Why is the dependency on technology relevant? In other words, why should it not be the case that the answer to the question “what path is moral here” would in fact depend on which paths are available to you technologically?
Well, practically, my main concern would be that it would motivate anti-abortion folks to spend a huge amount of money and resources on research pushing the viability dates back just a tiny bit, which would not be a productive use of scientific resources.
But philosophically, you raise a very valid point.
Because the persecution of women is the entirely point of this argument, so the safe assumption is that any standard will be twisted as hard as it can in service of that.
Maybe, but I don’t know that they are so outcome oriented. They’re pretty solidly opposed to IVF, for example even though you would think that making more babies would align with their ideological goals. And on the balance, I think artificial womb technology would be a more liberating development than they’d really be interested in.
This thread seems more philosophically inclined than practically inclined, though that doesn’t mean that practical considerations aren’t worth considering at all, and others have taken different perspectives.
Perhaps a question for another thread, but I believe (or have been trying on the belief for a bit) that the massive amount of things that are technically possible medically, and in other areas, has in fact broken our ability to apply moral understanding to questions like this.
If it is technically possible to keep a human embryo alive outside of a human body, is it the morally correct choice to do so?
What if I can’t afford the procedure (and ensuing costs)? In a world where I am expected to pay for my own medical care, am I morally obligated to go into bankruptcy to keep my embryo/fetus/pre-born alive? If I can’t afford it, do I get a pass on the label of “immoral”?
Why do I obtain significant moral responsibility overnight, simply because some doctors somewhere developed a way to keep an embryo alive?
Yes, it has always been true that morality shifts as society shifts, as you describe in an earlier post. However, until I live in a healthcare system where it is economically and culturally trivial for everyone to access the kind of care needed for keeping pre-viable fetuses etc alive, I find the question of the morality of abortion decisions vis a vis this alternative to be kind of gross.
So much of this conversation seems to follow the logic “if the thing has been invented, then we must incorporate it into our moral calculus” while ignoring that “having access” to a thing is not the same as “a thing existing”.
I don’t agree. I think you raise some questions, but I don’t think they are unanswerable in any way.
Depends on the situation. I’d say that once the embryo reaches a certain state of brain development, yes, it would be the morally correct choice; before that, I don’t think there’s a moral imperative to keep the fetus alive. But I could see people make other arguments.
I mean, yes? Just like with the example of the hikers vs neolithic hunter-gatherers who are faced with the dilemma of when it is morally acceptable to abandon a doomed companion to ensure their own survival. Medical science means that there’s more of a moral obligation on the hikers because their decision might be the difference between life and death while the hunter-gatherers can’t save their friend even if they get where they’re going. But you could imagine hikers who are out somewhere incredibly remote enough that there is no way to save their friend, and then I think the moral calculus swings closer to where it was for the hunter-gatherers.
I don’t think you do! The fact that a scientist successfully gestated a fetus in an artificial womb wouldn’t impact the morality of your decisions at all.
50 years later if artificial wombs are widely accessible and cheap or government funded, you are in an entirely different moral landscape where you probably do have significantly different moral responsibilities.
I don’t think anyone is ignoring that at all.
It seems completely and totally obvious that the morality of your actions is determined by what you have access to, not by what is theoretically available to someone somewhere.
I think that I have a strong moral obligation to vaccinate my kids. I strongly judge people living in the United States today who don’t vaccinate their kids. I don’t judge George Washington’s parents for not vaccinating him and his siblings even though the fact that they didn’t vaccinate them led to George Washington’s older brother dying of tuberculosis. This is because the tuberculosis vaccine was not in fact invented yet when Lawrence Washington died. And likewise, if you live in a rural part of India where tuberculosis vaccines are unavailable and as a result your child is infected with the disease, I don’t judge you for that, because you didn’t have access.
A single mother living near poverty declines to vaccinate her young children for COVID-19 despite being able to do so if necessary because she is unwilling to pay $200 without demonstrated necessity, and trusted medical authorities publicly announce the vaccine may do more harm than good. One child gets sick of COVID-19 and dies. Does the mother deserve our reprobation?
I think the same analysis applies where a pregnant mother for whom pregnancy is medically or otherwise unacceptable declines to obtain artificial life support for her fetus to survive outside the womb, assuming arguendo that personhood (and parental responsibility) attaches at viability and artificial life support, with risks (to the fetus) and expense and religious opposition, pushes viability back, possibly to conception.
In both situations, we assume the parent is ultimately responsible for her child. This is arguably enforced by the natural emotional attachment between mother and child; I question whether any further reprobation is needed.
~Max
When it is born. Because your birthday is when you come out of your mother. That is when they say that it is your nth year as a human. So logically, you gain human rights when you are born.
Abortion is the pregnant person’s choice. It is her body. And to have abortion laws decided by a person who doesn’t have a womb is stupid, because they will never have to deal with pregnancy and the issues that come with it, both physical and psycological.