Being a vegan is a drop in the bucket of animal suffering, but making a real change in a personal life in response to my moral principles is very important to me. With apologies to those who disagree, I think about voluntarily choosing to not have abortions in the exact same way.
Changing our personal lives in response to a view that it’s very good for more people to exist (and with approximate indifference between ending the lives of fetuses and something that prevents those lives from ever starting) doesn’t seem like it primarily would give avoiding abortion (typically using birth control, non-impregnatable sex, or abstinence) to avoiding starting pregnancies). Instead, it would primarily push towards having kids earlier in life and having a large number of them, no?
I think maybe a goal of maximizing how many kids you have is doing all the work here? Almost all of the cases I can think of where someone who is trying to have as many kids as possible would have an abortion if not for a no-voluntary-abortion goal (risk to life of mother, accidental pregnancy early enough in life that it would limit ability to have more other kids later, prenatal test shows serious issues, etc) are cases where I think your reasoning above would lead to having the abortion and then going on to have more other kids.
You’re making the understandable assumption given your family’s history in EA that I too am a saint, and that does run into the conclusion you gave. Most likely, I’ll marry someone who’d also like to have many children, and we’ll have as many children as we agree to. However, if there’s a happy accident, I’d prefer to keep that happy accident. If there were a happy accident who for whatever reason we weren’t able to support, we should give up for adoption rather than abort.
Changing our personal lives in response to a view that it’s very good for more people to exist (and with approximate indifference between ending the lives of fetuses and something that prevents those lives from ever starting) doesn’t seem like it primarily would give avoiding abortion (typically using birth control, non-impregnatable sex, or abstinence) to avoiding starting pregnancies). Instead, it would primarily push towards having kids earlier in life and having a large number of them, no?
I think it should push towards both of those values, and I plan on fulfilling both ;)
Thanks for clarifying!
I think maybe a goal of maximizing how many kids you have is doing all the work here? Almost all of the cases I can think of where someone who is trying to have as many kids as possible would have an abortion if not for a no-voluntary-abortion goal (risk to life of mother, accidental pregnancy early enough in life that it would limit ability to have more other kids later, prenatal test shows serious issues, etc) are cases where I think your reasoning above would lead to having the abortion and then going on to have more other kids.
You’re making the understandable assumption given your family’s history in EA that I too am a saint, and that does run into the conclusion you gave. Most likely, I’ll marry someone who’d also like to have many children, and we’ll have as many children as we agree to. However, if there’s a happy accident, I’d prefer to keep that happy accident. If there were a happy accident who for whatever reason we weren’t able to support, we should give up for adoption rather than abort.