Zach Broderick
12 Oct 2007
PHIL 17A – Smiley
Paper #1 – Topic B
Bentham on Abortion
Jeremy Bentham’s early work on utilitarianism is highly regarded by philosophers as
groundbreaking moral theory. However, like many other pioneering ideas, his particular flavor of
utilitarianism is viewed as revolutionary but impractical, far too rough around the edges to
realistically be implemented except by the most devout economists. Subsequent refined visions
of his theory are more popular, such as that of John Stuart Mill, though we still give Bentham
credit for providing the first stepping stone. In this paper I will attempt to apply Bentham’s
utilitarianism to a complex modern problem, in order to demonstrate that it does indeed fall short
in practical application. I have chosen abortion for the test case, as I have found it to be well
suited to illustrating the weaknesses in Bentham’s theory. In the following I will show that
abortion is morally wrong under his utilitarianism, address some common objections, and
analyze how the conflict between my argument and these objections exposes fundamental
problems of impracticality in Bentham’s theory.
The abortion issue has many exceptional cases that make it particularly complex. The
mother’s life may be in danger, she may have been raped, or the baby could be at risk for
horrible birth defects, to name a few. Because the goal of this paper is not really to argue
abortion, but rather to apply and analyze Bentham’s theory in a modern context, I will use a
more typical scenario that does not involve these special cases. This is as follows: a young
woman from a poor, secular family is accidentally impregnated by her boyfriend due to a failure
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in birth control. The father is not ready for a family and abandons her. She is not prepared for a
child either and knows that if she keeps the baby her life will likely be very difficult. Her parents
are sympathetic but cannot offer much assistance, having children of their own to raise.
Assuming there is a free clinic willing to perform the operation, is she morally justified in getting
an abortion under Bentham’s utilitarianism?
To answer this question Bentham would have us apply his calculus of pain and pleasure.
According to this algorithm, we add up all of the pains resulting from the abortion and weigh
them against the pleasures. If there are more pains, the act is wrong, and vice versa. Pains and
pleasures are calculated based on a number of factors such as intensity, duration, certainty,
proximity, and number of people (39), which we might imagine are, save number of people,
percentages that are multiplied together. Looking at this it should be obvious we have already
encountered a fundamental problem with Bentham’s theory that arises from the near
impossibility of quantifying pain and pleasure. His use of a mathematical model is an attempt at
measuring these very qualitative and subjective values. We are given a bizarre and absurd system
that is difficult to implement and wide open to interpretation. For example, what is more intense,
death by childbirth or death by vacuum?
To throw up our hands and admit defeat this early, however, would not be doing
Bentham justice. Therefore I am going attempt to implement his calculus as best I can, using
societal standards of what constitutes pain and pleasure and their intensity. For example, much to
my disagreement, our society seems to view death as the worst pain a human can experience, and
thus it will be given heavy consideration. I will aim to be as abstract as possible while still
conforming to Bentham’s vision, in order to lessen the subjectivity associated with “moral
arithmetic.”
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We must first then determine the various contributions to the pain and pleasure equation
that would result from the abortion. I think it is safe to say that no one derives pleasure from an
abortion; however, equivalent to pleasure under Bentham’s formulation is the prevention of pain.
The purpose of an abortion is to avoid having a child under unfavorable circumstances; thus it is
theoretically preventing a life of hardship for both the mother and the child. This would seem to
be our sole contribution to “pleasure.” In terms of Bentham’s model, this is moderately intense
unhappiness over a long period of time, and it directly involves two people. However, the
certainty factor is unclear. A hard life would seem likely, but we do not know for sure; many
parents who decide to keep their baby end up regretting even considering an abortion, and lead
perfectly happy, if sometimes difficult, lives.
Uncertainty causes all sorts of problems for Bentham. For example, do we take into
account future generations? This child would likely have children of his or her own, and so on,
forming a very large family tree. The child’s poor situation might predispose him or her to crime
and thereby inflict pain on others. He could be the next Hitler or the next Einstein. There are
limitless considerations that are simply too numerous for the human mind to calculate. For the
sake of this paper and fairness to Bentham, we will limit our consideration to the overall
hardship likely to be inflicted upon the child and mother, as its avoidance is the purpose of
abortion itself.
As that is all there is for pleasure, let us move on to calculating pain. Just as pleasure can
be interpreted as the prevention of pain, it would seem too that pain can be interpreted as the
prevention of pleasure. Just as we have considered the potential of a hard life for the mother and
child sans abortion, so too must we account for the possibility of a happy life that the abortion
would deny them. So what is the likelihood then of a poor life vs. a good life? Some may argue
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that no matter how hard life is, it is always better than not having been born. However, I would
argue that Bentham would consider a good life based on whether or not it produced net pleasure
over pain. With that in mind, even if we assigned a 50% certainty value to each outcome, which
is far from unreasonable—in fact, due to the difficulty of calculating these percentages at all, it is
really the only option we have—then we are left with an equal amount of pain and pleasure from
this consideration alone, and they cancel out. Because the prevention of a hard life is the only
value we have on the pleasure side of the equation, it already seems evident that abortion is nonutile under Bentham.
Let us continue though with calculating the other pains, as they demonstrate further
weaknesses in Bentham’s utilitarianism. Pro-life advocates would insist that we consider the
interests of the baby above all else, so we will start there. Our society seems to confer death a
peak pain value, which is perhaps increased even more by the gruesome nature that people
associate with abortive techniques. Thus even if there were any pleasures left over from our
previous calculation, which we established is not likely, the pain of death would surely trump
them. We need not go into the detail then of calculating the actual pain value of the baby’s death,
and instead focus on what this tells us about Bentham’s theory.
Pro-choice advocates would quickly object to this point and claim that a fetus is not
really sentient, or at the very least its capacity to feel and understand pain is so minimal as to be
irrelevant. In terms of pain, they might argue, it is like stepping on an ant. According to
Bentham, however, this does not matter, and we are again presented with a difficulty in his
formulation. Bentham’s theory purposefully does not put the pains and pleasures of man over
that of animals—he was an early animal rights supporter—nor does it take into account levels of
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sentience. Therefore we must weigh the interests of the fetus and the ant just as highly, even
though the former is simply a collection of cells.
Pro-life advocates would respond that even if we were to disregard the baby’s pain due to
a lack of sentience, it would still be wrong to kill the baby based on the intrinsic value of a
human life. This argument too, however, is trivial under Bentham’s utilitarianism. Things are
assigned “value” based on the pain and pleasure they produce, nothing more; this does not leave
any room for “intrinsic” value associated with human life. We have already considered the
potential of the child to produce pain and pleasure, and therefore we must deny the pro-lifers’
claim.
The problem should now be fairly clear. For one, Bentham does not account for sentience
in even the most absurd cases, like that of the fetus. More importantly though, his reasoning is
offensive to our common moral sense, and not just on one side of the debate but both. Even if a
person is pro-choice, most of us have a sense of the value of human life, and simply disagree
with each other on the particulars. People who do not value human life are considered evil and
mentally ill. Yet under Bentham, we find that a human life is only as valuable as the pleasure it
produces, as that is the ultimate measure of value. While his system may produce favorable
moral results, the process used to reach those results clashes with our moral absolutes. For
example, the pro-life advocate may agree with my conclusion that abortion is wrong; however
they would no doubt be offended by the formulation of human value under Bentham, and would
condemn such a system of morality. Such clashes with moral absolutes are one of the ways
moral theories are discredited, and this suggests that Bentham’s theory needs revision, such as
was done by Mill.
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Along this same path of reasoning, the baby’s death reveals one more important failing in
Bentham’s theory. Even conceding that the baby’s life does not have any intrinsic value, which
seems unlikely, the pro-life advocate might still argue that the baby is innocent, and that it is
unjust to kill it. This is similar to the classic example of the racists who want to lynch an
innocent black man. Again though we must deny this objection under Bentham, as his theory
cannot account for justice without some revision. Justice is absolute and is not always utile, as in
the case of the lynching. Justice is also one of our most sacred moral absolutes.
Our next pain consideration introduces another agent or agents whose interests need to be
taken into account. Let us assume that protesting outside of the clinic are several pro-life
activists. They address the young lady on her way in, asking her in various ways not to go
through with the abortion. Let us say that, for whatever particular reason, because they are at the
clinic they will be conscious of the operation taking place. We must then under Bentham assign
them many different possible pain values: anger, hatred, sadness, distress, indignation, horror—
the list goes on. These pains are surely intense, and depending upon the amount of people present
must be multiplied.
We are now met with an objection from the pro-choice advocate: “Why should we have
to take their feelings into consideration? Their anguish is born of ignorance, and is the result of
their personal and religious beliefs, ones that we do not share. This is a private matter that is
none of their business.” Indeed, if you asked a pro-life advocate why abortion is morally wrong,
their answer is not likely to be “Because I don’t like it. It makes me sad.” The “I don’t like it”
argument is not considered very valid for most purposes in our society.
Under Bentham however that argument holds some weight. The protesters standing
outside of the clinic, and anyone else who knows of the abortion and does not approve, is going
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to feel genuine pain because of the mother’s actions. They are in effect an interested party, and
must be taken into account under Bentham. The problem here is that this leaves little room for
notions of individual liberty, which is prized highly by our society. If we are to be good
Utilitarians, we must take into account the disapproval or offense of other parties, even if they
are not directly affected by our actions. Similarly, if others indirectly approve of our actions and
extract satisfaction from them, then we ought to perform them. Thus the innocent black man
might be compelled to hang himself in order to satisfy the mob, if he wanted to be a good
Benthamite Utilitarian. Like justice, Bentham’s formulation does not take into account personal
liberty, a concept we would consider essential to any moral theory.
The final pain we must take into consideration may also offend our sense of liberty. A
well known side effect of abortion that affects some but not all women is emotional trauma;
depression can result from the loss of the baby, even if it was intentional. Therefore it should be
self-evident that we must include this in our calculations. A few pro-life advocates might agree,
but the rest of us might take pause. Is this not her choice? She is taking this risk upon herself, and
she is the only one who will be affected by it. Thus it may seem a bit paternal to say she can’t
have an abortion on this basis. Except in the most extreme cases, such as suicide or drugs, it is
generally part of our conception of liberty that you are allowed to destroy yourself however you
see fit. Smoking is a perfect example of this, as are dangerous activities like mountain climbing.
Thus under Bentham the mother could not choose for herself whether the abortion was
worth the risk of emotional trauma, and this violates our sense of liberty. Another example may
illustrate this more clearly. We would probably consider it a violation of our liberty to be told we
can’t smoke or climb mountains; but worse, what if smoking turned out to be utile, giving more
pleasure over the course of one’s life compared to the pain of an early death? Everyone would
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then be compelled to smoke, which would strike most of us as unacceptable. This is similar to
the example of donating all of your money to a third world country for the sake of utility, what
Bernard Williams terms “negative responsibility” (95). I will stick with the broader notion of
violating one’s liberty, as it is more inclusive of our abortion example and other such positive
responsibilities we find unacceptable.
In conclusion, we find that abortion is decidedly non-utile under Bentham’s
utilitarianism. We have looked at several objections to my argument, which have shown his
theory to be incompatible with concepts such as justice and liberty, at least in its current form.
To most, these concepts are morally significant, and their violation can be interpreted as a
weakness in system that claims to be morally supreme. Thus we must conclude that Bentham’s
utilitarianism is a good start, but not suitable for modern application.