From: Dan Fabulich (daniel.fabulich@yale.edu)
Date: Mon Mar 01 1999 - 03:19:49 MST
Timothy Bates wrote:
>What is the extropian position on these two? We no doubt all agree about
>free crypto, and certainly I am glad the Nuremberg decision happened this
>way. They are perfect example of first-use force hiding behind free speech.
>These anti own-body control memes retard the rate at which we get to
>transcend ourselves
Abortion is one of those problems for which an honest libertarian will have
to claim that libertarianism does not have a simple answer. If the aborted
fetus was a citizen who bears rights, then abortion is probably force
against a non-aggressor, unless we conclude that the fetus itself would
rather risk abortion than pay for abortion laws. Then again, if the
aborted fetus is not a citizen but rather a part of the mother, then
abortion is not force at all; outlawing abortion in this case is force
against a non-aggressor.
If libertarianism is defined purely in terms of the prohibition of force
against non-aggressors, then we can clearly see that libertarianism will
agree with both sides of the abortion debate, depending in this case on the
definition of a person and what qualifies consent.
Normally I like to fall back on Marshall efficiency to help answer these
questions, since it more or less maps directly on to expected utility, and
thus leaves us, more or less, with utilitarianism. (Friedman provides a
great intro to Marshall efficiency in his "Expanded Postcript for
Libertarians" in his _Machinery of Freedom_.)
In an ideal situation we imagine that a "rational fetus" would be willing
to pay quite a bit for its own protection if it could do so; perhaps more
than it would cost to protect it, even when adjusted for the accrual of
interest. On the other hand, it seems like trying to effectively enforce
abortion laws would require an extremely intrusive gov't, and therefore an
extremely costly gov't; since abortions can and are performed as back-alley
affairs where abortions are illegal, we might not expect such laws to be
effective no matter how expensive. The cost of enforcing them may be so
high that even the imagined "rational fetus" wouldn't be willing to pay for
it; that the fetus would be willing to accept a higher risk of abortion
rather than pay the enormously high cost of abortion insurance.
If, in fact, abortion is so costly that the fetus would be unwilling to pay
for its enforcement, then we may think of the freedom to choose abortion in
terms of assumed consent; in the same way we make decisions for people who
are comatose and cannot directly provide their consent. Assumed consent is
not entirely unreasonable in this context: consider a starving man who
steals food when its owner is away, and provides money to pay for the
damages. In this case, we allow the fetus to suffer a risk to its own
life, and as a result it doesn't have to pay the costs of insurance when it
gets older, in the form of taxes paid to an intrusive gov't.
If it doesn't seem plausible that a "rational fetus" would make this
choice, consider also the fact that many unwanted children go on to live
exceptionally poor lives, so the "insurance" we provide may save the
fetus's life, but that fetus may grow up to live rather unhappily in abject
poverty, which is only made worse by the presence of an intrusive gov't
with increased taxes. We have heard this argument before in the argument
of abortion in a somewhat different context. Formerly, this argument may
be seen as pretty absurd: would the fetus's live be so bad that the fetus
would rather commit suicide than live it? Obviously not. So this
consideration alone is not a good reason for us to allow abortions to go on.
Here, however, we might imagine a "rational fetus" considering the problem
thus: "If I pay for abortion insurance, I can greatly reduce the risk of
my being aborted before I am brought to term. However, if we consider the
cases where I would have been aborted but wasn't, many of those leave me
with very little well-being; since the cost of insuring against abortion is
so high to begin with, I'd want to expect that I'd be getting something
really good for my money; in most of the cases where the insurance would be
useful, I wouldn't."
I think I have outlined a correct analysis of the problem of abortion in
terms of Marshall efficiency; I think most of those those who disagree with
me in this case would also disagree with using Marshall efficiency as a
moral indicator, and perhaps with utilitarianism in general. Certainly, if
you believe that abortion is simply wrong, not as a derivative from some
other foundational rule but as a simple moral prohibition which cannot be
derived nor rejected, you will not find my argument very compelling. Most
people do not think this way, however: most people who think that abortion
is wrong think that it is wrong because we have a prohibition against doing
harm to begin with. This claim is problematic, and one which shouldn't be
accepted by a libertarian: we should, at the very least, presume that we
can harm an aggressor.
Moreover, I think we can also say that we can harm someone who explicitly
consents to be harmed. This is why libertarianism is not defined in terms
of harm, but rather in terms of force, which is, by definition, some action
committed against the will of the person(s) being forced. In light of
that, it also seems reasonable that libertarians should accept some kind of
assumed consent; here I adopt a theory of consent which assumes consent in
terms of what a "rational" agent might do, but this is not the only such
theory of assumed consent. Some may argue that assumed consent in the case
of abortion is not meaningful: a fetus, though alive, cannot formulate its
own consent, and therefore any harm committed against it is necessarily
forced harm. This objection overlooks the fact that although the fetus
cannot give its consent, neither can it deny consent. And since it can do
neither, the argument that it WOULD give its own consent, if it could,
should convince us (presuming that my argument is correct!) that it is
right for us to do some amount of harm onto the fetus (in the form of the
risk of abortion) by the assumption of assumed consent.
These objections have been raised against the claim that assumed consent
even makes a difference here: that abortion is simply wrong by assumption,
or that a fetus which cannot conceive of consent cannot be assumed to give
it to us. Further objections might agree that it matters whether or not
the fetus would give its consent, and go on to claim that my argument does
not show that the fetus would actually do so. For example, the fetus may
not be "rational;" if not, we may have to provide abortion insurance for
the fetus, even though the fetus is making an irrational decision for
itself. We may be morally obliged to do so if it would ask us to. I do
not have the right to forcibly prevent my irrational friend from committing
suicide if he decides to do so; therefore I certainly have no right to
withhold abortion insurance from an irrational fetus when that insurance
may save its life.
However, am I REALLY forbidden from preventing my friend from committing
suicide? What if I know that this bout of suicidal tendancies is
temporary, and that if I prevent him from committing suicide now, he will
thank me later and praise my decision? While a theory of assumed consent
could certainly be abused to justify all kinds of governmental atrocities,
(and has, and will be again!) it seems like in the case of a suicide it
would also result in an ethical wrongdoing if we do not accept assumed
consent. Libertarianism does not tell us anything about assumed consent,
since in order to formulate the idea of libertarianism one must already
know the definition of force and consent. However, utilitarianism in this
case can provide us with a clear answer: assumed consent results in optimal
net utility as evinced by my friend's praise of me after the fact, so we
should accept it. (This only applies when the theory is correctly
formulated: clearly a theory of consent which assumed that you agreed to
let me rape you simply because you were wearing a skimpy dress would be an
ill-formed theory!)
This still does not show that the fetus would give its consent; after all,
I may be absuing the theory of assumed consent in this very case! There
are a host of different ways this objection might be raised against me, the
most plausible of which is perhaps the argument that by my reasoning I have
assumed that the fetus would be willing to accept its own death in exchange
for the cost of abortion insurance. We do not accept the argument that
"abortion is okay because most would-be abortions live unhappy lives,"
because unhappy life is usually better than no life at all. However, this
objection is based on a mistake about my argument and the position from
which we must consider the fetus: we are not imagining a fetus considering
whether it should be aborted or whether it should not be aborted (and have
to pay for the cost of preventing its abortion), since obviously in this
case the fetus would accept the latter; instead, the fetus must consider
the possibility of getting NOTHING from abortion insurance and still having
to pay for it. From this perspective, it may well be willing to suffer an
increase in the RISK of abortion in exchange for not paying for the
abortion insurance, which may well be useless.
Some may still claim that this argument leads to unethical conclusions, and
therefore we should reject it out of hand. However, the main reason I
chose Marshall efficiency is because it maps so well onto utilitarianism;
in this case, if my argument is valid, then not only is it an argument
within libertarianism for rejecting abortion laws, but a utilitarian
argument as well. Not everyone would be better off without abortion laws:
clearly, many fetuses who are aborted will be much worse off than they
would have been in a state which banned abortion. However, those who were
worse off would not be MORE worse off than others would be made better off
by the freedom to choose; on average, most people would be better off than
the aborted fetuses were worse off, if my Marshall analysis is correct.
While utilitarianism is not anywhere near universally accepted as an
ethical theory, those who believe that utilitarianism is right will believe
this argument from Marshall efficiency, presuming the analysis itself is
valid. Even if you don't accept utilitarianism, most of us do believe that
improving the happiness of all people, even at the expense of some, is a
worthwhile moral consideration. If my argument is ethically wrong, then it
must be that both utilitarianism and libertarianism must be wrong here as
moral theories [qualified by the assumption that assumed consent is a valid
libertarian consideration]. Perhaps they are, but if you disagree with
both utilitarianism and libertarianism, you really aren't the sort of
person to whom I have intended this argument. If you are of this camp, I
am sorry to have wasted your time: you will not find my argument
convincing, and I have nothing further to say to you.
For everyone else, however, I hope I've given you some food for thought on
this debate, and hopefully allowed you to view abortion from a direction
which you're not used to. I know I've never heard an abortion argument
presented in these terms before, so at the very least the argument is new
on me; hopefully you'll appreciate the argument's novelty even if you
reject its content.
Good luck!
-Dan
-IF THE END DOESN'T JUSTIFY THE MEANS-
-THEN WHAT DOES-
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