, and you have to accept that for some of those people, terminating a pregnancy to avoid suffering is well within their rights.
The crux here is that a valid counterargument would suggest that if we use this logic, then we should be able to kill our annoying neighbor or our boss depending on how much suffering they inflict.
On its face, the argument appears to hold water, but remember, we're dealing with a mathematical formula- your suffering isn't the only important factor.
Let's give some numbers to this exercise.
Let's say your boss causes you 1,500 "suffering" points. So, you think you'd be justified in killing him. Well, hold on. He causes his wife -1,000 suffering. And his child -1,800 suffering. And between his friends and family and other employees, he causes -4,200. So, in total, he causes -7,000 suffering to offset your 1,500. The net total is still -5,500 suffering caused by this human. Therefore, he does more good than bad and killing him would cause more suffering than it would alleviate, making it an action that is immoral by utilitarian standards.
With that in mind, let's revisit the idea of abortion. A fetus that is not currently emotionally connected to other humans is a lot easier to parse out with math.
The fetus is worth 400 points of suffering to the mother. This amount is almost guaranteed to rise as the physical, emotional, and financial demands of pregnancy persist. The father is caused a net 100 suffering because he is pained by the mother's agony and difficult choice, but he's otherwise indifferent to having or not having the child. No one else knows of its existence and there is therefore, no one else who is caused suffering points (whether positive or negative). As such, the fetus causes a net 500 suffering. The abortion is arguably justified at that point.
This isn't a particularly convincing argument when you get down to it though, I must admit. If you have an eight-year-old who has no friends and only immediate family who hate him, he might cause a net positive amount of suffering, but it would problematic to kill this child, wouldn't it?
In the end, even utilitarians want to cling to some universal ethical principles, but not others. We're not above our own inconsistencies.
So, why then would abortion be morally acceptable, but not the killing of your own child if both yielded positive total suffering?
The best I can honestly come up with is a lack of alternatives.
If women had a cheap, safe, and easy way to expel a fetus in such a way that it could still be kept alive, then I think most people on both sides would be satisfied. However, such a method does not exist. The closest is to bear the burden of pregnancy to full term and then to give the baby up for adoption. However, the problem with this method is that it takes serious physical, emotional, psychological, and financial tolls on the woman that could otherwise be avoided. Similarly, adoption poses certain problems for many children (often non-white children). They're thrown into a system that is underfunded and often poorly run. The children may not be adequately cared for or ever adopted.
So, in lieu of a perfect alternative that alleviates everyone's problems, someone has to make the sacrifice, and I'm inclined to people do with their body what they want more than I'm inclined to suggest that fetuses have the same rights as children.
It's not a satisfying conclusion, but if you've followed and understand the previous arguments, then surely you feel the same sense of dissatisfaction, yes?
Of course, it's entirely possible that I'm missing some vital pieces of information or perspective that might make the decision easier.
What are your thoughts?
-
Waddles
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