I might not be the person you're writing to as I have no strong opinion on when the cutoff time for abortion should be and 14 weeks seems fair, but I don't think this is a contradictory position.
Suppose we accept that a 14 week old fetus has about the same ability to suffer as a chicken.
Eating a factory farmed chicken causes a few months of suffering for the chicken, plus a violent death. Aborting a fetus causes a few minutes of suffering for the fetus, plus a violent death. Even if we say the fetus' suffering is 10x greater for the few minutes of the abortion procedure, the total for the chicken must be 1000x greater over time.
The benefits of eating chicken are a delicious meal. The benefits of aborting a fetus are avoiding months of pregnancy and (depending on whether the parents are able to adopt the baby out) years of unwanted child-raising. Let's say people care 1000x more about whether or not they have a child than whether or not they eat KFC, even when adoption is available.
So from a purely suffering-focused ethics. the costs are 1000x lower and the benefits are 1000x higher. I think under these circumstances it's very easy to support one but not the other. Also, there are 10,000x more chickens killed per year than fetuses, and it's an easier issue to make political progress on, so even if you did think abortion was net negative it's not clear it would ever cross your mind as an issue worth working on or writing about.
(the equivalent of the shrimp welfare charity for abortion would prevent 1,000 abortions per $1 with zero cost to anyone else including the mother - I think this is pretty different from what real pro-life activism involves!)
I think nobody including utilitarians actually uses the calculation above; problems with abortion from challenging the boundaries of what's human, or who owes whom what duty of care, or what it means about us if we kill family members, or bodily autonomy, or whatever, outweigh the suffering involved even for people with a strong tendency to focus on suffering-related ethics. I just don't think it's worth attacking on a basis of suffering-related ethics hypocrisy.
The title of the post is slightly hyperbolic (as most titles are, since nuance requires many words). I'm not so much trying to convince animal rights activists that they should support bans on abortion as much as I'm trying to convince them that they should care about the suffering an abortion causes. I can understand someone believing that the suffering of the fetus is outweighed by the benefits to the mother, and therefore still supporting the legality of abortion through the entire pregnancy. But I believe that most people who are pro-choice, and likely most animal rights activists, do not recognize the suffering of the fetus at all. They are not aware of it, or if they are aware of it they don't care. But logically animal rights activists should care about the suffering of each fetus, even if they decide the suffering is worth the benefits.
In a sense I'm trying to copy the methods of the animal rights activists themselves. They seek to shine a light on the suffering animals undergo, make people aware of it, and convince people they should care about it. Maybe that doesn't always translate into support for veganism or abolishing factory faming for everyone who hears it, but it does mean that person will start caring a bit about something they never bothered to care for before. I'm a case in point on that: I didn't really care at all about the suffering of chickens and pigs until animal rights activists shined a light on it for me. I'm not a vegan, but now if there was a vote for a bill that tried to lessen the suffering of pigs and chickens I'm much more likely to vote for it. I hope animal rights people who read this will be more likely to vote for a 14-16 week abortion ban, or at least for a law requiring fetal anesthesia for abortions over that limit. I don't think they would have spared the issue a second thought normally, just as I wouldn't spare a second thought to animal rights issues in the past.
All that to say, this post is an argument to care. When it comes to utilitarian arguments I have two other posts on the subject: I think utilitarians, and Effective Altruists in particular should be pro-life (https://flyinglionwithabook.substack.com/p/why-arent-effective-altruists-pro) and I give what I believe to be a strong argument in favor of that there. If you are a utilitarian you shouldn't simply weigh the suffering of the fetus against the benefits to the mother, you also have to weigh the 53 expected QALYs that an abortion destroys against the mother's benefit as well. But I don't think most animal rights people are particularly utilitarian, since most people in general aren't.
I do not have a view on when exactly animals become conscious, but I think abortion should be illegal after the point they are. So for both shrimp and people, I think they only should be unkillable after they are conscious.
It's a reasonable view, but of course the primary problem with it is that we have no way of knowing whether something is conscious or not. Like pain, we have to guess based on behavior and biology. What is your method of judging consciousness?
Well, the primary method is to look at the neural correlates that are present when creatures are conscious and no present when they slip into unconsciousness and also look at behaviorally if they appear to be conscious. This is, of course, difficult, and is a reason to have fairly cautious laws.
Btw, you should write more, your articles are really good!
Honest question: why would it be morally acceptable to kill an unconscious fetus, but not an unconscious adult?
Clearly murdering someone in their sleep is not morally different than killing than while they are awake (excepting that killing them in their sleep may be less painful). Yet if it is consciousness that determines whether someone is "unkillable" or not, then what's wrong with killing a sleeping man? True, he will be conscious given some time, but so will the fetus. Also true, even if he is not currently conscious he is the kind-of-a-thing that is conscious by nature: but so is a fetus. And thirdly it is true that by killing his unconscious self you are robbing him of all his future conscious life: but that is even more true of the fetus.
So it’s not being conscious that matters, but having been conscious at some point in the past?
Don’t you believe it’s probable that all of us have had previous lives? If that is the case, then each fetus has been conscious before too and has a “soul”.
I might not be the person you're writing to as I have no strong opinion on when the cutoff time for abortion should be and 14 weeks seems fair, but I don't think this is a contradictory position.
Suppose we accept that a 14 week old fetus has about the same ability to suffer as a chicken.
Eating a factory farmed chicken causes a few months of suffering for the chicken, plus a violent death. Aborting a fetus causes a few minutes of suffering for the fetus, plus a violent death. Even if we say the fetus' suffering is 10x greater for the few minutes of the abortion procedure, the total for the chicken must be 1000x greater over time.
The benefits of eating chicken are a delicious meal. The benefits of aborting a fetus are avoiding months of pregnancy and (depending on whether the parents are able to adopt the baby out) years of unwanted child-raising. Let's say people care 1000x more about whether or not they have a child than whether or not they eat KFC, even when adoption is available.
So from a purely suffering-focused ethics. the costs are 1000x lower and the benefits are 1000x higher. I think under these circumstances it's very easy to support one but not the other. Also, there are 10,000x more chickens killed per year than fetuses, and it's an easier issue to make political progress on, so even if you did think abortion was net negative it's not clear it would ever cross your mind as an issue worth working on or writing about.
(the equivalent of the shrimp welfare charity for abortion would prevent 1,000 abortions per $1 with zero cost to anyone else including the mother - I think this is pretty different from what real pro-life activism involves!)
I think nobody including utilitarians actually uses the calculation above; problems with abortion from challenging the boundaries of what's human, or who owes whom what duty of care, or what it means about us if we kill family members, or bodily autonomy, or whatever, outweigh the suffering involved even for people with a strong tendency to focus on suffering-related ethics. I just don't think it's worth attacking on a basis of suffering-related ethics hypocrisy.
The title of the post is slightly hyperbolic (as most titles are, since nuance requires many words). I'm not so much trying to convince animal rights activists that they should support bans on abortion as much as I'm trying to convince them that they should care about the suffering an abortion causes. I can understand someone believing that the suffering of the fetus is outweighed by the benefits to the mother, and therefore still supporting the legality of abortion through the entire pregnancy. But I believe that most people who are pro-choice, and likely most animal rights activists, do not recognize the suffering of the fetus at all. They are not aware of it, or if they are aware of it they don't care. But logically animal rights activists should care about the suffering of each fetus, even if they decide the suffering is worth the benefits.
In a sense I'm trying to copy the methods of the animal rights activists themselves. They seek to shine a light on the suffering animals undergo, make people aware of it, and convince people they should care about it. Maybe that doesn't always translate into support for veganism or abolishing factory faming for everyone who hears it, but it does mean that person will start caring a bit about something they never bothered to care for before. I'm a case in point on that: I didn't really care at all about the suffering of chickens and pigs until animal rights activists shined a light on it for me. I'm not a vegan, but now if there was a vote for a bill that tried to lessen the suffering of pigs and chickens I'm much more likely to vote for it. I hope animal rights people who read this will be more likely to vote for a 14-16 week abortion ban, or at least for a law requiring fetal anesthesia for abortions over that limit. I don't think they would have spared the issue a second thought normally, just as I wouldn't spare a second thought to animal rights issues in the past.
All that to say, this post is an argument to care. When it comes to utilitarian arguments I have two other posts on the subject: I think utilitarians, and Effective Altruists in particular should be pro-life (https://flyinglionwithabook.substack.com/p/why-arent-effective-altruists-pro) and I give what I believe to be a strong argument in favor of that there. If you are a utilitarian you shouldn't simply weigh the suffering of the fetus against the benefits to the mother, you also have to weigh the 53 expected QALYs that an abortion destroys against the mother's benefit as well. But I don't think most animal rights people are particularly utilitarian, since most people in general aren't.
I do not have a view on when exactly animals become conscious, but I think abortion should be illegal after the point they are. So for both shrimp and people, I think they only should be unkillable after they are conscious.
It's a reasonable view, but of course the primary problem with it is that we have no way of knowing whether something is conscious or not. Like pain, we have to guess based on behavior and biology. What is your method of judging consciousness?
Well, the primary method is to look at the neural correlates that are present when creatures are conscious and no present when they slip into unconsciousness and also look at behaviorally if they appear to be conscious. This is, of course, difficult, and is a reason to have fairly cautious laws.
Btw, you should write more, your articles are really good!
Honest question: why would it be morally acceptable to kill an unconscious fetus, but not an unconscious adult?
Clearly murdering someone in their sleep is not morally different than killing than while they are awake (excepting that killing them in their sleep may be less painful). Yet if it is consciousness that determines whether someone is "unkillable" or not, then what's wrong with killing a sleeping man? True, he will be conscious given some time, but so will the fetus. Also true, even if he is not currently conscious he is the kind-of-a-thing that is conscious by nature: but so is a fetus. And thirdly it is true that by killing his unconscious self you are robbing him of all his future conscious life: but that is even more true of the fetus.
How do you solve this problem?
Because they have had consciousness. They've gotten their soul already, so you're committing murder.
So it’s not being conscious that matters, but having been conscious at some point in the past?
Don’t you believe it’s probable that all of us have had previous lives? If that is the case, then each fetus has been conscious before too and has a “soul”.