Response from Thomas Pogge on June 22, 2006

By the same reasoning, your mother would have done a terrible thing to you if she had abstained from sex on this occasions or if she had insisted that your father use birth control. Such conduct, too, would have denied a good life to a person in the future. I assume that you would not want to classify such conduct as worse than murder, but rather as perfectly permissible -- even though sometimes, when you use birth control, a person who otherwise would have come to exist will not.

The problem with your analogy is this: In the case of murder, there is a person who is harmed, a person who is deprived of further years of life, prevented from realizing her plans, projects, and ambitions. In the case of abstention or birth control, by contrast, there is no person who is harmed, no person whose life is cut short, no person disabled from realizing her plans, projects, and ambitions. Murder harms an existing person, birth control merely prevents the coming into existence of a person. This explains why it is not wrong to abstain from sex or to use birth control.

Now the case of abortion is different from both others. It is like the murder case in that something exists whose life is cut short. And it is like the abstention case in that there is no person suffering a harm. Those who believe abortion to be morally permissible liken it to the abstention case: An abortion does not kill a person, but merely prevents the coming into existence of a person.

Response from Jyl Gentzler on June 22, 2006

If your mother had had an abortion, then yes, alas, there would have been no you who has had such a good life. But it’s also true that, if your mother had done anything different on that fateful night in the early sixties– had she decided to stay home, had she decided she wasn’t really in the mood that night, had her amusing story gone on just a little bit longer– then, chances are, there would have been no you: that particular egg and that particular sperm just wouldn’t have gotten together. In fact, had a multiplicity of other events in the past– e.g., the weather on a night millions of year ago when your ancient ancestors got together-- been different from what they in fact were, then there would have been no you because there also would have been none of your more recent ancestors. When you think of all of the events that had to conspire from the beginning of time to produce you, then it becomes clear how very lucky each of us is even to have lived for just one minute. The odds against each of us were astronomically high.

Now let’s imagine all the unimaginably many possible unions of human egg and sperm that might have been, who might have developed into people who had had a life as good as yours. If your mother’s story had gone on just a bit longer, then someone else might have been conceived that night. Was your success his loss? Should we feel sorry for him? Should we grieve the losses of all of the indefinitely many people who might have been, had things turned out differently?

The difference between these other cases that I’m asking you to imagine and the case that you imagine when you contemplate your mother getting an abortion is that in the latter case you’re imagining a very near miss: all of the events over the eons had managed to lead to the union of that sperm and that egg, and had that abortion not taken place, then chances are, you would have existed and lived your wonderful life. Near misses are more psychologically painful than events that seem never to have been in the cards. If you almost landed that perfect job– in fact, you learn later, that as far as the search committee was concerned, you and the successful candidate were both equally qualified and, in the end, they had to flip a coin in order to make a decision–, then your apparent loss is much more painful than if you had never even received an interview. The job was practically yours, but then stupid fate snatched it from you. Similarly, when you imagine the near miss of your mother having an abortion, you are imagining her taking away from you a life which, it can seem, was already and rightfully yours. But was it really? The job wasn’t really yours, even though it nearly was. Was the life that you ended up living really the rightful possession of that fertilized ovum, which as things actually did turn out, developed into you?

In order for a wrong to have been done, I think (though many will disagree), there has to be some identifiable individual who was harmed. (I have a much broader notion of harm, I think, than most people, and so, I will baldly assert that many of the counter-examples that you’re now imagining don’t apply to my position.) If life (under most circumstances) is a good, as I think that it is, then to take away a life from an individual is to harm that individual. Of course, there are many significant harms to many individuals (e.g., the ants that keep attempting to invade my kitchen this spring) that most of us don’t worry about very much: I set out ant-traps without a moment’s moral hesitation. Humans are different, most of us think. If someone had cut short my life, a significant moral wrong would have been done to me. But I have to have existed in order for a life to have been taken away from me. Those merely possible people I asked you to imagine never really had a life, and so, there was no identifiable individual who was harmed when circumstances didn’t conspire to bring them into existence. The question you are raising, then, is: when I am imagining my mother having had an abortion, am I imagining me and a life being taken away from me, or, am I imagining a situation in which I do not yet exist, but would soon exist if events take their normal course. Am I imagining my life being taken away from me, or am I imagining the possibility of my never having existed at all and so never having been a candidate for harm?

The answer to this question depends, of course, on when I came into existence, and at what stage we are imagining my mother having an abortion. And the answer to this question depends on what features make me me. Did I exist once that particular egg and that particular sperm got together? Did I come into existence when that fertilized ovum developed into a fetus with some mental properties? Did I come into existence only when that fetus developed into a being with higher mental functioning?

These are very difficult and complex philosophical questions which I can’t explore here. But I will assert, again very baldly, that this third suggestion strikes me as completely implausible. Before there was a creature with higher mental functioning, there was a me, and had my life been ended at that point, a significant harm would have been done to me, a harm that would have been equal if not greater than the harm that would be done to me now if my life were now ended.