For the following exercise I assume that we are all good at playing trains. So, suppose that on the first track of the trolley lies Ron Paul, and on the second track lie Lew Rockwell, Tom Woods, Bob Higgs, David Gordon, and Joseph Salerno all tied up by the mustachioed villain Statist Ideology. You can’t stop the trolley but must steer it on one track or the other. What are you going to do?
Now relax and consider the exact same problem but with newborn infants instead of our libertarian heroes. Does the problem seem easier? Is it now not so heart-breaking to steer the trolley onto the track with the one infant?
Very good. Now suppose that instead of the infants there lie on the tracks 1 week old though viable embryos. Is the proper course of action now almost entirely obvious?
This bears on the issue of abortion. It is clear that Lew Rockwell is not interchangeable with Ron Paul, and neither are the rest of our friends. They are unique human beings, profoundly actualized with distinct and powerful personalities and histories, each in his own way. The infants and still more, the embryos, on the other hand, are much more like each other than the grown men in the first example. “5 > 1” and therefore “saving 5 is better than saving 1” become more plausible, the more the 5 things resemble each other and the 1 thing. So, I think that the reason why many people do not consider abortion problematic is that in their view the embryo is entirely interchangeable with other embryos they might later beget or conceive. I mean, look, making a child is normally a trivial undertaking. Any pair of idiots can make one in 5 minutes; it’s not rocket science. So, as long as an embryo is considered to be just like any other embryo rather than a real and inimitable though developing son or daughter, abortion will be widespread.
The issue is actually two-fold. First there is the “relative” problem just mentioned, namely, whether any two arbitrary embryos produced by the same couple can pretty much be swapped for one another with little harm done.
Second, there is the “absolute” problem of whether an embryo maintains its personal identity as it matures. In other words, the question is, are you the same person (in the metaphysical rather than legal or moral sense) that you were when you were in your mother’s womb as a 1 week old creature?
This second question is puzzling. A 1 week old embryo does not seem to have any powers of willing and thinking. It’s not that it has these powers but is not in a condition to exercise them as might be asserted of a sleeping adult or even of an infant. It’s that it lacks these powers altogether. Therefore, though it is certainly potentially human, it is not essentially human. But if it is not essentially human, then, surely, there is no enduring personal identity of it which obviously requires a personality or habits and dispositions which build on, actualize, and direct the powers proper to a human being. So, this is the second reason why I think many people consider abortions to be non-crimes.
(Cross-posted at http://dmitrychernikov.com/blog/2008/09/18/train-job/)