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The extreme positions are "a four-cell zygote should be protected from abortion", and "a baby being born may be aborted". Most citizens are in the middle ground

The extreme positions are "a four-cell zygote should be protected from abortion", and "a baby being born may be aborted". Most citizens are in the middle ground.

dane-pgp 4y ago
Suppose that an omniscient moral Oracle decided to reveal that the correct point before which abortions should be allowed was indeed somewhere strictly between the two bookends you mention. (Let's say that a super-majority of the public are indeed somewhere in this "middle ground", and, in a secular democracy, that's as close to an omniscient moral Oracle as you might be able to find). Now suppose that you are asked to decide where exactly that line is, taking into account this knowledge from the Oracle. But, imagine that at some point in the future, the Oracle might reveal where the line should have been drawn, and if your guess is a higher number than the Oracle's, then you are retrospectively guilty of manslaughter of all the zygotes/babies that were aborted at an age between your number and the Oracle's. I suspect that in this hypothetical scenario, you would pick "a five-cell zygote should be protected from abortion" as the line.
- MockObject 4y ago
  Would that possibly be balanced by the chance that the Oracle could find in the opposite direction later, making us retrospectively guilty as well?
  - gadflyinyoureye 4y ago
    What’s the guilt in that scenario. “Oops, you allowed a thing to become a person. “
  - dane-pgp 4y ago
    Sure. Guilty of the deaths of the women who received unnecessarily dangerous and illegal abortions, guilty of the deaths in childbirth of women who otherwise would have had abortions, and guilty of something like (but less severe than) slavery for the women who had to gestate children which they didn't want to. Someone could probably run the numbers and work out where the line should be drawn to balance out the costs of over- and under-estimating, given a uniform random distribution for where the Oracle's line could be.

The extreme positions are "a four-cell zygote should be protected from abortion", and "a baby being born may be aborted". Most citizens are in the middle ground.

dane-pgp 4y ago

Suppose that an omniscient moral Oracle decided to reveal that the correct point before which abortions should be allowed was indeed somewhere strictly between the two bookends you mention. (Let's say that a super-majority of the public are indeed somewhere in this "middle ground", and, in a secular democracy, that's as close to an omniscient moral Oracle as you might be able to find). Now suppose that you are asked to decide where exactly that line is, taking into account this knowledge from the Oracle. But, imagine that at some point in the future, the Oracle might reveal where the line should have been drawn, and if your guess is a higher number than the Oracle's, then you are retrospectively guilty of manslaughter of all the zygotes/babies that were aborted at an age between your number and the Oracle's. I suspect that in this hypothetical scenario, you would pick "a five-cell zygote should be protected from abortion" as the line.

MockObject 4y ago
Would that possibly be balanced by the chance that the Oracle could find in the opposite direction later, making us retrospectively guilty as well?
- gadflyinyoureye 4y ago
  What’s the guilt in that scenario. “Oops, you allowed a thing to become a person. “
- dane-pgp 4y ago
  Sure. Guilty of the deaths of the women who received unnecessarily dangerous and illegal abortions, guilty of the deaths in childbirth of women who otherwise would have had abortions, and guilty of something like (but less severe than) slavery for the women who had to gestate children which they didn't want to. Someone could probably run the numbers and work out where the line should be drawn to balance out the costs of over- and under-estimating, given a uniform random distribution for where the Oracle's line could be.