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Schrödinger’s Fetus

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Abstract

This paper defends and develops Elizabeth Harman’s Actual Future Principle with a concept called Schrödinger’s Fetus. I argue that all early fetuses are Schrödinger’s Fetuses: those early fetuses that survive and become conscious beings have full moral status already as early fetuses, but those fetuses that die as early fetuses lack moral status. With Schrödinger’s Fetus, it becomes possible to accept two widely held but contradictory intuitions to be true, and to avoid certain reductiones ad absurdum that pro-life and pro-choice positions face. It also gives a simple solution to the problem of prenatal harm.

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Notes

  1. I will define ‘fetus’ as any post-conception pre-birth being, including embryos. My focus here is on early abortions. Most abortions are done during the early phase of fetal development; therefore, my argument covers most abortions, although it technically covers only early abortions.

  2. For recent criticism see for example a blog post by ‘Maverick Philosopher’ (2017), Michael Spielman’s (2012) article in Abort73.com and Margot Cleveland’s (2017) article in the Federalist ‘Yes, The Princeton Prof’s Argument For Early Abortion Is Stupid.’

  3. Many pro-choice scholars use the embryo rescue case to show that the pro-life view is untenable. For example Lovering (2014), Räsänen (2016) and Greasley and Kaczor (2018, pp. 27–32).

  4. Schrödinger's fetus is indebted to Schrödinger's cat, a thought experiment devised by physicist Erwin Schrödinger. His aim was to illustrate what he saw as the problem of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics applied to everyday objects. The scenario presents a cat that may be simultaneously both alive and dead. The thought experiment was an inspiration for the claim that an early fetus has an undetermined metaphysical and ethical nature, although Schrödinger’s original proposal was about an epistemological, not a metaphysical problem.

  5. For similar reasoning see Spielman (2012).

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Anna Smajdor, Ole Martin Moen, Aksel Braanen Sterri and anonymous referees for commenting on earlier versions of this paper. Thanks also to Milla Miettinen.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Arts and Ideas, Faculty of Humanities, University of Oslo, P.O. Box 1020, Blindern, 0315, Oslo, Norway

    Joona Räsänen

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Correspondence to Joona Räsänen.

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Räsänen, J. Schrödinger’s Fetus. Med Health Care and Philos 23, 125–130 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11019-019-09916-4

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