Moral Matters

The ever-insightful philosopher Peter Smith has a number of interesting things to say about abortion, but I found one of those things particularly striking — partly because I don’t recall ever having thought of it before, and partly because, in retrospect, I don’t see how I could have failed to think of it.

Namely: The argument is made that zygotes/embryoes/fetuses, even at a very early stage, have the full moral status of human beings. Yet if that were true, surely we’d want to divert a substantial portion of the medical research budget away from relatively minor scourges like, say, cancer, to the spontaneous abortions that take the lives of something like 30% of these full-fledged humans. In a typical year, there are about 8 million cancer deaths worldwide; the number of early-stage spontaneous abortions must be at least twice that.

In Smith’s words:

very few of us are worried by the fact that a very high proportion of conceptions quite spontaneously abort. We don’t campaign for medical research to reduce that rate (nor do opponents of abortion campaign for all women to take drugs to suppress natural early abortion). Compare: we do think it is a matter for moral concern that there are high levels of infant mortality in some countries, and campaign and give money to help reduce that rate.

Smith is struck by the fact that this attitude is very widespread; I am more struck by the fact that it seems to be very widespread even among those who characterize themselves as pro-life.

Nothing here proves the pro-lifers wrong; maybe instead it means that the whole world has its medical research priorities upside down. But then what are we to make of the fact that even ardent pro-lifers seem, for the most part, to acquiesce in those priorities?

I’m sure that with enough contortions, one could reconcile a near-indifference to the problem of spontaneous early abortion with a sense of moral outrage against intentional abortion. But even then, I suspect one might be forced to abandon one’s insistence that a three-day-old zygote has the same moral status as, say, a ten-year-old child.

Edited to add: Some commenters have tried to address the question “Why would you care more about induced abortion than spontaneous abortion?”; their answers tend to reference a distinction between natural versus intentional acts. But that’s not the interesting question. The interesting question is “Why would you care more about cancer than spontaneous abortion?” Cancer and spontaneous abortion are, after all, equally natural.

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67 Responses to “Moral Matters”


  1. 1 1 Mike H

    maybe instead it means that the whole world has its medical research priorities upside down.

    Clearly the latter is true. You could compare, for example, the money spent on XYZ-itis research vs the money spent sending mosquito nets to Africa.

    This doesn’t not invalidate the argument, of course.

    PS – do economists know how to “make” a poor country rich in practice?

  2. 2 2 Marcel Popescu

    Well, as a pro-lifer, I was unaware of the spontaneous abortions issue (I mean the magnitude). I don’t think I’m the only one.

  3. 3 3 Mike H

    … particularly striking – partly because I don’t recall ever having thought of it before, and … don’t see how I could have failed to think of it.

    It is possible that this phenomenon contains the seeds of an answer to

    what .. of the fact that even ardent pro-lifers seem … to acquiesce in those priorities?

  4. 4 4 JLA

    This is a really neat idea! One response is that it might be easier to make progress curing cancer than stopping spontaneous abortion, so the marginal dollar towards cancer research might still save more lives than the marginal dollar towards spontaneous abortion. I have no idea if this is true or not.

  5. 5 5 Mike

    I think, especially given attitudes to IVF that the mainstream pro-life attitude is that life is a continuous function (devout Catholics believe in a discontinuity at conception and strong pro-choice people believe in a discontinuity at birth). Most people put their marker at where life is strong enough to not justify abortion (pro-lifers) at various points in the pregnancy.

    Of course in addition people except all sorts of nasty natural things, look at the general distaste for anti-aging research.

  6. 6 6 Martin

    “Well, as a pro-lifer, I was unaware of the spontaneous abortions issue (I mean the magnitude).”

    Actually, the magnitude could be as high as 80%. I quote:

    “Traditionally the frequency of miscarriages was considered to be 15 percent. When hormonal methods for early detection of pregnancy were devised, it became clear that the actual frequency of miscarriages was considerably higher, around 50 percent. Recent studies suggest that many other fertilized embryos don’t even implant or survive long enough to become detectable hormonally; adding these to the total yields a miscarriage rate of perhaps 80 percent.”
    — Jared Diamond, “The Cruel Logic of Our Genes,” Discover (November 1989), p.74

  7. 7 7 Jerome

    As said earlier I don’t believe most people know that spontaneous abortions/miscarriage happens as often as it does. I’ve now seen estimates ranging from 15%-80%. People don’t worry about things they don’t know about.

    I think there is a strong idea in peoples minds that there is little we can do to prevent them. Although many women now take folic acid daily among other things to “prepare” their body for pregnancy. I never remember that happening when I was younger, but that might be because I was oblivious to anything but baseball.

  8. 8 8 Terry

    If a person is an ardent pro-lifer, he or she will give money to medical research, whose purpose is to prevent human deaths, in proportion to the number of deaths.

    If a society has many ardent pro-lifers, it will give money to medical research, whose purpose is to prevent human deaths, in proportion to the number of deaths.

    Perhaps it is my poor representation of the argument that makes it invalid.

  9. 9 9 Biopolitical

    Witness also the moral treatment of human haploids by human diploids. Utter neglect and outright murder routinely lead crowds of haploid humans – mainly sperm, but also ova – to an early death.

  10. 10 10 Phil

    By introspection, pro-lifers already realize that they don’t really believe zygotes have full moral status. I’m sure that almost all of them react with much more horror when someone murders a three-year-old than when someone has an abortion.

    They may not want to admit it. But they know it.

  11. 11 11 Pat

    This begs the question. Do you measure moral status by the amount of money spent on preventing certain types of death? Do we spend money to prevent adult death in proportion to how people die? I don’t have the statistics but I doubt it’s proportional. Smith’s logic would imply that an adult who dies of one thing has higher moral status than an adult who dies of another thing.

  12. 12 12 Pat

    My last sentence is sloppy. Smith’s logic would imply that an adult who dies of one thing has a higher moral status than an adult who dies of another thing if there is a difference between money spent divided by number of deaths.

  13. 13 13 Sam

    I don’t expect this to be convincing to every reader of this blog (or even to most) but it’s explanatory of what many pro-lifers believe, so I offer it in that spirit:

    If one acknowledges an act/omission distinction in morality, then the lack of concern from pro-lifers becomes quite easy to explain — induced abortion is a positive act; spontaneous abortion is not. (Or from another viewpoint: if you derive your moral logic from natural law — as many pro-lifers do — spontaneous abortion is natural while induced abortion is an intervention.) Given that, the question being asked about the cancer research dollars is somewhat like asking about the right balance of funding devoted to protecting people from murder vs. devoted to protecting people from earthquakes. Murder is, in principle, a thing that need not happen and can be prevented from happening; earthquakes, while tragic, do not in principle arise from human agency and are not subject to human control.

    You can ask how we prepare for them (building codes, etc.) and do cost-benefit analyses of those preparations, but they’re not the same sort of thing as preventing/responding to bad human acts and comparing them on an apples-to-apples basis merely assumes the moral logic that is in fact in question in the first place.

  14. 14 14 Fenn

    Ach, well, it is a fine cutesy example. But why dick around on the fringes? Obviously none of us object to murder either:

    http://meteuphoric.wordpress.com/2009/07/23/murder/

  15. 15 15 Steve Landsburg

    Sam:

    induced abortion is a positive act; spontaneous abortion is not.

    But neither is cancer! Cancer is as natural as spontaneous abortion, and yet most people (including, as far as I can tell, most pro-lifers) are far more inclined to support anti-cancer research than anti-spontaneous-abortion research. How does one justify this if the victims of cancer and of spontaneous abortion are of identical moral status?

  16. 16 16 JohnE

    @Sam: I think you misunderstand Steve’s point. He is not asking the question, “Why aren’t pro-lifers morally outraged over spontaneous abortion?” Rather, he is making the logical point that if you think a zygote has the same moral status as a human being AND you think that cancer research is worthwhile, THEN you should support spending even more money on research to prevent miscarriages.

    For the record, as someonoe who considers himself pro-life, I would never make the claim that a zygote has the same moral status as a human being.

  17. 17 17 Jonathan Kariv

    Well firstly, as Mike H said the fact that Steve (and me and alot fo other people) never considered this explains some of the lack of campaigning for it.

    I showed this to a med student who pointed out that the most common cause of spontaneous abortion is, chromosomal abnormalities i.e. babies that wouldn’t make it if born. I don’t actually know the exact figures. (If anyone does please jump in).

    Of course one could then ask why noone is campaigning for some kind of research aroudn that but I think that debate starts to get away from the “value of life as a function of age”, question.

  18. 18 18 Sam

    OK; point taken — but there’s an obvious pathology to be targeted in cancer (or at least, in a lot of cancers). It’s my understanding that that is not the case for spontaneous abortion. Many spontaneous abortions occur before the pregnancy is even recognized, and even the ones that occur after the pregnancy is known don’t necessarily correlate to some pathology we can target.

    Of course, you can then argue back that the pathology is unknown, and we should target research dollars at discovering that pathology — but then we’re just having an argument about what the most prudential way to spend money is given large unknowns.

    So on those terms, perhaps the proper comparison is not quantified lives-lost-to-cancer vs lives-lost-to-spontaneous-abortion, but lives-possibly-saved-by-research in each case. And there it’s certainly posible to make the judgement that given the unknowns, it’s more prudent to target research dollars at cancer at this point.

    Focused on “naturalness” — a pro-lifer can, I think, coherently view spontaneous abortion at early stages of pregnancy — perhaps even because of its high prevalence — as a natural feature of human biology that we don’t have a moral obligation to resist at all costs, any more than we have a moral obligation to resist natural death from old age at all costs. So maybe there’s a kind of gradualism here — but it’s not a gradualism about the worth of the life, but a gradualism about the naturalness of the death; spontaneous abortion for unknown reasons at high prevalence seems more natural, more an inevitable feature of human biology, than does, say, childhood infectious disease or even cancer.

    Of course, that “seems” covers an enormous amount of controversial ground, and I don’t expect it to be immediately convincing. But I think it helps explain how pro-lifers’ moral judgments and intuitions can work without necessarily concealing a gradualism about the worth of human lives.

  19. 19 19 Leslie

    “Cancer and spontaneous abortion are, after all, equally natural.”

    That is debatable. Cancer incidences are certainly increased drastically with human action and pollution. While some cancer is natural, the extremely high rate of cancers is not a natural phenomenon. I have not seen any data showing an increase in spontaneous abortions due to human actives, (which does not mean that it has not increased, just that I haven’t seen the data) but to call it equally natural to cancers is not really accurate.

  20. 20 20 Roger Schlafly

    Not everyone thinks that high infant mortality is such a great moral concern. Infant mortality is used as a measure of health care, as much infant mortality is preventable. It is not known that early-stage miscarriages are preventable.

    You are complaining that pro-lifers acquiesce to death by natural causes. There is a big difference between killing a fetus, and accepting an unpreventable natural death.

  21. 21 21 Sam

    What Roger said. At much briefer length (thanks!).

  22. 22 22 Jacob

    I’m curious now, and my Google skills were insufficient for this task. Which is larger, the prenatal market, or the cancer research market? Anecdotally, I know my spend on preventing miscarriages is quite large, while my spend on cancer research is relatively nil.

  23. 23 23 Jerry

    Another point to consider with regard to pro-lifers:

    Do they support or oppose extraordinary lifesaving measures as people get older? Especially once they hit retirement age?

    If the “natural death” concept is rationally applied, then they should NOT.

  24. 24 24 Roger Schlafly

    If you want to know what pro-lifers think, then I suggest asking some pro-lifers. You sometimes hear non-pro-lifers try to argue that if pro-lifers were rational, then they would be against the Iraq War, against the death penalty, against eating meat, against miscarriage, and now (from Jerry) against extraordinary lifesaving measures. All of these opinions miss the point of the pro-life position.

  25. 25 25 Jerry

    “All of these opinions miss the point of the pro-life position.”

    Which is ???

  26. 26 26 Sam

    Let me try to state this more explicitly, and explain why the natural/intentional distinction matters here: the “rational application” question, as Jerry is talking about it (and as the whole post treats it) involves the following logic:

    (1) Pro-life claim: unborn human beings have “equal moral status” to born human beings
    (2) Therefore, pro-lifers wish to protect unborn human beings from intentional killing equally as much as born human beings should be protected from intentional killing
    (3) Therefore, pro-lifers should wish to protect unborn human beings from [any threat to their lives] equally as much as born human beings should be protected from [any threat of similar magnitude]
    (4) Pro-lifers do not wish (or do not act as if they wish) to protect unborn human beings from spontaneous abortion as much as they desire to protect born human beings from cancer
    (5) Therefore, contradicting (1), pro-lifers do not see unborn and born human beings as having “equal moral status” and hence, are irrational in their claims to do so.

    There are at least 2 big problems here:
    (a) Claim (3) is not symmetrical in the way claim (2) is (it’s comparing two threats of similar magnitude rather than the same act with different objects)
    (b) Even allowing for the comparability of different threats of similar magnitude, establishing claim (3) as a necessary consequence of holding (2) only follows if the natural/intentional distinction is meaningless (i.e., if “intentional killing” can be abstracted to “any threat to life”).

    If the natural/intentional distinction holds, then one can equally (i.e., absolutely) oppose all acts of intentional killing directed against human beings at any stage of life without, merely for the sake of rational consistency, having to equally (i.e., absolutely) oppose all forms of natural death.

    And there, I think, is where Roger’s point about actually asking pro-lifers what they think might come in — because the internal coherence of the position doesn’t come from opposing abortion and murder merely “equally,” but “absolutely,” inasmuch as both actions involve the goal of destroying a unique human being, which intention is always wrong. Since those moral positions are equal only because as they are both absolute, drawing comparisons between them and matters of prudence (how much funding for which diseases) is like asking how much closer 1,000 is to infinity than 10 is. Mistaken questions produce unclear answers.

  27. 27 27 Steve Landsburg

    Sam: Thanks for this long and exceptionally thoughtful reply.

    I have trouble grokking it, because I do not understand why, when it comes to protecting someone from the threat of death, I should care whether that threat is or is not intentional. Therefore I see symmetries that you do not see.

  28. 28 28 Will A

    @ Jerry:
    There is a difference between pro-lifers who are “anti-abortion” and those that are “anti-birth control”.

    I am someone who thinks that abortions should be illegal, I am against the death penalty, and I think that we should give free contraception to anyone who wants it in an effort to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies.

    To me the issue that a person should not forcibly take another’s life. This doesn’t mean that I have an issue with someone seeking help to end their own life or that I have an issue with someone else seeking to preserve the life of another.

    Someone who is “anti-birth control” is in favor of teaching abstinence as the only form of birth control even if it leads to more unplanned pregnancies. To them the issue is trying to stop all forms of birth control. Being against all forms of birth control doesn’t have anything to do with “natural death” that I can see.

  29. 29 29 johnson85

    I think Sam is pretty close to a/the right response, but I’ll try to add what I hope is clarity.

    The simple fact of the matter is that moral positions must be based on some priors, but most people don’t really spend time examining what theirs might be. I don’t think most pro-life people would really agree with the statement: “zygotes/embryoes/fetuses, even at a very early stage, have the full moral status of human beings.” At least not in the sense that the original author intends it.

    Some pro-life people probably say they agree with that statement, but all they really mean is that zygotes/embryoes/fetuses are entitled to protection from intentional acts. If a doctor is confronted with a person having a heart attach, or a woman experiencing an early term miscarriage, I don’t think that any significant number of pro-life people would argue that the doctor has as much of a moral obligation to prevent the miscarriage as the doctor has to treat the man with the heart attack and woman with the miscarriage. They might go so far as to say the doctor should try to prevent the miscarriage to the extent he can, but I think generally when they say an zygote/embryo/fetus has moral rights, they just mean something between (at one end of the spectrum) they have a right to life that outweighs the woman’s desire to avoid the inconvenience of pregnancy to (at the other end of the spectrum) they have a right to life that cannot morally be interfered with by another person, even if it is to protect that other persons health.

    There’s also an argument that funding for/attention to diseases/illnesses does not reflect a moral choice (I think this is actually true, although I think maybe it would be better if it weren’t). People generally don’t think it’s immoral to study the common cold simply because it’s not life threatening. It’s likewise not immoral to worry about cancer but not spontaneous abortion. Not as satisfying an argument, and doesn’t explain why every choice to expend resources isn’t a moral one, but judging from the way people actual behave, I think it’s hard to argue against the position that people don’t think such choices are generally amoral.

  30. 30 30 mcampbell

    I am sympathetic to the pro-life view on religious (Christian) grounds, but I would hate to see significant amounts of cancer research money diverted to saving zygotes. This is because while I have some concern for zygotes out of solidarity with God, who created them and who may regard them as persons, I have much more concern for conscious cancer sufferers out of solidarity with them as fellow rational beings (as well as out of solidarity with God, who in my view definitely regards them as persons). I imagine many religious people agree with me. I don’t think most religious people are insincere in our beliefs, as you argue in your book, The Big Questions.

  31. 31 31 Will A

    @ Sam and Prof. Landsburg:
    To me the odd jump in the argument Sam lays out is the jump from (3) to (4) to (5).

    (1) Americans claim: all living human beings have “equal moral status”.
    (2) Therefore, Americans wish to protect protect all groups of humans as much as an group of humans.
    (3) Therefore, Americans should want to protect the lives of smokers as much as the life of smokers.
    (4) Americans spend less on finding a cure for lung cancer even though more Americans suffer from lung cancer:
    http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09182/980892-192.stm
    (5) Therefore, contradicting (1), Americans do not see cigarette smokers and non-smokers as having “equal moral status” and hence, are irrational in their claims to do so.

    Once you get to (5) you can make even more logical conclusion.
    (6) Therefore, since smokers and non-smokers don’t have “equal moral status”, Americans think it should be legal to kill cigarette smokers.

  32. 32 32 Will A

    Prof. Landburg:
    Can you remove my last post that was full of typos?

    As it relates to the symmetry you see, this year I have given money to habit for humanity, but have given no money to those starving in Somalia.

    You could argue that I care more about providing affordable housing to poor Americans than I care for those starving in Somalia.

    You could argue that I should care as equally or more about those starving in Somalia.

    I think though it would be a huge stretch to say that I think it should be legal to kill those starving in Somalia.

  33. 33 33 Jerry

    My philosophy is a bit different. What I believe is I decide for ME. Nobody else gets to have their say–because they do NOT have to live with the consequences (good or bad).

    Pro-lifers intend to impose their choices on everyone else *without* accepting the consequences of their choice(s) imposed on others.

    That is the *real* difference between the groups. The same argument applies to the “pro marriage” groups. They are NOT “pro” marriage. If that was really true, then they would be *supporting* ANY marriage–and be protesting divorce lawyers (and fighting to make marriage *permanent*–with the ONLY way out of a marriage being *death*). How many see that being promoted by ANY “pro-marriage” group? None. It does NOT happen–because they are not–and never have been–“pro” marriage. They are *anti* marriage. Anyone who does not meet *their* definition of “who qualifies FOR marriage* CAN’T get married under their rules.

    “Pro”-lifers refuse to take responsibility (other than morally) for their imposition on others–so how can they be “pro”-life when they want to control *other* people’s lives AND impose the costs of *their* choices on others? VERY “Big Brother”/1984-ish. That is *anti*-life, IMO and must be fought for the same reason there was a revolution started in Boston Harbor in 1776.

  34. 34 34 Sam

    @Prof. Landsburg: I think we may just be coming down to a basic difference in moral philosophy here, about whether or not anything other than the outcomes of an act can have moral weight. I’m not a consequentialist, nor (I think) are most pro-lifers, so intention does matter for me as a basic moral category.

    With that as background, I think that johnson85’s clarification holds, for the most part, in that what many pro-lifers mean by the claim that unborn human beings have “equal moral status” is that they are entitled to equal protection from intentional acts. In fact, I can’t think (off the top of my head) of many pro-lifers making the “equal moral status” claim universally with respect to any act at all; it’s usually within the context of a question of protection from killing, and the rhetorical move is that a unique human life begins at conception and is continuous to and beyond birth and thus the protections we grant to unique human life should be similarly continuous, because all discontinuities that can be introduced are arbitrary and cannot outweigh the status (whatever it is) of a unique human existence.

    However, a lot of moral claims dealing with intention can be rewritten, at least to some degree, in a rule-utilitarian form, so let me try that. We recognize that embryos/fetuses may be under threats from both (a) intentional human acts and (b) natural or biological causes, which may or not be pathological in origin. Let’s grant for the sake of argument that these threats have equivalent moral weight (i.e., they derive all their moral weight from the status of the victim). A variety of responses are possible — and one kind of response (a rule/law against abortion) can only possibly be effective against threats of type (a), but it can be *very* effective against them, both by directly forbidding/restraining induced abortion and also by helping to shift consensus toward the protection of unborn life. Thus, such a rule has net positive consequences, even if threats of type (b) persist.

    A person’s willingness to support one kind of intervention directed against one limited type of threat with a high likelihood of success surely can’t be compared apples-to-apples to their willingness to support any possible kind of intervention with any hope whatsoever of countering any kind of threat. Even on a purely consequentialist analysis, the expected benefit from the former is clear while the benefit from the latter is probably unknowable — which, even if it’s not the same point, matches up with the same line drawn by a distinction between intentional and natural acts.

    Trying to make those comparisons I think leads into the same sort of weird territory that Will A was describing in his comment.

  35. 35 35 Scott H.

    Steve,

    I think that upon hearing your argument, the average pro-lifer might say, “you know I never thought of it that way… why aren’t we investing more in that type of research?”. They might even go on to lobby for research. Would that make you happier with their pro-life position? I seriously doubt it. As such, isn’t this a “red herring” argument on your part?

    And, on a slightly different angle… An interesting thought experiment is to take the pro-life movement out of the equation. According to the facts you gave and some safe assumptions I can make…

    1.) Early stage miscarriage is common
    2.) Many couples are trying to have babies
    3.) Miscarriages are very painful and expensive for couples that want babies — regardless of political beliefs.

    The key question: Given 1, 2, and 3, why don’t we already have more money (any money?) invested in researching miscarriage? Even pro-choice people want and love babies.

  36. 36 36 Steve Landsburg

    Scott H.:

    I think that upon hearing your argument, the average pro-lifer might say, “you know I never thought of it that way… why aren’t we investing more in that type of research?”. They might even go on to lobby for research. Would that make you happier with their pro-life position?

    It would certainly incline me to take their position more seriously, yes.

  37. 37 37 Steve Landsburg

    Will A:

    I have written about this extensively in the past. As an individual, it makes good sense to target your charitable contributions to the one charity you think most worthy; as a society, it makes no sense at all. So the way you target your own contributions does not tell me much about how you think society should allocate its contributions.

  38. 38 38 Roger Schlafly

    Steve Landsburg says: I do not understand why, when it comes to protecting someone from the threat of death, I should care whether that threat is or is not intentional.

    The law and moral philosophy has always distinguished intentional death from unintentional death. Always has and always will.

    Jerry says: My philosophy is a bit different. What I believe is I decide for ME.

    You also seem to want to say what pro-lifers and others believe, and you get it wrong badly. It is not difficult. Just listen to them.

  39. 39 39 Harold

    Ultimately I agree that almost nobody really believes that zygotes have the same rights as people – or even that they are people (yet). As Steve points out, if that were the case, then they would act differently with regard to spontaneous abortion. Clearly, many people do believe very strongly that zygotes have some rights – principally to be protected from deliberate termination.

    As we saw with the fat man and the trolley bus, people react very differently to different acts depending not on the outcome, but on the means and intentions. Thus one may be morally compelled to flick a switch to divert the trolley bus from hitting 5 victims to hit one, but not to push a fat man off a bridge to stop the trolley bus. The rationalisation is that the latter cannot be moral because the *intention* when you push the fat man is to cause his death. If he were to survive and get out of the way, your intentions would have been thwarted. If however the single man on the track gets up and moves away from the trolley, then your intentions have not been thwarted. This provides a way for the switch flick to be moral, but not the pushing of the fat man, even though the outcomes are the same.

    This can explain why people find it OK to allow zygote deaths, but not OK to intentionally harm zygotes. It cannot explain that even pro-lifers appear relatively unconcerned about spontaneous early stage abortion or failure to implant, if they believed zygotes were fully human.

    It also fails to explain why people are generally unconcerned about deaths far away. Many people would agree that “right to life” is the most fundamental right, and thus should be adressed before all other needs. Many would also agree that all human life has equal “right to life”. The same people (and I believe this includes just about everybody, me included) will give to, for example, homeless or animal charities, when the same money could perhaps keep many people alive in a distant country.

    People justify this with arguments such as “well, we don’t know that the money is spent “properly””, or that they are dying because of corruption and mis-government, which our donations do not address. I believe that it is because we do not really care that much about people far away to whom we are not closely related.

    I believe that humans have evolved this way, and a very succesful strategy it has been too. It does now cause conlflicts between our emotional responses and our intellectual responses. It is very difficult to overcome our emotional responses, because they are almost hard-wired. This leads us to rationalise in ways that do not make logical sense. Steve’s conclusion that we should give only to a single charity that we consider the most worthy is a case in point. It is entirely logical, but conflicts with our emotions. Therefore most of us will carry on giving to several different charities, with various justifications. Also, pro-lifers will continue to claim that zygotes have full human rights, whilst giving to cancer charities rather than spontaneous abortion research.

  40. 40 40 TjD

    Greetings,

    I cross read most of the responses and was surprised that no one pointed out one of the major reasons. Early terminations ( doctors seem to not agree on frequency, but most often one in three or four ) are nature’s way to let go the ones that are malformed. There is no ‘cure’ for say an abnormally small/weak heart.

    T.

  41. 41 41 Seth

    Perhaps pro-lifers believe that cancer deaths are somewhat preventable, but believe that spontaneous abortions are less so, much like dying of natural causes in old age.

    I’m not sure if this is true or not (that cancer deaths are more preventable than spontaneous abortions), but it seems like these views would make the position Peter Smith addresses consistent. No?

  42. 42 42 Mark

    I think the distinction is simple.

    If no cure is found, there’s a pretty high chance I’ll die of cancer some day. Regardless of any discovered cure, I’m not too worried I’m going to die of malaria in Africa or spontaneous abortion. Which cause is in my self interest to donate to?

    Now, most people (including me) aren’t so selfish they won’t ever donate to a cause that won’t benefit them. But it seems most people care much more about near people rather than far people. I think that distinction explains why people don’t donate more to Malaria nets, stopping genocide in far countries, getting worked up about millions of abortions, or funding more spontaneous abortion prevention research. In all four cases, the victims are far; whereas in cancer, the victim is close (probably a loved one has died from it, and there’s a good chance I could!). You could completely explain pro-lifers position if you allow the embryo to have complete human rights, but be a very far human.

  43. 43 43 Jerry

    “You also seem to want to say what pro-lifers and others believe, and you get it wrong badly. It is not difficult. Just listen to them.”

    This statement makes no sense. Pro-lifers desire to unilaterally deny to others the opportunity to choose *differently* than what the pro-lifers have already decided is “the right” choice. Which is the same philosphy as the pseudo “pro-marriage” groups. Read what is on their web sites and what they propose as laws. There is no misinterpretation. They intend to dictate–not offer choices. That is not acceptable.

  44. 44 44 Jerry

    “Early terminations ( doctors seem to not agree on frequency, but most often one in three or four ) are nature’s way to let go the ones that are malformed. There is no ‘cure’ for say an abnormally small/weak heart.”

    Actually, that is the type of situation where one *should* expect the most support to NOT terminate–because the problem IS fixable. Is it VERY expensive? Yes. Does it require life-long medical care? Yes. But that is the cost of saving that life. Money over life–or life over money? If they are NOT willing to make the investment in–and FOR–life, then where are those top AND bottom lines? If the top threshold is $500k, then a $500,001 cost is a “killer”. So, they are snared in a Catch-22 trap of their own devising.

  45. 45 45 Jerry

    IMO, the real problem is simple. Is the problem temporary or (essentially) permanent?

    Pregnancies terminating early *naturally* is a permanent situation that may or may not ever be resolvable.

    “Children starving” (wherever) is also a permanent problem–but each area is different, with various causes. If the cause is an expanding desert, then the ONLY solution is to move. Staying means death. If the problem is disease, then the cure fixes the problem. If the problem is war, then targeted assassinations might fix the problem (yeah–OTHER issues there, but you get the idea).

  46. 46 46 Roger Schlafly

    Jerry, the statement makes no sense to you because you have not bother to learn the beliefs of others. Just go read their web sites, if you want to know what they believe.

  47. 47 47 Al V.

    Several posters have commented that pro-lifers do not actually equate a zygote to a human being. Similarly, a pro-choicers don’t believe that a fetus suddenly becomes human at birth. Therefore, neither side sees the transition as a discontinuous one. Rather, both perspectives see a transition from 0% human immediately prior to conception (assumption) to 100% human at birth, or some time before. Thus, the difference between the two perspectives must be the curve followed in the two views. A pro-lifer (at least one who does not view a zygote as fully human at conception) must see the curve as rising rapidly after conception, and then flattening out over time. A pro-choicer must see the opposite – starting relatively flat, and then rising rapidly as the fetus approaches viability or birth.

  48. 48 48 Al V.

    @Jerry, as in all areas of life, there are multiple variants of pro-lifers. I know several pro-life people who recognize a moral responsibility towards children arising from unwanted births, and who take adopt or take in foster children. As a pro-choice person, I find their positions much more logically understandable than a pro-life person who sees no responsibility for the unwanted children arising from abortion restrictions.

  49. 49 49 Harold

    Mark: Your “distant human” is a very good reference point. There is generally not too much concern – at least not too much concern that actually translates into action- about early death in Africa, but people feel a considerable moral indignation about anyone actively killing African children. There is a very similar dichotomy about the zygote among some people.

    If this analogy is valid, and we follow Steve’s argument above just by substituting “African” for “zygote”, then it follows that we do not actually believe that an African life is worthy of “fully human” status. Obviously the parallel is not exact, some people do campaign for African lives, but then so do some fight for pro-life campaigns.

    This leaves us with a horrible realisation: do we really believe that Africans are less than human? That would make us horrible people. If not, why don’t we do something about it? To do nothing also makes us horrible people. To quote Steve “maybe instead it means that the whole world has its [medical] research priorities upside down”.

    This leads back to Steve’s earlier posts: the least we could do is open our markets to their agricultural products.

  50. 50 50 Pat

    Are people who consider murder of the elderly to be equally immoral as murder of the non-elderly logically inconsistent if they spend more on research for diseases that have a greater relative affect on the non-elderly?

    There are always tradeoffs in how you spend research dollars on people of different ages with different health problems but there isn’t a tradeoff in forbidding murder of people of different ages.

  51. 51 51 Ken B

    Steve wrote ” I do not understand why, when it comes to protecting someone from the threat of death, I should care whether that threat is or is not intentional.”

    Perhaps this explains why I find most of Steve’s posts on the law “misguided” (a euphemism). Most of us have little trouble understanding that driving your car into a person deliberately is different from losing control (perhaps while having a stroke) and crashing into that same person.

  52. 52 52 Will A

    Prof. Landsburg:

    Sorry for getting off track. Here is a response a question you posed in the post.

    But then what are we to make of the fact that even ardent pro-lifers seem, for the most part, to acquiesce in those priorities?

    I think what you are to make of the pro-lifers is that they are anti-birth control. They care as strongly about teaching abstinence only as they do about making abortion illegal.

    If it could be shown that distributing free birth control and/or educating youths about the use of different contraception could reduce the amount unwanted pregnancies and therefore the number of abortions, these “pro-lifers” would still be against free birth control and/or education about birth control.

    For them, it is not about life vs. death or murder vs. viability. It’s about birth control.

  53. 53 53 math_geek

    I didn’t even want to wade into this irritating conversation, but Prof. Landsburg’s premise is noticably incomplete. If there are say, 3 times as many spontaneous abortions per year as there are cancer deaths, then it would follow that we should divert funds from cancer research to spontaneous abortion prevention if and only if those funds would be at least a third as effective in preventing an individual spontaneous abortion as they would be in preventing an individual cancer death. I am not a scientist, but this, to me, seems extremely unlikely, as has been shown above we have very little knowledge of what causes spontaneous abortion, and due to the phase of it’s occurrence being fairly short, private, and difficult to determine when it occurs, it’s extremely difficult to study the phenomenon at all. Cancer on the other hand, takes quite a lot longer to take effect, and cancer patients are easy to identify and often extremely interested in being researched. This all would imply that our funds would be directed correctly in the first place, even according to hard-line pro-life principles on the beginning of life.

  54. 54 54 Lance

    Intent does matter here. Some pro-lifers are okay with embryonic stem cell research from spontaneous abortions (Robert George, e,g.). But, their opposition is to the creation of embryos for the sole purpose of destroying them for medical research.

    Moreover, just because you recognize that a human which dies from a spontaneous abortion and a human which dies from cancer as equipoise does not affect how you view the distribution of funds towards medical research.

    The marginal effectiveness of an additional dollar of research impacts our decisions in addition to when in the life-cycle the disease occurs. Would medical research be able to prevent spontaneous abortions which occur due to chromosomal abnormalities?

  55. 55 55 Ken B

    @math_geek: to be fair to SL he is talking about people’s concern, not spending. You are right about allocating funds for cures, but your argument does not answer the question, WHY people *care* a lot about one and little about the other — SL’s point.

    I’d say the real reason is that attitudes towards abortion were formed — by churches, feminsits ideologies, etc — before we knew how many spontaneous miscarriages there really are, and this is a topic strikingly impervious to factual considerations (on both sides).

  56. 56 56 Jerry

    “the statement makes no sense to you because you have not bother to learn the beliefs of others.”

    Beliefs are irrelevant. *Actions* are what impact others lives. *Acting* to prevent others from exercising *their* beliefs (if not harming others–defining “others” is another issue not resolved) is what causes problems.

  57. 57 57 math_geek

    @Ken B

    “Caring” is an elusive concept. There are a lot of horrible things that happen in the world, but I don’t intend to live permanently traumatized by this fact. I think Reinhold Niebuhr get’s it right. “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” I don’t “care” because I can’t really do anything about it.

  58. 58 58 Al V.

    @Ken B, isn’t the question of whether the threat is intentional or not a variation on the Trolley Problem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem), which has been discussed here previously?

  59. 59 59 Mark

    Harold: That’s exactly my point (i.e., cancer is near abortion is far), and I’d like to see Steve address it as I think it’s a flaw in his argument about pro-lifers and abortion (or at least I’m not understanding everything clearly). If you’re pro-life, abortion is one of many atrocities in the world (along with genocide and sex slaves, for example) that infuriate you on principle, but that you do very little about in practice. Which to me means that they’re being perfectly consistent to do nothing about abortion since they don’t do anything about other distant atrocities. “Far” people, abortions included, seem to invoke plenty of passion but very little action.

    Sometimes it’s fun to point out to people that if they’d just drink tap water instead of buying bottled water, and gave the money to malaria prevention, they could save a life. Nobody does so though, so does that mean that none of us really care about any of these distant atrocities?

  60. 60 60 Jimbino

    Engaging in an activity, like sex, that results in 5 or so lives’ being extinguished for every one that has the potential to become an Al Gore, is reprehensible.

    Research dollars should be spent on getting folks to avoid all sex, not on the futile attempt to save damaged fetuses.

  61. 61 61 Harold

    Mark: I agree with you – they are similarly inconsistent. I think your comparison of zygotes with “far” people is a good one. However, this seems to me fall onto the two wrongs don’t make a right catagory. I don’t see it as a flaw in the argument, but an illustration that people often make the same “error” or inconsistency.

    Math Geek: “as has been shown above we have very little knowledge of what causes spontaneous abortion”. This is largely because we devote little effort to finding out – because we don’t care very much.

    Ken B: I am surprised at you! “Steve wrote ” I do not understand why, when it comes to protecting someone from the threat of death, I should care whether that threat is or is not intentional.”

    Perhaps this explains why I find most of Steve’s posts on the law “misguided” (a euphemism). Most of us have little trouble understanding that driving your car into a person deliberately is different from losing control (perhaps while having a stroke) and crashing into that same person.”

    The point is not the difference between the intent or otherwise – that difference is obvious. It is that if you could save some number of accidental deaths from traffic, and the same number of deliberate deaths, should you put similar effort into both.

  62. 62 62 Mark

    Harold: I see your point, so I’ll change my wording from “flawed” to “unfair.” It’s unfair to pro-lifers to single them out for doing what essentially everyone does (profess a certain level of outrage with revealed preferences suggesting a much lower level) without acknowledging that they are only one example of many.

    To me, the interesting question isn’t why pro-lifers do this in the case of abortion/spontaneous abortion when they’re only one example of the bigger question: why do all of say we care about malaria/genocide in Africa when we won’t forgo simple luxuries to likely save some of those lives?

  63. 63 63 Will A

    Prof. Landsburg:

    What I like about this blog is that it makes me question my beliefs. A symmetry I had not thought about before is how Duty to Rescue is similar to a mother’s choice of having an abortion.

    If I see a person bleeding profusely on an isolated road, his life isn’t viable unless I help him to survive. A fetus’s life isn’t viable unless its mother helps it to survive.

    I think that people are morally obligated to help the person on the side of the road, but I’m not sure that I would want to make it illegal to not help the person. This being the case, I shouldn’t think that it should be illegal for a mother to have to help her fetus survive.

    Perhaps those of us who are morally opposed to abortion could fund research that would allow for the transfer of fetuses so that if one person didn’t want to help a fetus survive, someone else could volunteer to help it survive.

  64. 64 64 Jimbino

    Yo WillA:

    The problem you have to face is this:

    There is, under our laws, no general “Good Samaritan” duty to rescue even an infant drowning before you. Unless you have a special duty to help, as would a cop, fireman, doctor or nurse, for example.

    The mother may rightly feel herself attacked by the growth inside her, as if it were a cancer. Nobody has a duty to suffer being touched unwillingly for nine months by a tumor. Even if she had done something that had caused the tumor to start.

  65. 65 65 Pat

    Will A,

    It’s one thing to not help a person with an injury, it’s another to cause the injury. Pro-lifers see abortion as the former.

    Like you, I hope technology makes abortion moot. If you could just as easily transfer a pregnancy to an artificial womb as terminate it, there would be no good reason to abort.

  66. 66 66 Harold

    Mark: “To me, the interesting question isn’t why pro-lifers do this in the case of abortion/spontaneous abortion when they’re only one example of the bigger question: why do all of say we care about malaria/genocide in Africa when we won’t forgo simple luxuries to likely save some of those lives?”

    This is also interesting to me. We not only display illogical behaviour, we positively celebrate it. A quick look at the interchanges between Spock and Kirk or McCoy shows this. I have a feeling our host would mostly sympathise with the Vulcan.

  67. 67 67 Charles Anthony

    “Why would you care more about cancer than spontaneous abortion?”
    That is not an interesting question.

    Personally, I do not care much about either of them. However, if I had to gamble at reading the minds of every other person in the world, I would say that the answer is pretty obvious: they just do not care….. you know, like, not many people care about the starving kid on television with flies in his face….. not many people care about the street people who sell their bodies just to survive…. not many people care about anything that does not impact them directly.

    It is laughable for any intelligent writer to pretend that people who survived child-birth would be more concerned about spontaneous abortion more than getting cancer.

    Steve,
    Here is a newsflash: People are selfish.
    That answers your question.

  1. 1 Moral Matters « Daniel J. Smith
  2. 2 Abortion and Logic « Politics & Prosperity

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