(1) Rawls’s list of the burdens of judgment: (a) empirical and scientific evidence is often complex and conflicting; (b) we may reasonably disagree about the relative weight of different considerations; (c) concepts are vague and subject to hard cases; (d) the way we assess evidence and weigh values can be shaped by our total life experience; (e) different normative considerations on different sides can make overall assessment difficult; and (f) the number of values any social institution can incorporate is limited.
(2) The abortion question hinges on whether anti-choice advocates can justify bringing the coercive power of the state to bear to force people to conform to religious views they don't necessarily hold. The burdens of judgment suggest this is properly left to individuals since no sufficiently compelling secular justification exists to support broad prohibitions against what most people (70% in the US) think of as private health care decisions.
(3) Further, your discussion presupposes a kind of good-faith debate absent in the abortion debate and in general in the US right now. In particular, the historical facts suggest that a significant number of anti-choice advocates use fetal personhood to cover the real motive for their opposition to abortion which is in using it to enforce patriarchal and religious norms on women.
(4) This is one reason the direct application of philosophical ethics to practical debates often does more harm than good. It often involves strengthening the argument for, and the idea that it is a matter of argumentation, various bad-faith positions.
(1) Rawls’s list of the burdens of judgment: (a) empirical and scientific evidence is often complex and conflicting; (b) we may reasonably disagree about the relative weight of different considerations; (c) concepts are vague and subject to hard cases; (d) the way we assess evidence and weigh values can be shaped by our total life experience; (e) different normative considerations on different sides can make overall assessment difficult; and (f) the number of values any social institution can incorporate is limited.
(2) The abortion question hinges on whether anti-choice advocates can justify bringing the coercive power of the state to bear to force people to conform to religious views they don't necessarily hold. The burdens of judgment suggest this is properly left to individuals since no sufficiently compelling secular justification exists to support broad prohibitions against what most people (70% in the US) think of as private health care decisions.
(3) Further, your discussion presupposes a kind of good-faith debate absent in the abortion debate and in general in the US right now. In particular, the historical facts suggest that a significant number of anti-choice advocates use fetal personhood to cover the real motive for their opposition to abortion which is in using it to enforce patriarchal and religious norms on women.
(4) This is one reason the direct application of philosophical ethics to practical debates often does more harm than good. It often involves strengthening the argument for, and the idea that it is a matter of argumentation, various bad-faith positions.