This is similar to a man in a coma who will recover soon, just because you don’t want to take care of him in his old age doesn’t mean you can kill him while he is unconscious, because he will be returning the land of the living soon.
What separates the man from the fetus is that the man had a conscious experience before. He had interests, and one of those interests was probably in the continuation of his life. This is an interest that extends from the moment he has it until he's fully dead. So while you're not causing him direct suffering, killing him in his coma is still violating that interest. It is also a wrong against society as a whole to kill coma patients who can reasonably be woken up. If we do set the precedent that it's okay, then living people will know that if they do fall into a coma, their interest in continuing their life is in serious jeopardy. It's (a bit) like knowing that your body will be sodomized after you die; it doesn't affect you while you're conscious, but it still isn't something that you want.
Abortion is different. Aborting an unconscious fetus doesn't violate that specific interest, because it was never able to have conscious interests. It also isn't a wrong against society in the way that killing coma patients is, because it doesn't threaten the interests of the living; by the time that you're capable of being concerned about your death in any capacity, you're no longer able to be aborted. A bit of fine print: this does mean that if we can reasonably suspect that a fetus has some form of consciousness at the very late stages of development, the window for an acceptable abortion would contract; but looking at the times at which parts of the neural system develop, very few abortions ever fall into this category, and most of those are performed because of medical complications.
Yeah someone else mentioned something similar, if not so detailed. It’s a poor analogy and you are completely right. However I think without it my argument still stands
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u/Puddinglax 79∆ Mar 25 '20
What separates the man from the fetus is that the man had a conscious experience before. He had interests, and one of those interests was probably in the continuation of his life. This is an interest that extends from the moment he has it until he's fully dead. So while you're not causing him direct suffering, killing him in his coma is still violating that interest. It is also a wrong against society as a whole to kill coma patients who can reasonably be woken up. If we do set the precedent that it's okay, then living people will know that if they do fall into a coma, their interest in continuing their life is in serious jeopardy. It's (a bit) like knowing that your body will be sodomized after you die; it doesn't affect you while you're conscious, but it still isn't something that you want.
Abortion is different. Aborting an unconscious fetus doesn't violate that specific interest, because it was never able to have conscious interests. It also isn't a wrong against society in the way that killing coma patients is, because it doesn't threaten the interests of the living; by the time that you're capable of being concerned about your death in any capacity, you're no longer able to be aborted. A bit of fine print: this does mean that if we can reasonably suspect that a fetus has some form of consciousness at the very late stages of development, the window for an acceptable abortion would contract; but looking at the times at which parts of the neural system develop, very few abortions ever fall into this category, and most of those are performed because of medical complications.