Disclaimer: I am very, very, very tentatively pro-choice, though very undecided. This is my defense of a view I don’t hold.
For those who have been sleeping under a rock since Chalmers’ magnum opus , a philosophical zombie is a being that an exact physical replica of a human but that lacks consciousness. The zombie version of me would type out these exact same sentences — every atom would move the same way — but it would not be conscious. All is dark inside the zombie. There is nothing that it’s like to be it.
For those who have been sleeping under a rock since Hendricks’ argument, the impairment argument is the following.
If it’s wrong to give a fetus fetal alcohol syndrome then it’s wrong to abort it.
It’s wrong to give a fetus fetal alcohol syndrome
Therefore, it’s wrong to abort a fetus.
The argument for premise 2 is based on the following.
The Impairment Principle: If it is immoral to impair an organism O to the nth degree, then, ceteris paribus, it is immoral to impair O to the n+1 degree
Because killing the fetus is a greater impairment than merely giving it FAS, it’s thus wrong to kill it if it’s wrong to give it FAS.
There’s fascinating literature surrounding the impairment argument. But I think that, by introducing the idea of zombies, we can get a much stronger argument. It would be the following.
If it’s permissible to abort a fetus, it would be permissible to turn a fetus into a zombie.
If it’s permissible to turn a fetus into a zombie, it would be permissible to turn a fetus into a zombie for 40 years.
It would not be permissible to turn a fetus into a zombie for 40 years.
Therefore, it’s not permissible to abort a fetus.
1 is pretty intuitive — there doesn’t seem to be any difference between being a physical replica of a human that’s not conscious and being dead. In neither cases can one be benefitted or harmed.
2 is also pretty intuitive — it follows from the impairment principle, but it also just has a degree of plausibility. If you can turn a fetus permanently into a zombie, then it wouldn’t be wrong to turn it into a zombie for 40 years.
The most common objection to the traditional impairment argument is that giving the fetus FAS would harm it when it’s a full-fledged infant. But this can’t apply here — after all, zombifying it wouldn’t harm it; there’s no conscious being to be harmed.
Arguments about the fetus not being the same person as the adult human do not apply here. If they are zombified, they are not the same person as the fetus or the adult self. Because zombification takes place in the first 40 years of life, it takes place before the fetus has developed consciousness — thus, the fetus is never conscious if it’s zombified.
3 is very obvious — zombification is as bad as death.
And 4 follows from the first 3.
Here's a plausible alternative to the impairment principle:
(The harm principle): it's impermissible to cause a conscious person to have a significantly worse life than they otherwise would have, but permissible to prevent or refrain from bringing a conscious person into existence.
The harm principle explains why (2) is false. Permanent zombification prevents a conscious person from existing. Nobody is harmed by this. 40-year zombification deprives a person of the first 40 years of their life. That harms them.
Good argument.
FAP is wrong since it’s affecting a conscious being (albeit in the future), abortion is wrong to the extent a conscious being is killed.
If the non conscious fetus becomes a zombie, then no conscious being is affected and the grown fetus is outside of our moral universe. No moral wrong can be committed. Yet if the fetus is conscious when zombified, only then is a wrong committed.