The usual question about “permissibility” of abortion is the political one of support for making abortion illegal, i.e., threatening violence to a woman who has an abortion or to people who help a woman have an abortion, thereby attempting to force women to bring to term children who they do not want at the time, or resort to the illegal means of obtaining an abortion that are left when the legal ones are removed.
This is related to the more question of support for theocracy—of attempting to force people to live by your values.
Trying to prevent women by force from having abortions entails a great many decrements to util production, even from a Utilitarian completely unconcerned with deontological constraints.
But if in your hypothetical one is blithely unconcerned about old fashioned deontological ideas like autonomy, liberty, or freedom, why care about murdering fetuses?
Unless one considers every unoccupied womb as wasted util production, I don’t see the issue. There is simply nothing “impermissible” about killing a fetus. The “inconvenience” of playing host to a large parasite is quite large, costing a woman many utils.
Letting her choose the time and place of having children likely increases her utils, increases the utils for her children, and may end up with her having more of these increased util children. The net util calculation for a “make abortion illegal” intervention would be quite complicated.
It seems to me that someone who decides that abortion is wrong could still believe that abortion should be legal, but do pro-life advertising, suggest to pregnant friends that they carry the child to term, and then shame or ostracize their friends that get abortions, just as an animal rights activist might believe that eating animals should be legal but do advertisement and positive and negative social actions to convince their social circles to not eat animals.
Your guess would be mistaken! I think I am much more concerned about the autonomy than the average EA, which is a large part of the reason I write the only libertarian effective altruist blog I’m aware of.
But most EAs do not seem to care about autonomy, hence why I pointed out than autonomy arguments, a classic pro-abortion argument, are not available to them.
Meta: I think you may have had a negative reaction to my post because you (perhaps reasonably) pattern-matched me as an ideological opponent, which I think is a (perhaps reasonable) mistake. I think some of my other posts, like this one, this one or this one might be more to your taste.
This is related to the more question of support for theocracy—of attempting to force people to live by your values.
Would you apply this “argument” to infanticide, how about sati, how about slavery, how about murder?
You’re completely glazing over the question of of whether abortion is moral by assuming it is, the concluding what you’ve just assumed and pretending this constitutes an argument.
I was commenting on his arguments and his hypothetical Utilitarians, not giving my own arguments.
I don’t have much of an issue with early term abortions. Having a steak or a hot dog seems more problematic, and I do both, with relish. Literally, with the hot dog.
Later term abortions are morally a problem, but so is nationalizing a woman’s womb. Moral questions don’t always have tidy feel good solutions. All in all, I’ll go with letting the woman choose no matter the state of development of the fetus.
The usual question about “permissibility” of abortion is the political one of support for making abortion illegal, i.e., threatening violence to a woman who has an abortion or to people who help a woman have an abortion, thereby attempting to force women to bring to term children who they do not want at the time, or resort to the illegal means of obtaining an abortion that are left when the legal ones are removed.
This is related to the more question of support for theocracy—of attempting to force people to live by your values.
Trying to prevent women by force from having abortions entails a great many decrements to util production, even from a Utilitarian completely unconcerned with deontological constraints.
But if in your hypothetical one is blithely unconcerned about old fashioned deontological ideas like autonomy, liberty, or freedom, why care about murdering fetuses?
Unless one considers every unoccupied womb as wasted util production, I don’t see the issue. There is simply nothing “impermissible” about killing a fetus. The “inconvenience” of playing host to a large parasite is quite large, costing a woman many utils.
Letting her choose the time and place of having children likely increases her utils, increases the utils for her children, and may end up with her having more of these increased util children. The net util calculation for a “make abortion illegal” intervention would be quite complicated.
It seems to me that someone who decides that abortion is wrong could still believe that abortion should be legal, but do pro-life advertising, suggest to pregnant friends that they carry the child to term, and then shame or ostracize their friends that get abortions, just as an animal rights activist might believe that eating animals should be legal but do advertisement and positive and negative social actions to convince their social circles to not eat animals.
Yes I deliberately avoided discussing the law for this reason, and to try to keep down the number of open worm-filled cans.
True.
But my guess is that the OP is more the type interested in the question of law, as evidenced by his blithe dismissal of concerns about autonomy.
Your guess would be mistaken! I think I am much more concerned about the autonomy than the average EA, which is a large part of the reason I write the only libertarian effective altruist blog I’m aware of.
But most EAs do not seem to care about autonomy, hence why I pointed out than autonomy arguments, a classic pro-abortion argument, are not available to them.
Meta: I think you may have had a negative reaction to my post because you (perhaps reasonably) pattern-matched me as an ideological opponent, which I think is a (perhaps reasonable) mistake. I think some of my other posts, like this one, this one or this one might be more to your taste.
Would you apply this “argument” to infanticide, how about sati, how about slavery, how about murder?
You’re completely glazing over the question of of whether abortion is moral by assuming it is, the concluding what you’ve just assumed and pretending this constitutes an argument.
I was commenting on his arguments and his hypothetical Utilitarians, not giving my own arguments.
I don’t have much of an issue with early term abortions. Having a steak or a hot dog seems more problematic, and I do both, with relish. Literally, with the hot dog.
Later term abortions are morally a problem, but so is nationalizing a woman’s womb. Moral questions don’t always have tidy feel good solutions. All in all, I’ll go with letting the woman choose no matter the state of development of the fetus.