In previous articles I have addressed two arguments against inherent rights: the presumption that inherent rights must be based on religious dogma and variations on the argument from incredulity. This article addresses consequentialist arguments against inherent rights.
All consequentialist arguments against inherent rights are variations on the following core argument: If it is true that individuals have inherent rights, I/we won't be able to do certain things that I/we deem very important. Therefore individuals do not have inherent rights.
I find this argument such a shameless case of motivated reasoning that I am surprised by how many people are willing to make it. Yet it can be seen on blatant display in consequentialist arguments against inherent rights. There are two main variants:
- Recognising inherent rights would limit population control, therefore individuals don't have inherent rights
- Recognising inherent rights would prevent abortion, therefore individuals don't have inherent rights
The Population Control Argument
The population control argument against inherent rights is essentially this:
- Population control is important/necessary.
- We need to use infanticide for population control.
- Infanticide is not possible if rights are recognised as inherent.
- Therefore rights are not inherent.
Jan Narveson makes the argument that it is "not reasonable" to recognise the inherent rights of "all and sundry newborns" because infanticide may be required for population control:
infanticide has been a recognized social practice in many human societies, not only in much earlier times but in a few societies even now. Infanticide as a method of population control has been frequent, and as a sort of rough eugenic practice perhaps even more so… whatever one’s instinctive reaction to the contemplation of infanticide may be, it is not a reflection of a universal human feeling, even in the sense of one that has been typical in every culture and society. This suggests that the circumstances of those societies have something to do with it. And that seems to me to be as it should be. In a society of very limited resources, where life is harsh, people cannot afford to devote those resources to the sickly or lame; in a society where the food supply is just equal to the population as is, expansion of population is everyone’s enemy. It is not reasonable to grant strong positive rights to life to all and sundry newborns in such circumstances. - Jan Narveson, The Libertarian Idea
In this excerpt, Narveson is attempting to bolster his consequentialist case for infanticide with a fallacious argument from authority, suggesting that infanticide should be considered legitimate since it has been a recognized social practice in many human societies. It is an appeal to social proof.
As an advocate of the theory of acquired rights, Peter Singer makes numerous arguments against inherent rights. Among these, he includes the consequentialist argument about population control. Like Narveson, Singer is also fan of the "other people do it" argument for infanticide. He invokes the argument from authority by noting that highly-regarded ancient philosophers justified infanticide on grounds of population control:
Not to kill a deformed or sickly infant was often regarded as wrong, and infanticide was probably the first, and in several societies the only, form of population control. We might think that we are more 'civilized' than these 'primitive' peoples, but it is not easy to feel confident that we are more civilized than the best Greek and Roman moralists, nor than the highly sophisticated civilizations of China and Japan. In ancient Greece, it was not just the Spartans who exposed their infants on hillsides: both Plato and Aristotle recommended the killing of deformed infants. Romans like Seneca, whose compassionate moral sense strikes the modern reader (or me, anyway) as superior to that of the early and mediaeval Christian writers, also thought infanticide the natural and humane solution to the problem posed by sick and deformed babies. The change in Western attitudes to infanticide since Roman times is, like the doctrine of the sanctity of human life of which it is a part, a product of Christianity. Perhaps it is now possible to think about these issues without assuming the Christian moral framework that has, for so long, prevented any fundamental reassessment. - Peter Singer, Practical Ethics
Singer combines both the population control argument and the abortion argument against inherent rights. He takes it as given that population control is necessary and argues that abortion is just as valid as any other method:
to argue against abortion on the grounds that it prevents beings of high intrinsic value coming into the world is implicitly to condemn practices that reduce the future human population: contraception, whether by 'artificial' means or by 'natural' means such as abstinence on days when the woman is likely to be fertile, and also celibacy. This argument does not provide any reason for thinking abortion worse than any other means of population control. If the world is already overpopulated, the argument provides no reason at all against abortion.
Singer is attacking a straw man of the argument for inherent rights. Abortion is not wrong because "it prevents beings of high intrinsic value coming into the world", it is wrong because it involves killing a rights-bearing individual who is already in the world. Individuals already exist inside the womb. When a baby is born it is changing location, not coming into existence.
Singer's consequentialist argument for infanticide via abortion comes down to this:
- Population control is necessary
- Everyone accepts some forms of population control as legitimate (e.g. contraception, abstinence, and celibacy).
- Abortion is just another form of population control.
- Therefore abortion is legitimate.
- Abortion is incompatible with inherent rights.
- Therefore rights cannot be inherent.
There is an obvious flaw in this argument. Just because contraception, abstinence, and celibacy prevent population growth and are morally legitimate practices, this does not imply that any practice that prevents population increase is morally legitimate. Shooting people at random prevents population growth; Singer would not apply the same logic to argue that this must also be legitimate.
Paul Ehrlich, loser of the Simon–Ehrlich wager, was responsible for an influential 1968 book The Population Bomb. Alongside its inaccurate assertions and failed predictions, the book called for "compulsory birth regulation" in pursuit of population control. Ehrlich saw abortion as a legitimate tool of population control and expressed outrage that the UN was not yet encouraging it at the time:
Abortion is a highly effective weapon in the armory of population control. It is condemned by many family planning groups, which are notorious for pussyfooting about methodology, despite their beginning 60 years ago as revolutionary social pioneers. The United Nations, for instance, does not include abortion in family planning. Quite the contrary, the U.N. justifies family planning as a method of combating abortion!
Ehrlich's consequentialist argument for abortion is that unwanted children will only lead miserable lives if allowed to live and will also contribute to the destruction of humanity, therefore it is good to kill them:
in many cases abortion is much more desirable than childbirth. Above all, biologists must take the side of the hungry billions of living human beings today and tomorrow, not the side of potential human beings. Remember, unless their numbers are limited, if those potential human beings are born, they will at best lead miserable lives and die young. We cannot permit the destruction of humanity to be abetted by a doctrine conceived in total ignorance of the biological facts of life.
Ehrlich's book was extremely influential, for example in the development of China's one child policy between 1979 and 2015. The one child policy included forced abortions.
The population control argument is based on false premises. The looming demographic problem is not population growth but population collapse. However, even if one were to accept the incorrect premise that population control is good or necessary, it simply does not follow that killing babies is ethically valid.
Infanticide is not required to prevent the creation of children. Preventing the creation of children is not something that requires action, on the contrary, it is the result of inaction. Children do not just show up, they are created by the actions of the man and woman- the mother and father- who make their gametes available for fusion. If you make your gametes available for fusion, you are responsible for the consequences of your actions. If you don't want to create children, don't make your gametes available for fusion.
When a man and woman create a child, they have put a child in a state of peril. The fact that they did not intend to create the child does not remove them from moral responsibility for the consequences of their actions. The fact that they cannot afford the consequences of their actions does not remove them from moral responsibility for the consequences of their actions. It may be unwise for some people to have children, but this fact does not justify denying rights to children who have nonetheless been created. It does not justify any form of infanticide. The population control argument against inherent rights is morally absurd.
The Abortion Argument
The use of motivated reasoning is even more blatant when it comes to arguing against inherent rights on consequentialist grounds relating to abortion. As a reminder, the basic form of all consequentialist arguments against inherent rights is this: If it is true that individuals have inherent rights, I/we won't be able to do certain things that I/we deem very important. Therefore individuals do not have inherent rights. The abortion argument tracks this format exactly. Laura Purdy set out the argument bluntly when she argued simply that unborn children cannot have rights because it would prevent abortions:
Consider the consequences for women if society grants equal rights to fetuses: most abortions would unjustifiably be prohibited. In general, then, despite the advantages of adopting more inclusive standards, we cannot be blind to the possibly overridingly bad consequences of doing so. -Laura M. Purdy, In Their Best Interest? The Case Against Equal Rights for Children
Mary Ann Warren provided a more detailed exposition of this argument against inherent rights:
we need to be careful not to burden human moral agents with obligations that they cannot possibly fulfill, except at unacceptably great cost to their own well-being and that of those they care about. Women often cannot complete unwanted pregnancies, except at intolerable mental, physical, and economic cost to themselves and their families. And heterosexual intercourse is too important a part of the social lives of most men and women to be reserved for times when pregnancy is an acceptable outcome. - Mary Anne Warren, “On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion” in Ethics in Practice, ed. Hugh LaFolette
Warren's argument against inherent rights is essentially:
- Men and women need to be able to have heterosexual sex without encountering the risk of having to raise a child as a result.
- The removal of this risk requires abortion to be available.
- Abortion is not compatible with inherent rights.
- Therefore inherent rights are invalid.
There is an utter contempt for the lives of children behind all consequentialist arguments against inherent rights. This contempt is often somewhat disguised, but in some cases it is stated openly. Sharon Presley and Robert Cooke argued that a pregnant woman has the right to insist not merely on removal of the unborn child but also on the killing of it, because letting the child live would have "psychological significance" for the woman. These "libertarians" make an extraordinarily aggressive and bloodthirsty argument:
If the fetus is removed and raised independently, as Block suggests, the woman is still the biological mother with all the psychological significance that implies… But, we maintain, a woman's right to self-determination includes the right to refuse to bear a child as long as that choice is still physically open to her… If a woman has a right to abort a fetus at any point prior to birth, this also implies the right to terminate the life of the fetus as well. Abortion is not a discrete act; it is an ongoing process that begins within the woman's body and continues outside it. If she has a right to the procedure of abortion, she has a right to the entire procedure otherwise the so-called right is meaningless. Since the purpose of abortion is not just to terminate the pregnancy but to avoid bearing the child, what is necessary is not just the removal of the fetus (otherwise she could just bring it to term and give it up for adoption), but its death. - Sharon Presley & Robert Cooke, The Right To Abortion: A Libertarian Defence
Presley and Cooke are asserting that unwanted children must die to satisfy the psychological needs of their mothers. The reprehensible contempt for the lives of children necessary to make such an argument is clear when it is stated so openly. However, the same contempt underlies all consequentialist arguments against inherent rights.
Motivated Reasoning
Underlying all consequentialist arguments about which rights to recognise is the positivist assumption that rights are essentially arbitrary. This is the belief that we may choose to recognise whichever rights we all agree to recognise. Consequentialists think they can choose which rights to recognise on the basis of which outcome they want (and think they will achieve). This is to misconceive the very purpose of ethics, which is to provide a means for the peaceful resolution of all potential conflict. In order to resolve conflicts without aggression one must appeal to objective rules grounded in incontrovertible arguments. Valid rights are not merely chosen arbitrarily, they are discovered through reasoned argument.
The whole line of argument- that children do not have inherent rights because that would prevent us from doing things we deem important- makes this positivist assumption that rights should be allocated arbitrarily on the basis of desired outcome. The approach starts with a desired outcome in mind and then arbitrarily retrofits the ethical rules that will create that outcome. When the desired outcome is infanticide for population control, the arguer works backwards to the conclusion that children do not have rights. Similarly, when the desired outcome is exterminating unwanted children with abortion, the arguer works backwards to the conclusion that unborn children do not have rights.
This is blatant motivated reasoning. The utility of a claim does not make it valid. Whether you desire a particular outcome has no bearing on whether you are justified to deny an individual's rights in order to create that outcome. Whether rights are valid or not depends on whether they are argumentatively indisputable without contradiction, not whether they lead to what you want.