"Why I don't regret my abortion"

The good old "why don't you just kill yourself" chestnut, much beloved of natalists who find their reasoning is on the ropes. I will answer...

I consider the suffering in my life to outweigh the benefit, but not to the extent that I'm currently prepared to risk a suicide attempt that might be botched and leave me disabled. I don't think that my parents thought about the antinatalist argument before creating me, so therefore I can't accuse them of having acted with immoral intent. However, I would say that anyone who is familiar with the antinatalist argument, and who has understood it, then goes on to reproduce, is acting immorally.

I don't think that anyone can reject the antinatalist argument based on reason alone; but I expect many to employ cognitive dissonance to try and persuade them it's wrong, in much the same fashion as theists are emotionally too committed to their religious beliefs to be receptive to atheism.

If someone disagrees with the right to gay marriage and refuses to provide goods (for example, a wedding cake) to be used in the celebration of a gay marriage, are they acting immorally? People believe stupid things and make decisions which harm others based on their faulty reasoning. I'd say that ignorance of the argument altogether is a better excuse than poor reasoning; but the reality is that nobody is able to change their fundamental nature, so rather than flinging around terms like 'moral' or 'immoral', the best that can be done is to expose as many people as possible to this reasoning. We already know that atheists tend to bear fewer children, on average, than religious people, and part of that is because atheists are less likely to consider it a moral obligation, or to think that their spawn are going to be part of any kind of grand design.

Which part? The lower birthrate amongst atheists is a fact:



www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/07/why-people-with-no-religion-are-projected-to-decline-as-a-share-of-the-worlds-population/

Idiocracy is the future of the human race.

And you accuse me of excuses!

Ok, I'll try again. Not taking uninvited risks on behalf of someone else is a rule that seems to be working out rather well for progressive societies. For this reason, I think it's a shame we don't extend that rule as far as it would go and also disallow the risk of procreation.



There are very few examples wherein taking a hazardous risk on behalf of someone else would be considered acceptable; procreating is one of those very few exceptions. The only other one that I can really think of is when someone is given power of attorney; but even in that situation, I believe that the person whose estate is being managed would need to consent to give that individual power of attorney.

By 'moral' what I mean is a code of behaviour which is agreed upon in society in order to minimise harm and/or maximise benefit. The reason that I cannot take reckless gambles with your property, money or general wellbeing, is because with respect to you, my greater obligation is to do you no harm (even if doing you harm might bring about a benefit to myself and a great number of others) and this far outweighs any obligation that I have to benefit you in any way. Would you agree that there is a stronger obligation on my part not to harm you than to benefit you; especially if the benefits that I might have in mind could cause you significant complications and difficulties in the future, in the event that my attempt to benefit you went awry? You would expect to be given the opportunity to consent to whatever scheme I had in mind, would you not?



The existence of consciousness is the root cause of all suffering, because there could be no suffering without that precondition being satisfied. The only thing left to be determined is who suffers, how they will suffer and how much they will suffer.



No, you are not responsible for the harm caused to someone, if that harm resulted from a chain of accidental events which involved yourself. You have not knowingly put someone into a situation where they could be harmed, which is different from giving birth to something which has the capacity to be harmed. In the latter case, you are satisfying the single precondition without which suffering could not occur. In your hypothetical example, you are just an unwitting pawn in a random sequence of events which ends in someone else being harm. Every one of us are probably involved in such chains of events throughout our lives.

Consider my hypothetical example of a couple who are thinking about having children. Both of them carry a certain gene which would confer on any of their potential offspring a roughly 25% chance of inheriting a terrible disability which, although it will not necessarily kill them at a very young age, would cause them to have a greatly reduced quality of life. It is not possible to detect this condition prior to birth. In your view, would it be morally permissible for the couple to 'throw the dice' on behalf of the child? And if that case is not permissible, whereabouts would you draw the line in terms of likelihood of significant harm?



It's a social rule that generally is observed to work very well wherever it is implemented. Are you grateful that the law does not allow me to take uninvited risks with your wellbeing or property, simply because (from my subjective perspective) there could be a benefit in it for you in the future? Your earlier answer indicates that you are quite satisfied with the protections that are provided to you on the basis that you must have the right to consent to any risks that I take with your property or wellbeing.



At the very minimum, they are deciding that the prerogatives of the mother take precedence over the rights of the potential child. And it is very common for pro-choice advocates to deny that there is any trespass against the child/hypothetical child whatsoever.



In the case where the child is born, there is no future person to consider. In the case of the child which is given birth to, we do not consider the hypothetical person (which is irrelevant anyway), but we do have to grant due consideration to the future child. For example, we would frown upon any mother who recklessly drinks alcohol and smokes tobacco whilst pregnant. Whilst she is not committing any crime against the hypothetical person, she is very likely condemning a future person to a greatly degraded quality of life. Going back to the earlier example of the couple who carry rare genes; do we give them the green light to produce as many children as they want and can financially support, just because a hypothetical person does not know the meaning of suffering?



In the case of the couple who chooses not to reproduce, there is no future person to consider. And that situation is FINE, because the hypothetical person does not need the benefits that would come into being if they were brought into existence. Did you have a problem with the time which passed before you were born? Will you have any problem with the time which passes once you have died? And unless you would support reproduction in all cases (alluding back to the case where the child has a high likelihood of a terrible disability), then you would adhere to my reasoning in at least a limited number of cases, which would also make you a dishonest hypocrite.



1. Unless you would support reproduction in all cases, regardless of the risk of disability or illness, then you would be employing the same logic as I have, albeit in a much more limited range of cases.

2. The benefit that is brought to the "overwhelming majority" (and I'd like to see you prove this) does not justify lumbering a small minority with all the costs. I understand that you probably think that the suffering of the minority is "worth it" for the pleasures of those who have enjoyed better luck. But you can only say that from the perspective of someone who happens to have enjoyed the luck of the draw. As one's lot in life is basically a lottery, that means that those who lose the lottery are no more "deserving" of their hardship than those who have won the lottery.



I have done so, and I've gone over them again. You may not like the answers that you have been given, but you (or people like you) would likely use similar reasoning as myself in a limited number of cases.




So, given that you believe that we need to give weight to the potential benefit of people who do not yet exist, how do you justify your failure to pass on your genes and confer that benefit upon a new life?



So considering the costs that have to be paid by those who cannot consent is a case of cognitive dissonance?



Anyone who advocates in favour of abortion is relegating the would-be child's interests to a position of irrelevance; which suggests that most of those who favour the right to abortion do understand that you cannot deprive a non-existent person of any benefits.

I can't tell if you are being serious or not.

I would actually agree with your apparent premise here that a moral rule is one which "works out well for society".

What I find positively astonishing is that you appear to accept this as a valid basis for the discussion... and then use it to justify a rule that would obliterate society completely.

At this point I would suggest that you have rather obviously fallen foul of reductio ad absurdum and that your argument is invalid on that basis.


Again, you frequently appeal to popularity to support your premises, all the while trying to justify a conclusion which would be manifestly unpopular.

Either stop using popularity as a basis for why things are so, or abandon your argument completely.



Yes, and I would agree to this. However, note that BOTH are involved - one must strive to maximise benefit in addition to, or in place of, minimising harm. A society which seeks to minimise harm whilst disregarding benefit completely would be literally insane.

Yet this is exactly what you advocate - that everybody should concern themselves only with minimising hypothetical future harm whilst utterly disregarding hypothetical future benefit as unimportant. Once again, you have invalidated your own argument here.



But my argument is that the "root cause" is utterly unimportant and basing our actions upon it is irrational.

What matters is the proximate cause. Each step you take away from the proximate cause reduces the importance of the causal factor - since you place such value on subjective opinions as the basis for arguments, it must surely weigh heavily on you that people focus greatly on proximate causes and gradually place less and less importance on less proximate causes, until they place none at all on those causes distant from the event in question. Yet you disregard this, for no discernable reason.

Or rather, I suspect your reason is that it makes your argument work - and ALL of this is merely an attempt to rationalise a belief you hold out of emotion.


Then you are, again, a hypocrite.


It's really quite breathtaking to watch you invalidate your own argument again and again and yet still continue to believe in it.

Yes, by giving birth you allow suffering to occur. But you do not cause suffering to occur by giving birth. The only sense in which birth leads to suffering is that birth initiates the event sequence that terminates in suffering. Which is exactly what the example I gave illustrates.


Yes it would. Rather obviously.

In fact I'd argue that it would be immoral not to allow them this choice.


Again, we have the irony of you using "benefit to society" as a benchmark by which to justify premises which you then use to advocate the destruction of society.

I support "benefit to society" as a basis for contemplating moral issues. But once we accept that, it becomes rather obvious that any argument which advocates the destruction of society is automatically immoral.


I have no problem with considering hypothetical future suffering. My issue is that you assert that only the hypothetical future suffering matters, whilst hypothetical future benefit does not.


Hence "hypothetical".


I do. I support the right of any person to reproduce.


No, actually it wouldn't.

Like I say, I have no problem with a person who considers hypothetical future suffering. I do not even have a problem with a person who balances hypothetical future suffering against hypothetical future benefit and decides that the former outweighs the latter - if a person decides that "there is so much evil and pain in this world that I can't bring a child into it" then I think that person is extremely mistaken in their conclusion, but I also think that they have made a reasoned judgment call if they have looked at the probable good things ahead and the bad things ahead and decided that the bad outweighs the good.

Where I part ways with you is in your insistence that one should only consider hypothetical future suffering whilst maintaining that hypothetical future benefit is irrelevant.

You would seriously look at a person who spent their entire lives enjoying happiness and accomplishment, being surrounded by love and contentment... and then take an occasion on which they stubbed their toe and say "none of that joy counts for anything; only the stubbed toe matters, and since that was always a possibility this person should never have been born".

I'm sorry, but if you honestly believe this then you're just being stupid.


I don't need to "justify" it, since it wasn't a deliberate decision on my part. It's just how my life has worked out.


Yes it is, when it is accompanied a refusal to consider the flipside of that coin.