Costing a life

During the height of the Covid crisis (hopefully to never venture higher), there was “out there”, where opinions fester and, yes, take on a life of their own, an ongoing debate concerning the value to be placed upon any life; considered in terms of years already lived and the potential for those yet to come. Stated in short: Must society and its institutions protect the older amongst us (seniors or retirees, say) or rather focus on the more productive, those in the middle of life (workers, parents, students) or, indeed, the very youngest with the most years yet before them (infants, school children)? It could hardly surprise, that neither a morally nor a functionally sustainable solution could be agreed upon, rather, as the pandemic wore on, what could be witnessed was only a hardening of the positions and an intensification of already existing tensions between generations – and interest groups (e.g. employers, unions, health services, schools) in their service.

Mostly, I must say, I found these debates exceedingly irritating; often simplistic, and very often the empiric data on which arguments were built being cherry-picked for purpose and presented as evidential – and by all parties. It seemed to me, in the midst of this global crisis that dominated every aspect of many people’s lives, that solidarity should be encouraged and not fault lines created across nations, class and generations. Especially, the latter surprised me. I hadn’t realized the fragility of our modern societal (and familial) structures, in which one is viewed essentially only in relation to the discretely – and discreetly! – numbered stages of one’s life.

Now, an inflammatory issue reemerges (as if it ever went away!) that is in some respects analogous; arising from a quite different circumstance but none the less still concerned with – in fact, springing from – the very murky, ill-defined logic that results from trying to neatly organize all the stages of a human life. I am speaking, of course, of the abortion debate in the US; heating up again following the Supreme Court leak that more than suggests an impending overturn of Roe v. Wade and the Court’s intention of sending abortion rights to the mercy and inconsistencies of state jurisdiction, and being fought with the usual ritualistic fervor.

As in those arguments surrounding measures to curb the pandemic, again, in respect to abortion rights, one is confronted with a situation that seemingly demands a value (of life) judgement. And to an even more radical degree. A complex matter, but one deserving of consideration.

One consideration may follow a scenario like this:

If a foetus is a life, when is it a life? And what value may be placed upon that life? Say, for instance, we take a 10-year-old child; one who may be expected to live for eighty more years; who may earn x amount in that period by some productive means (whereby the productivity is highly subjective and variable) and thereby contribute to society; who may themselves have x children; x grand-children. Is that child’s life more valuable than that of their parents with half of their life (therefore their productivity – in the widest sense, including giving life to this child) behind them, and even more so than that of their retired perhaps ailing grand-parents? Following this logic, does not a 10 week old foetus then have even greater potential, therefore greater worth? And in the preceding embryonic stage, more so again? Generally speaking, and particularly in terms of the latter stages of the argument, I would suggest that most reasonable people would find absurdity in the hypothesis.

(I recall a thought experiment being posed along the lines of: Say, a maternity clinic is on fire and there is the opportunity to save either a mother or a baby from the ward or a collection of IVF embryo cultures in a laboratory awaiting transfer. I cannot believe anyone’s inclination would be to first think about the embryos; our instinct seems to inform us as to what human life is – and it is not to be found in a Petri dish. And such was the unanimous result of the experiment.)

But, should we really even attempt to evaluate productivity – as a potential, in medias res, or already rendered – when pertaining to the breadth of diversity that is a defining characteristic of human existence? And does a technical reckoning so based fail to recognize life as a continuum, intrinsic in and of itself – inside or outside a woman’s uterus, and independent of discrete time and somebody else’s notion of what a life should look like? To be fair, during the pandemic, there were also voices raised, speaking beyond monetary or societal gains and urging respect for individual human needs and experience. And, from those who oppose abortion rights, I haven’t recognized in their argumentation an emphasis on future (monetary and economic) contributions (of, for instance, a foetus) to the State, so their position doesn’t appear to be influenced by purely utilitarian motives. In fact, it should be said, there is a preponderance of “right to life” fundamentalists who don’t hold much with Government – especially Federal – anyway, and, it follows, their imposition and regulation of taxes and social welfare and the like. There is, though, a sinister suggestion of a white majority – decreasing with the passing of each decade and predicted lost by mid-century – that has an interest in bringing each and every white baby to term; irrespective of the economic balance sheet. If only that these same people would be inclined to assert as much energy and money and love into the welfare, security and education of these “lives” they so fervently wish to “save”!

On Tuesday, an 18-year-old walked into an elementary school in rural Texas and murdered 19 children and 2 teachers. A week or so prior, a young man of about the same age murdered 10 people in a supermarket in Buffalo. (This latter accompanied by a white supremacist diatribe.) Just one representative snapshot of lives – whole lives – being extinguished all over the US week in week out. An horrendous situation that presumably enough Americans are prepared to accept in the interest of their (god-given? second amendment affirmed!) right to bear arms; from which it follows: the right to buy armaments and munition with the minimum of control and duress. A despairing Michelle Goldberg says in The New York Times today:

[…]Guns are now the leading cause of death for American children. Many conservatives consider this a price worth paying for their version of freedom. Our institutions give these conservatives disproportionate power […]And so among liberals, there’s an overwhelming feeling of despair. Even as people learn the names of all those murdered children, the most common sentiment is not “never again,” but a bitter acknowledgment that nothing is going to change. America is too sick, too broken. It is perhaps beyond repair. […]

“America May Be Broken Beyond Repair” in NY Times, May 27 2022

In abortion rights and gun control we have two examples of “costing life” in the contemporary United States. I loathe to assume, but I must, given what we know of social conservative structures, that a not insignificant proportion of those who oppose abortion (at any stage) on the basis of the sanctity of life irrespective of the costs, also seem to accept a cost/benefit analysis such as that quoted above that protects their individual freedoms with scant regard for the greater common good and, indeed, the lives of others.

What is the value of a life? And who is to decide??

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