Opening the Economy, Utilitarianism, Abortion, and Our Pressing Ethical Project

One of the best books I’ve read in recent years is, surprisingly, a textbook: The Fundamentals of Ethics, by Russ Shafer-Landau, a professor of philosophy at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. In this book, the author explores a variety of moral theories―hedonism, desire theory, religion, natural law, psychological and ethical egoism, consequentialism, Kantian perspectives, social contract theory, ethical pluralism, virtue ethics, feminist ethics, ethical relativism, and moral nihilism―and examines both the appealing aspects of these theories and their inadequacies. What surprised me was that human ethicists have failed to come up with a moral theory that does not encounter dilemmas sufficient to prevent it from being universally applicable. I guess we could say that life is complicated. Moral dilemmas are everywhere, and no theory deals with them all effectively.

The emergence of the novel coronavirus has highlighted some of the moral dilemmas that undermine ethical theories. Perhaps the one theory that has been pushed to center stage more than others by COVID-19 is utilitarianism, a form of consequentialism. Utilitarianism, according to John Stuart Mill, one of its most famous proponents, requires us to create the greatest good for the greatest number of people or, conversely, to minimize suffering.

Utilitarianism is a popular framework most people use in making sometimes difficult decisions, but it does have serious drawbacks. Let me illustrate with the current predicament facing most states in America as well as the Trump administration. Both sides of the “open the economy” debate are using utilitarian arguments. On the one side, the medical professionals and those who believe them are mostly arguing that keeping social distancing in place and issuing stay-at-home orders will create the greatest long-term good for the country and prevent the most harm, epidemiologically and economically. They are arguing that opening up the economy without sufficient testing and contact tracing will not only cause a spike in deaths in the short term and may overwhelm our hospitals, but also that the economic pain will be greater in the long run. Trump, some state governors, and a smallish wave of vocal protesters are arguing that “the cure is worse than the illness,” that the greatest damage is being done by shutting down the economy. In short, the price of x number of deaths is smaller than the economic suffering of the masses.

This disagreement brings to light some of the weaknesses of utilitarianism. First, how do we measure well-being or suffering? If we cannot measure them, we cannot be sure that we are maximizing well-being or minimizing suffering. How do we compare the pain of a lost job or a lost house with the death of a loved one? Second, how can we know what the long-term results of our current actions will be? Utilitarianism defines morality by the results it produces. But if we cannot accurately know those results for many years, how can we be sure what is moral and what is not? Third, how do we define “good.” Good can have many definitions. For instance, we may consider health to be good, but we may also consider economic prosperity to be good. But what if two manifestations of good are in conflict with each other or, in present circumstances, may be mutually exclusive? There are other challenges to utilitarianism, but one problem most of us face is that we apply utilitarianism selectively.

For instance, consider one popular hypothetical dilemma for utilitarianism. Is it moral to take the life of one healthy individual to preserve the lives of five dying people who need organ transplants? This seems rather straightforward. We can come fairly close to measuring the good here. Five lives preserved versus one lost. The math seems conclusive. But how many of us would really vote to take this action? Especially if the one life to be sacrificed is the life of a family member. And yet this is quite analogous to the current “open the economy” argument. If we open the economy (or get back to normal, as Trump puts it) without sufficient testing and contact tracing (which, despite Trump’s claims, his administration has failed to produce), more people will certainly die than if we don’t open it. But the economic well-being of millions, so the argument goes, outweighs the preventable deaths of tens of thousands of Americans.

This is a difficult moral dilemma. Which is why we should probably not apply utilitarian thinking to it. If it is wrong to kill one person to save the lives of five others, why should it be right to kill tens of thousands to preserve the livelihoods of millions―particularly when that outcome is far from certain? We must base our reasoning on something more ethically sound than the morally shifting foundation of consequentialism. And we can’t just choose to apply utilitarian thinking in some situations but not others. We must at least aim for consistency.

You have probably been wondering what the decision to open the economy has to do with abortion. Well, quite a lot, actually. By and large, it is the far right wing of the Republican Party that is pushing for opening the economy prematurely, and on purely utilitarian grounds. “Give me liberty or give me death” we see on protest posters. But perhaps their slogan should be “Give me liberty and give them death.” Basically, “my liberty is more important than your death.” Or “my economic prospects are more important than your death.” But this same standard is not applied by conservatives to abortion.

I have a neighbor who loves to insist that abortion is “infanticide.” Obviously, the Church offers a more nuanced view. Although Church leaders never give an example of a justified abortion, their policies indicate that certain circumstances do allow it: rape, incest, and the health of the mother, for instance. So abortion is not an absolute evil that must be shunned in every instance. It is very easy to see the Church’s position as utilitarian: sometimes greater overall damage could result from a birth than from ending the life of a fetus. Which opens the door to other potentially exculpatory circumstances. What if, for instance, a single mother with two young children is barely squeaking by. She has no health insurance. She is working at a low-paying job with no maternity leave and can barely make rent and put food on the table. Then, despite her efforts at birth control, she becomes pregnant. The father-to-be is a deadbeat and cannot provide any assistance. If she has the baby―and, of course, she can’t afford the cost of the birth itself―she will also lose her job, her apartment, and will likely end up homeless. Government assistance will be insufficient to tide her over until the baby is old enough to place into childcare, which she can’t afford anyway. If we look at this situation from a strictly utilitarian point of view, the least harm to human life (and economic survival) would arguably be accomplished by an abortion.

This hypothetical scenario is not, by any stretch of the imagination, unrealistic. In fact, it points a reproving finger at the Republican Party, which has been accused of espousing the belief that life begins at conception and ends at birth. If there were a real social safety net for such individuals, then perhaps the GOP’s rigid stand on abortion would be more palatable, but the party has fought tooth and nail for years to deny such individuals an adequate safety net. So why not apply the same utilitarian thinking to this situation that is being applied to the COVID-19 dilemma? I have no answer.

Since the Church already acknowledges a utilitarian approach to some situations regarding abortion, why not other equally compelling ones? Who is to be the arbiter of this very individualized utilitarian decision? Blanket rules simply cannot cover all the possible situations. The only reasonable answer, therefore, is to leave this awful decision in the hands of the mother (and father, if present) and the doctor. No abortion decision is an easy one, but in a utilitarian framework, at least there is some consistency between this decision and other equally perplexing judgments, such as the choice between opening the economy (and thereby causing more deaths) and keeping stay-at-home directives in place and suffering grim economic consequences.

But I am not arguing for utilitarianism to solve either the abortion dilemma or the COVID-19 quandary. Utilitarianism, as a solution to such difficult issues, is certainly a Swiss-cheese panacea. It has too many holes in it.

I am no ethicist or moral philosopher, but if I read Shafer-Landau’s exploration of ethics correctly, perhaps there is no moral theory that is expansive enough to guide us in these difficult dilemmas. But there is at least one moral philosophy that falls far short of providing ethical guidelines to almost any ethical quandary. Unfortunately, it is the moral philosophy espoused unwittingly by our floundering president, Donald Trump. It is called psychological egoism, “which tells us that there is only one thing that motivates human beings: self-interest.”¹ Almost every statement Trump makes and almost every action he takes is guided by a careful calculus that determines “what’s best for Donald?” This is why the staggering number of deaths we have endured does not seem to strike any sympathetic chord in Trump’s heart. They are mere numbers to be spun in such a way as to convince Trump’s followers that his administration has handled the pandemic in an exemplary manner. The pandemic is all about Trump’s reelection possibilities, which is why he has turned pandemic news briefings into political rallies and why he is so desperate to open the economy without having provided for the testing and contact tracing that might make such a move sensible. But the numbers don’t lie. They will damn him in the history books if not in the upcoming election.

Using psychological egoism as the guiding moral philosophy for making life-and-death decisions in a time of global pandemic is as senseless as applying a football playbook to the choreographing of a ballet. But a good many of those who are protesting the stay-at-home orders are indeed following Trump’s moral theory. It’s all about self-interest. No sacrifice for the greater good. It’s all about them. And for some, it’s about the notion that the government has no right, they say, to tell them what to do with their lives. This is raw egoism, which is far inferior to even utilitarianism.

So, how have other countries dealt with this moral dilemma? The ones that have succeeded (and I highlighted a couple in my last post) have actually defused this dilemma by being competent. With timely and adequate testing and contact tracing, they have both halted the spread of the virus and minimized the damage to the economy. By being prepared, they are not faced with the moral dilemma our incompetence has created for America.

But our incompetence is not simply a product of Trump’s fragile egoism. Yes, he has contributed significantly to the problem, but a brilliant article by Ed Yong that appeared recently in The Atlantic summarizes a full range of causes eloquently: “The desire to name an antagonist, be it the Chinese Communist Party or Donald Trump, disregards the many aspects of 21st-century life that made the pandemic possible: humanity’s relentless expansion into wild spaces; soaring levels of air travel; chronic underfunding of public health; a just-in-time economy that runs on fragile supply chains; health-care systems that yoke medical care to employment; social networks that rapidly spread misinformation; the devaluation of expertise; the marginalization of the elderly; and centuries of structural racism that impoverished the health of minorities and indigenous groups. It may be easier to believe that the coronavirus was deliberately unleashed than to accept the harsher truth that we built a world that was prone to it, but not ready for it.”²

If Yong is correct, our ethical and moral failings are both numerous and longstanding. And finding a solution to the coronavirus is only part of the much larger ethical reconstruction project we must undertake if we are to create a better country on the other side of this awful pandemic.

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1. Russ Shafer-Landau, The Fundamentals of Ethics, 2d ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 89.

2. Ed Yong, “Why the Coronavirus Is So Confusing,” The Atlantic, April 29, 2020, https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/04/pandemic-confusing-uncertainty/610819/.