Thousands of adults are in fact killed in auto accidents every year, and yet it seems to me very strange indeed to call auto accidents a crime against humanity.
Thousands of adults are killed in street crimes, and it seems very strange to me to call street crime a crime against humanity.
Etc., etc., etc.
I conclude that my intuitions about whether something counts as a “crime against humanity” aren’t especially well calibrated, and therefore that I should be reluctant to use those intuitions as evidence when thinking about scales way outside my normal experience.
And of course, the value-to-me of an individual can vary by many orders of magnitude, depending on the individual. I would likely have chosen to allow my nephew’s fetal development to continue rather than preserve the life of a randomly chosen adult, for example, but I don’t generally value the development of a fetus more than an adult.
But leaving the “crimes against humanity” labeling business aside, and assuming some typical value for a fetus and an adult, then sure, if I value a developing fetus 1/N as much as I value a living adult, then I prefer to allow 1 adult to die rather than allow the development of N fetuses to be terminated.
Thousands of adults are in fact killed in auto accidents every year, and yet it seems to me very strange indeed to call auto accidents a crime against humanity.
Thousands of adults are killed in street crimes, and it seems very strange to me to call street crime a crime against humanity.
Etc., etc., etc.
I conclude that my intuitions about whether something counts as a “crime against humanity” aren’t especially well calibrated, and therefore that I should be reluctant to use those intuitions as evidence when thinking about scales way outside my normal experience.
And of course, the value-to-me of an individual can vary by many orders of magnitude, depending on the individual. I would likely have chosen to allow my nephew’s fetal development to continue rather than preserve the life of a randomly chosen adult, for example, but I don’t generally value the development of a fetus more than an adult.
But leaving the “crimes against humanity” labeling business aside, and assuming some typical value for a fetus and an adult, then sure, if I value a developing fetus 1/N as much as I value a living adult, then I prefer to allow 1 adult to die rather than allow the development of N fetuses to be terminated.