Does utilitarianism entail an overall positive view on existence? I should also add she is open to adoption, since those kids exist anyway. Although now that I think about this, I suppose the logical thing for a pessimistic utilitarian to do would be suicide. To follow your logic, if a woman refuses an offer of sex when she is about to ovulate, that is wrong, or at least objectionable from a utilitarian standpoint? Not that this makes it wrong on its own merits, but it may provide some insight into why pro-choice people would reject the original argument.
Separately, two other points. I think it is highly likely that such considerations do pull strongly pro-life, though I go into some sub-arguments that pull in the opposite direction in the post for example, utilitarians will reject many classic pro-life arguments. But they will also reject many classic pro-abortion arguments!
There is also the argument from moral uncertainty. I go into more detail about some example calculations in the post. The problem here, as pointed out above by Thomas B, is that your argument justifies rape.
If a moral argument justifies rape, it must be flawed. This is the closest thing you will find to a proof by contradiction in philosophy. Yes, this is a matter of rights. A women has the right to choose, or not to choose, to give birth to the baby.
It is as simple as that. Utilitarianism is for people like Peter Singer. Every utilitarian I know has limits as to what they would accept happening to an individual in order to increase the happiness of others. Many, including myself, would consider an involuntary pregnancy is far worse and far more intimate than slavery at least for the duration.
I do not understand the leap in logic that equates consensual sex with rape in this line of reasoning. How many utilitarians are there, pro-life or pro-choice? I mean because if there are a lot, that bothers me.
Having babies is good. Really really really good. I think Sam W. This was something I thought about a while back. The more interesting scenario, and the stronger argument against utilitarianism, comes if you imagine a world with abortions but no contraception. In such a world an abortion could argue that banning abortion would simply lead to lots of people abstaining from risky but enjoyable sexual behaviour, without significantly raising the birth rate.
The exception, however, would be rape victims, who would not have chosen to engage in risky behaviour. This is precisely the reverse of our ordinary intuitions, where even many pro-life people are willing to accept abortion in cases of rape. Utilitarianism is interested in questions of duty if you do it right. Treating the latter question as identical to the former would be a big mistake, but so would ignoring the latter question entirely.
Email the webmaster econlib. A valid email address is required to post comments on EconLog and EconTalk. Notwithstanding arguments over fetal pain, pre-vital or pre-natal nonexistence entails no experiential deprivation of good or bad things , so it is always better than being born, an event which guarantees suffering even if slight and death. Just to revisit my earlier point, I did not say that the utilitarian position justifies rape.
Rape involves a lack of consent; I argued that the utilitarian position would argue that it would be immoral for the woman to refuse consent. Thus, in the utilitarian morality it would not be rape, because the woman would consent. Since virtually no-one argues that it is immoral for a woman to refuse consent to sex in our world, there is something wrong with the utilitarian position.
Separately, I thought it was well established that interpersonal utility comparisons were a no-no? The focus would need to be on the feelings of the survivors in both cases. If someone who has already been alive for a while dies, this is devastating to the people who know and care about the person.
Utilitarianism would work better if utilitarians did away with maximization, and with the concept of pleasure and pain aggregating across individuals. Obviously, if every women had 20 children each life would be pretty unbearable.
But it seems sure that the optimal number is way more than , which simply keeps the population even. I think the reason is that most utilitarians, like most educated people these days, hold their commitments to gender equality, gay equality, and anti-racism above anything else.
Act Utilitarianism is particularly useful, as it prefers to judge each individual case on its own merits, meaning abortion would be very much up to the mother, and what the consequences would be for her life.
This means circumstances such as severe foetal abnormality, rape, and financial instability can all be considered under utilitarian thought. However, judging abortion on the basis on welfare can be problematic, because we are often unable to establish the long-term consequences of the action, therefore long term damage cannot be assessed. In addition, Rule Utilitarianism states that we should create a rule about abortion that then applies to all circumstances; this is because decisions shouldn't be bound by individual welfare, but by societal welfare.
In South Africa alone approximately 5. To put this into perspective it means 99 schoolgirls fell pregnant which approximates to per day. This is an increase from the. It seems that abortion strikes people to the core because it challenges your deepest moral beliefs. Why is abortion such a debated topic? Abortion has always been debated, more often than usual it all comes down to politics and the laws that govern this hot debated topic. Abortion by definition is the dissolution of a pregnancy by the elimination or exclusion of a fetus or embryo from the uterus in which case results resulting in its death.
By using the utilitarian approach which focuses on both pain and pleasure and the ability to maximize. Utilitarian View on Abortion Utilitarianism is the thought that actions are right if they benefit or bring happiness to a majority of the population. Another argument a utilitarian would make is that if a couple could not raise that child or would be alone single parent it would be better if they are aborted because it would put less of a burden on society having the mother not be …show more content… There is a problem with overpopulation in the world and the abortion of unwanted children would help.
Society as a whole could benefit from abortions in certain cases. Essay Examples. The abortion and the utilitarian view Abortion is a sensitive topic that requires a considerable amount of understanding when addressing the ethics behind it. My ethical justification for abortion stems from a utilitarianism standpoint.
When using the utilitarian consequential principle of ethics, we establish a set of general morals and rules in which we can apply to every moral question based upon our utilitarian findings.
By looking at the medical and social health benefits of abortion, we can come to the conclusion that it is ethical on the basis that it spreads happiness amongst a great number of the populace. Half of all pregnancies in the U. In , 1. From through , more than 39 million legal abortions occurred. Following the legalization of abortion, the largest decline in birthrates were seen among women for whom the health and social consequences of unintended childbearing are the greatest — women over 35, teenagers, and unmarried women Levine, et al.
Today, thirty percent of the abortions in the U. If safe, legal abortion were not available, more women would experience unwanted childbearing, and unwanted childbearing affects the entire family. Mothers with unwanted births suffer from higher levels of depression and lower levels of happiness than mothers without unwanted births.
They spank and slap their children more often than other mothers, and spend less leisure time outside the home with their children. Couples at risk of having children affected with severe and often fatal genetic disorders have been willing to conceive because of the availability of amniocentesis and safe, legal abortion.
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