An interesting article from W. Saletan:
http://www.slate.com/id/2219537/
If you grant that the life and welfare of a fetus has equal value to that of any other human, is there still a case to be made for the legality of some or all forms of abortion?
Moralists will argue that all murders should be illegal, and we do our best to investigate and prosecute criminal homicides.
Economically, the law against murder and its enforcement reduces the costs that individuals would experience in protecting themselves against murderers. Additionally, it reduces the deadweight costs of economic decisions made under the threat of murder. Conversely, we have to pay taxes to support the police and legal infrastructure that enforces this law.
Laws protecting children from murder by their parents have additional costs, namely social services and foster care for the child. A child, aside from being a consumer, is also an eventual producer. Damaging a child in whom society is investing schooling and medicine and other resources is extremely expensive (and morally abhorrent) and so the additional costs of protecting children may be justified. Most fetuses on the other hand do not yet contain any investment in human capital that others may yet benefit from.
If it is decided that protecting lives in excess of obvious economic benefits is an appropriate policy goal, then resources spent in this effort should be spent in the most cost effective way. Should we spend the marginal tax dollar prohibiting abortion, thereby imposing a special tax on the pregnant woman, and then subsequently in foster care for the unwanted child or should we spend the marginal tax dollar on healthcare for the disabled or elderly? What about feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, and clothing the naked? Every resource used to solve one problem is a resource denied another.
Further resources spent saving lives today must be balanced against the possibility of investing in economic growth and saving more lives in the future. Spending a marginal tax dollar on improved public education could generate greater economic growth and opportunity, reducing future numbers of abortions (by reducing unwanted pregnancies and increasing the ability to afford children) as well as greater future tax dollars to save more lives in the future.
The prohibition of abortion contains one additional economic cost that the prohibition of infanticide does not: the forced labor and delivery of the pregnant woman. Unlike children's services which can be performed by government professionals, only one person can care for any given implanted fetus.
This cost cannot be minimized by alluding to the woman's choice to engage in sex (except in the case of rape or coercion) as it is still a cost that must be borne. In no other situation do the laws of the United States require forced labor in this way. Even in cases of conscription or jury duty, we not only offer monetary compensation or service but also an individual can escape the requirement by showing cause. Do we plan to pay women to stay pregnant? Do we plan to permit an exception for conscientious objection or economic hardship?
Should the government have the power to legislate absolutely what occurs beneath your skin? In order for the postulates of Perfect Competition and the First Welfare Theorem to hold, the answer is generally no. The costs to all citizens, male or female, of granting the government this type of power must also be considered when prohibiting abortion.
It's not obvious to me that the life and welfare of a fetus is equal to that of any other living human, but even if it were true, it's not obvious to me that the prohibition of abortion would lead to the greatest realization of a "culture of life".
Dead rats and dopamine - a new publication
9 months ago
Good Evening fellow blogger(s),
ReplyDeleteWilliam Saletan is the Author of Bearing Right, How conservatives won the abortion war , by chipping away abortion rights and changing questions about abortion.
Now, I don't agree with everything he says , but looking at the preview of his book, its worth reading and doing a lot of homework.
I admit, I haven't been updating my blog lately, but I do have a criteria judging which states are more "liberal" rather than "conservative", its not the politics that I refer to, but rather what goes in the legislature when it comes to passing bills and as such that who really sticks to their liberal guts and who doesn't.
California for example, really isn't a liberal gung-hoo state , I knew this all along , with proposition 13 and many other conservative laws, on the boooks in part due to southern california, they just passed gay marriage ban, also looking at abortion laws, the conservatives really have shaped it differently, lets take a look.
William Saletan is dead on, a few years ago I was doing research into abortion laws , online by looking at Naral's data (a bit imperfect because antiquated statues are still grated), and to my suprise many "liberal states" have the laws william saletan has on the books.
However, those liberal states, aren't really liberal , as such in the social justice stands or in terms of minority clout. Take Massachutes and other states, they have parental consent laws, now of course if a abused child or foster child who most often is a minority is raped, who does she turn to, really should she have to tell her personal story to a judge.
In part, minorities or people who are of lesser economic of scale, are ignored in such debates by conservatives, my grading of a more liberal state would be how such clout or concerns are brought to the state legislature. The same is true with medicaid, social services, and laws which impact minorities, a lot of new england states and northern states which are thought the be liberal aren't if you look at the same of the laws they have on the books, even if they voted for obama and have a lot of democratic clout in the legislature and congressional representatives.
This goes back to my Previous saying about non-economic or rather economic-netural benefits, a family of 4 with an income of 120k would usually do better than the same with 10 children, even if one assumed that each of them worked and had jobs, chances are that they would struggle more.
One only need to see how poor black families in the Missisiippi delta who have to save pennies to get abortions, who make minimum wage and who have to drive 40 minutes to the doctor in a care fare. Also, 24 hour waiting periods mean the person may have to drive twice back. Pro-lifers are often as they say pro-life until birth, just look at infant mortatlity and whatever in mississippi for example or alabama.
Really, the pro-lifers try to use pictures of babies and marketing with "culture of life", in reality its not really culture of life but culture of disease , death, and misery after life (assuming infant mortaility doesn't kick in which by the way is worse than many other industrialized nations).
Regards, Ravi.