It's because nobody is a utilitarian, although yes, lots of EA-ish people emphasize consequentialist arguments in an unusually wide range of cases. This social class is deeply embedded in a fundamentally liberal-individualist culture, much more deeply than in the purely intellectual commitments of consequentialism, and is thus extremely loath to justify coercion in the name of (for the sake of argument, let's assume) better outcomes. It is indeed, all in all, hypocritical to be willing to advocate for the rights of, say, shrimp but not for those of human fetuses, though as a pro-choice non-consequentialist myself I personally am glad that nobody seems to be biting that bullet.
Utilitarians don’t agree on whether there’s a moral imperative to create more people if it reduces average happiness - Google the “repugnant conclusion” to see more. But the claim can also shift to assuming the mother in question has already decided how many children she will have in her life, and will use contraceptives later if she had a child now. Then the future child would often be happier than the current child.
I can understand a utilitarian who takes the position that we are not morally obligated to take action to make more people; but the fetus does not potentially exist, it exists already. In the case of an abortion you are taking a specific action that results in the loss of 58-78 years of life; even if you're not morally required to maximize future utility, surely utilitarianism requires us to not take actions that result in significantly less utility on net?
In the later case, wouldn't the highest utility come from putting the current child up for adoption? Taking an action that removes 58-78 expected years of life, with the possibility of producing 58-78 years of life with a higher utility later seems like a real gamble, especially when the adoption alternative results in not losing the 58-78 years that will currently happen and still having basically the same probability of producing more life in the future.
Carrying a child to term and putting them up for adoption is the same sort of theoretically-optimal-but-supererogatory thing as donating 50% of your money to charity for a year. Some people would rather do the latter than the former, and would expect it to produce more happiness on net (there are limited foster parents out there). Many utilitarians don’t do the latter, and would prefer doing that to doing the former, so they don’t feel bad about the former either.
For the actions thing, many utilitarians wouldn’t distinguish a potential person from an actual person. Killing an adult and replacing them would have societal costs, but abortion doesn’t have nearly as large societal costs in many people’s eyes.
>Carrying a child to term and putting them up for adoption is the same sort of theoretically-optimal-but-supererogatory thing as donating 50% of your money to charity for a year.
I would agree if the question was whether you should create a child for the purpose of carrying it to term and putting it up for adoption. If the life already exists, then carrying it to term is the null action, while choosing to abort destroys more than 50 QALYs of utility.
>(there are limited foster parents out there).
There are over 2 million families waiting to adopt a newborn in the United States: if you put your newborn up for adoption, they are not going into the foster care system. They're getting snapped up by families eager to adopt. There is so much more demand than there is supply that right now it takes around 7 years for a family to find a baby to adopt.
>For the actions thing, many utilitarians wouldn’t distinguish a potential person from an actual person.
I agree completely: which is why I'm baffled that so few utilitarians are pro-life.
You could try to make that argument, but I'm pretty sure it isn't true. A big part of the reason for the fertility transition is that people end up with less children than they actually want, in the presence of contraception, because it's a big short-term sacrifice to actually go through the pregnancy and infancy at any particular moment.
It's because nobody is a utilitarian, although yes, lots of EA-ish people emphasize consequentialist arguments in an unusually wide range of cases. This social class is deeply embedded in a fundamentally liberal-individualist culture, much more deeply than in the purely intellectual commitments of consequentialism, and is thus extremely loath to justify coercion in the name of (for the sake of argument, let's assume) better outcomes. It is indeed, all in all, hypocritical to be willing to advocate for the rights of, say, shrimp but not for those of human fetuses, though as a pro-choice non-consequentialist myself I personally am glad that nobody seems to be biting that bullet.
Utilitarians don’t agree on whether there’s a moral imperative to create more people if it reduces average happiness - Google the “repugnant conclusion” to see more. But the claim can also shift to assuming the mother in question has already decided how many children she will have in her life, and will use contraceptives later if she had a child now. Then the future child would often be happier than the current child.
I can understand a utilitarian who takes the position that we are not morally obligated to take action to make more people; but the fetus does not potentially exist, it exists already. In the case of an abortion you are taking a specific action that results in the loss of 58-78 years of life; even if you're not morally required to maximize future utility, surely utilitarianism requires us to not take actions that result in significantly less utility on net?
In the later case, wouldn't the highest utility come from putting the current child up for adoption? Taking an action that removes 58-78 expected years of life, with the possibility of producing 58-78 years of life with a higher utility later seems like a real gamble, especially when the adoption alternative results in not losing the 58-78 years that will currently happen and still having basically the same probability of producing more life in the future.
Carrying a child to term and putting them up for adoption is the same sort of theoretically-optimal-but-supererogatory thing as donating 50% of your money to charity for a year. Some people would rather do the latter than the former, and would expect it to produce more happiness on net (there are limited foster parents out there). Many utilitarians don’t do the latter, and would prefer doing that to doing the former, so they don’t feel bad about the former either.
For the actions thing, many utilitarians wouldn’t distinguish a potential person from an actual person. Killing an adult and replacing them would have societal costs, but abortion doesn’t have nearly as large societal costs in many people’s eyes.
>Carrying a child to term and putting them up for adoption is the same sort of theoretically-optimal-but-supererogatory thing as donating 50% of your money to charity for a year.
I would agree if the question was whether you should create a child for the purpose of carrying it to term and putting it up for adoption. If the life already exists, then carrying it to term is the null action, while choosing to abort destroys more than 50 QALYs of utility.
>(there are limited foster parents out there).
There are over 2 million families waiting to adopt a newborn in the United States: if you put your newborn up for adoption, they are not going into the foster care system. They're getting snapped up by families eager to adopt. There is so much more demand than there is supply that right now it takes around 7 years for a family to find a baby to adopt.
>For the actions thing, many utilitarians wouldn’t distinguish a potential person from an actual person.
I agree completely: which is why I'm baffled that so few utilitarians are pro-life.
You could try to make that argument, but I'm pretty sure it isn't true. A big part of the reason for the fertility transition is that people end up with less children than they actually want, in the presence of contraception, because it's a big short-term sacrifice to actually go through the pregnancy and infancy at any particular moment.
Sure, but that’s a very different argument, and there are probably more efficient ways to address it if that’s your only goal.