Abortion

Introduction In this rebuttal I will do two things, first I will respond to the objections to preference utilitarianism and secondly I will show why they are misguided in the first place. A last note on the objections: due to their similarity my responses will be quite similar as well. The Desire View of Personhood Yes, the ethics I propose contains infanticide as logical consequence. It is true that postnatal abortions might seem rather counterintuitive, but I do not think one can reasonably argue against it. Ann Furedi expressed this quite acurately:"There is nothing magical about passing through the birth canal that transforms the fetus into a person" (1) More on the topic of counterintuitivity in the end. The Suicidal Teenager Objection Suicide prevention is certainly a difficult issue, not only for utilitarians but for everyone else, too. One cannot give an universal answer to this, since every individual case is different. Suicidal teenagers and people with mental health disorders, generally do not actualy want to die, they feel like there is no hope left and life will never get any better, but they wish it would. They do not have a desire to die, they have a desire to get helped. At least that is my personal experience with teenagers, job related or not. But let us say that we go forth and kill the teenager, what would be the consequences? Quite obviously the parents and other relatives would grieve horribly. This can lead to family breakups, depression, more suicidal people as a result of their loss and frankly other suicidal teenagers would feel even worse, since people do not actualy care for their betterment.It is really hard to tell whether someone has a genuine desire to die or is calling out for help. In reality ordinary people cannot know that, since it requires profound psychological investigation. For these reasons alone one should under realistic conditions refrain from killing the teenager. The Religious Martyr Objection Reigious martyrs are quite obviously delusional and are more often than not accompanied. If we think about religious martyrdom most people do not think about silent deaths in the middle of nowhere, no, they think of people who are pursueing some kind of goal, be it the violent deaths of unbelivers or the killing of abortion doctors. The imanent consequences aside, martyrdom has allways inspired followers, leading to more martyrs. Frankly those acts have detrimental effects on our society and it should be out of question why we should not allow give them what they want. If they think they will go to paradise no matter their "achievements" then there is probably not much you can do anyway. In case someone decides to do that then she would not tell anyone anyway, under realistic circumstances you do not know whether or not someone is trying to become a martyr. The Temporarily Comatose Adult Objection If a coma is only temporary, i.e., one still poseses the capability to regain consciousness, then one cannot easily say that the person in question lacks all desires, in fact some coma patients are aware of their surroundings, even some who are diagnosed with a vegetative coma(3). In case the patient is expected to wake up rather quickly (as indicated by the term "temporarily") then killing them still makes void all of their endeavors and should not be done. That aside, lets evaluate the consequences: what do you gain from killing someone without desires? Even if one has an inexplicable joy in killing then she gets momentary satifaction that is outweighed by the grieve of relatives. What if we would live in a society in which killing coma patients gets common? Hospitals would stop inducing comas to save their patients or if doctors do it anyway, people would not go to the hospital anymore.By now it should be quite obvious why the killing of coma patients is obstructive in achieving the "greatest happiness of the greatest number", as the famous (though slightly inacurate) quote goes. The Indoctrinated Slave Objection Indoctrination is never without bad consequences. Until a slave owner gets to the point described in this objection, serious harm has to be done. The Creation of Brainless Human Beings Objection "For psychologists, desires arise from bodily structures and functions (e.g., the stomach needing food and the blood needing oxygen).[...] A 2008 study entitled "The Neural Correlates of Desire" showed that the human brain categorizes any stimulus according to its desirability by activating three different brain areas: the superior Orbitofrontal cortex, the mid-cingulate cortex and the Anterior cingulate cortex. "(4) Riding a person of all desires requires modification of the three above mentioned brain areas: Orbitofrontal cortex: Consequences of damage in this area "include swearing excessively, hypersexuality, poor social interaction [...] and poor empathising ability."(5) Mid-cingulate cortex: "is involved with emotion formation and processing, learning, and memory."(6) Anterior cingulate cortex: plays “a role in a wide variety of autonomic functions, such as regulating blood pressure and heart rate.”(7)Whether or not one can modify these areas and still maintain a “functioning human” is pure speculation since alteration in these parts might just result in death. It is a topic on which neither I nor my opponent can make any sensible statement.The Buddhist Master and Divine Persons Objection Humans beings who follow Buddhism believe that the extinguishing of all desire is possible. If a Buddhist ever reached the point of perfection, he would lose all his desires and thus no longer have a right to life under Pro's line of argument. Buddhism "Everyone fears punishment; everyone fears death, just as you do. Therefore do not kill or cause to kill. Everyone fears punishment; everyone loves life, as you do. Therefore do not kill or cause to kill" (8) Buddha "asks us to make a difference between what we need and what we want and to strive for our needs and modify our wants. He tells us that our needs can be fulfilled but that our wants are endless - a bottomless pit. There are needs that are essential, fundamental and that can be obtained and this we should work towards."(9) First of all, I am not an expert in Buddhist teachings, but it seems to me that they do value live to some extent and even if we consider only the enlightened ones, it would still not be permissable for quite similar reasons as for the other responses: What does one gain from killing this person? Suppose the murderer is taking pleasure in killing. His momentary bliss is again outweighed by the terror it induces in non-enlightened Buddhists who start to fear the consequences of their religion. Divine Persons "if they existed"I can argue whether or not killing unicorns is permissable, but even if an ethics has horrendous implications for imaginary beings, it should be of no concern to us (I am not imlying that my ethics is hostile to unicorns).Furthermore I think immortality could be considered as a perfection, too, making this part of the objection futile. Moral Intuitions The single most common critizism of utilitarianism is that "it seems wrong to do that" or in other words: it is against my moral intuition, therefore it can't be right. This is what most critizism boils down to, including the examples given by my opponent and it is why they miss their goal. Unfortunately gut feelings are on some level contrary to basically all ethical theories including kantianism, utilitarianism, divine comand theory and virtue ethics. Moral intuitions do not confirm or dismiss any of them, they are a result of our evolutionary origin and are prescriptive, not normative. They match with those acts which would grant the best survival chances in an pre-globalized era and are more often than not contradictory and inconsistent. When it comes to reaching an ideal state of affairs (like the utlilitarian normative ideal) they are not helpfull.This explains why most people would save a drowning child if it is at no significant cost to themselvs, yet watch with more or less indifference as 1600 people die a preventable death from malaria on a daily basis(9), most of which are children. Of course people do not like that fact and of course nobody denies that in an ideal world this would not be the case, but do they feel even close as obliged to help as they feel towards the drownign child? In this case utilitariansim actually appeals to our intuitions and even demands that we help (to some extent). Hence a lot of utilitarians are also so called 'effective altruists', Peter Singer for example gives approximately 30% of his income to charity (10). With the ability to reason comes the ability to overthrow our evolutionary bonds which will in fact be necessary to achieve a better world. Conclusion Basically all objections are shortsighted and ignore the long term effects. Furthermore I would have responded in more detail, but I am out of characters. In the next und I will defend my responses to Con's generall objections to abortion. (1)http://pop.org... (2)http://www.livescience.com... (3)http://en.wikipedia.org... (4)http://en.wikipedia.org... (5)http://en.wikipedia.org... (6)http://en.wikipedia.org... (7)Dhammapada, Chapter 10 (8)http://www.buddhanet.net... (9)http://www.who.int... (10)"How to live an Ethical Life", Big Think