Feeling away morality

I am sure Currency Lad could do a better job on this, but I can't let today's peculiar opinion piece by Michael Read in The Age go without comment.

The writer feels that, although he now has a perfectly good life, and can't remember much of his earlier difficulties due to a birth defect, he is so sorry for the pain his Mum went through that he believes it would have been better for her to have aborted him. As he summarises:

"My life in many ways has been a wonderful experience, but it has been achieved through the suffering of my mother. It would have been better for her had she aborted me. After all, my life then would never have been, and logically, I could not have regretted not living it, but my mother would almost certainly have had a better one."

Talk about your liberal death wishes....

The main thrust of the article, though, is about not being too judgmental on women who want abortions, even late term ones, such as the notorious incident involving a woman who aborted late due to probable dwarfism in the child.

There are many issues I have with the "logic" of this article.

Firstly, the point about a hypothetical abortion meaning that he would not be around to regret not living adds nothing to the argument about the morality of abortion or killing. I mean, adults killed don't harbour regrets either. Let's judge an act at the time it happens. (And let's not be too confident of being able to perceive alternative futures and the degree of happiness in them either.)

Perhaps inadvertantly, Read's comment on his hypothetical termination can be read to relate to issue of "personhood" and its relevance to the Peter Singer's utilitarian arguments about abortion. That is, if you abort a child before it has any significant self awareness, it is no moral wrong at all. (Remember, Singer would even allow a period of, say, a month after birth for parents to "accept" a child, and by his logic killing even a healthy new born is not necessarily "immoral".) This is where you can trust your intuition more than your "public intellectual".

Read is surely a utilitarain himself, with his emphasis in the article of wanting to see the maximum happiness. There are many, many problems with utilitarianism, but for the sake of the argument, if we try to apply it to his case, why does Read not factor in the happy ending? Having an adult son with a successful life is a good thing for his mother, surely. Achieving that happiness after overcoming physical adversity should make it especially profound, shouldn't it? Not to Mr Read, it seems.

And what does his mother think about this? He seems to deliberately avoid telling us her opinion (she is still alive.) Isn't this a vital factor if we are going to attempt some calculation of maximum happiness?

No, his aim is just to have us avoid judgement on the poor mother facing a possible hard life. So there is no point in being rigorous about it, he just wants us to concentrate on the negative possiblities and fears of the mother, regardless of how realistic they may be.

This points to one fundamental problem with utilitarianism: the nature of happiness itself and the difficulties in measuring it. I have posted here before on cognitive therapy for depression. It appeals to me becuase its fundamental idea (that all of your moods are in fact created by your thoughts, including your perceptions, your mental attitudes, beliefs and the way you interpret things) sounds right. And besides which, as a therapy it seems to clinically work.

If you philosophically agree with this understanding of moods, it makes the emphasis on "happiness" decidedly shaky grounds for deciding moral issues. Happiness (or the lack of it) is a cognitive reaction to events that may or may not be built on sound foundations in your cognitive world. What's more important is to look at those foundations.

(There's a lot of good stuff on the problems of trying to base morals on utilitarianism on the internet. Unfortunately, it is treated as a vague default position for many people who have never had the inclination or education to really think about the basis of morals.)

It's all well and good for Michael Read (and liberals generally) to emphasise sympathy for mothers who fear unhappiness. But when it comes to matters of life or death of a fetus/baby which would be viable outside of the womb (we are talking late term abortion), it is hardly the most important factor at stake.