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Originally Posted by John Wilkes Booth
Good point, but I honestly don't think that the capacity for suffering works as a consistent criteria either. Would it be alright to kill somebody if the death was quick, painless and unexpected? If not, then I don't see what the capacity for suffering has to do with the distinction between that scenario and killing a fetus.
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It would be the best way to kill someone, I'm sure most will agree. If you were convicted for it, you would probably do less time than if you had tortured someone to death. But in harming another adult human being, you are also hurting the ones whose happiness is, in part, dependent on that person. In addition, the murder may scare or otherwise discomfort a large number of people and so your action harms society by hurting people in it and even if you are not causing physical pain as you murder, you are most likely still causing a lot of suffering.
If you abort a fetus, you cause suffering to the mother who asked for it, is ready to take the moral responsibility, and probably thinks she's getting the best possible outcome, even if it's not painless for her.
Quote:
Originally Posted by John Wilkes Booth
There is of course one key difference between a fetus and a vegetable: the fetus (if healthy) is on course to wake up. If we knew for a fact that someone in a coma would wake up after 9 months, would it still be alright to kill them?
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Actually, I still think of someone asleep or in a coma as someone who has the capacity to care about their life and all it entails. The capacity is there, even if it's not being used. If you are asleep, you still care about things in your life, even though they may not be in your thoughts right then. If you're dreaming, you may be dreaming of someone you love.
A "lump of cells" without a developed nervous system doesn't have that capacity.
Quote:
Originally Posted by John Wilkes Booth
That's a hazy line to draw, though. Do you think newborns possess all of those qualities to the same extant as a 5 year old? If not, isn't it still equally wrong to kill both?
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The more suffering it causes, the greater the crime. Generally speaking, I do think it is worse to kill a five year old than a one year old. Let's say their family loved them equally much and suffered equally at the loss of both. If the five year old suffers more from being killed than the one year old, then killing the five year old will have caused a little more suffering, even if the extra amount of suffering is miniscule compared to the total suffering added up across friends and relatives.
So generally speaking, I believe murders of five year olds on average causes a little more suffering than the murder of one year olds. A five year old on average has more relations which will suffer. But practically speaking, both crimes are so heinous that the difference doesn't matter much.
Quote:
Originally Posted by John Wilkes Booth
edit - Interesting article on the topic: When Does Consciousness Arise in Human Babies?: Scientific American
I'm inclined to agree with you here, for practical reasons. I still think we're side stepping the moral question to a certain extent.
It's not rational because while the phrase is technically correct, it's too reductionist. Like Lateralus pointed out, that phrase applies just as much to us as it does to an embryo. |
I disagree .. Well, of course it is reductionist. Describing something in that way using a few words always will be. But I think describing adult humans as a lump of cells is more reductionist than calling an early embryo a lump of cells. After all, humans are much larger and contain cells which are highly differentiated. We contain bones and highly organized and intricate structures, more so than any fetus.
If you want to mix personality, thoughts and dreams into it, those are also reduced when describing adults as lumps of cells, but not when describing fetuses as such as these things have yet to develop, if they would at all.
Quote:
Originally Posted by John Wilkes Booth
It's also not rational to give a fetus the attributes you just listed (thoughts, feelings, etc). I don't see this as the obvious alternative to "just a lump of cells" though.
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Let's forget about the thoughts and stuff for a sec because what I really think of as important is the capacity to suffer. I think there are many ways to suffer, not just physically, which is why I've mentioned stuff like an ability to reflect upon things. If you love your children, being separated from them hurts you and so your capacity for love also becomes a capacity for suffering.
So if we reduce all that to a simple capacity for suffering, that's really what I'm interested in and that's where I think fetuses are lacking. I also think there are few people whose happiness or suffering depends on a fetus compared to the average child or adult and so removing one does less harm in the world than when removing a born human being.
My thoughts are a mix between a utilitarian wish for the best outcome happiness / suffering wise, but I also think that having a choice to abort generally gives good consequences for society. As I wrote earlier, happy families with healthy children. Parents will have more freedom to have healthy children when they want them and can support them. If you force them to become parents at a time when they don't want them, can't support them or when the child would be so sick they'd rather not have it, of course they may in time become a fully functional, happy family. But I think on average, the families people make will be a little happier if they get to choose for themselves whether to make them / add to them or not.