JURIDICAS VOL 3 No2 - ucaldas.edu.co

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DDDDDWWWWWORKINORKINORKINORKINORKIN, THE AB, THE AB, THE AB, THE AB, THE ABORORORORORTION BTION BTION BTION BTION BAAAAATTLE, ANDTTLE, ANDTTLE, ANDTTLE, ANDTTLE, ANDWORLD HUNGERWORLD HUNGERWORLD HUNGERWORLD HUNGERWORLD HUNGER*****

Recibido: jul. 24 / 06Aprobado: ago. 1 / 06

THOMAS POGGE**

* Este ensayo se publicó originalmente en: Veronique Zanetti – Steffen Wesche (eds.)Ronald Dworkin. Bruselas: Ousia, 1999, pp. 463-507. Por el debate actual en Colombiasobre la despenalización del aborto en tres casos taxativos, estimamos que resulta desingular relevancia su reimpresión aquí, por primera vez, la cual es publicada por gentilautorización del prof. Pogge. La versión castellana, autoría de Leonardo García J. y Pablo R.Arango, aparecerá próximamente.** Diplom in Soziologie, Hamburg University. Ph.D. in philosophy, Harvard University;dissertation on Kant, Rawls, and global justice (Advisor: John Rawls). Professor, ColumbiaUniversity Political Science Department. Professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophyand Public Ethics, Australian National University. [email protected]. Many thanksto Rüdiger Bittner, Bonnie Kent, Jens Saugstad, Judith Thomson, and Ling Tong for veryhelpful comments and criticisms.

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Thomas Pogge

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Dworkin, the Abortion Battle, and World Hunger

Revista Jurídicas. Vol. 3, No. 2, Julio - Diciembre, 2006, págs. 11-45

RESUMEN

DWORKIN, LA CONTRO-VERSIA SOBRE EL ABORTOY EL HAMBRE GLOBAL

Este ensayo relaciona la lucha con suprimirel hambre en el mundo, con la controversiasobre el aborto. Critica la defensa deDworkin de la legalidad del aborto, ypresenta razones para que las personas enlos lados pro-vida y pro-elección inviertansu tiempo y recursos en la lucha contra el

ABSTRACT

This essay relates the struggle to eradicateworld hunger to the battle over abortion. Itcriticize the Dworkin’s defense of thelegality of abortion, by presenting argumentsso that those in both sides of the abortiondebate (pro-election and pro-life) spendtheir time and resources in the fight againstworld hunger instead of the abortion battle,in which both sides could work together. Inthe fight over whether and to what extentabortions should be legal, great expendituresof effort are merely neutralizing each other.Meanwhile, fighting world hunger is muchless wasteful, and less costly for civilharmony and for the position of morality inour culture. Various counter-arguments –invoking cost-effectiveness considerations,or the distinctions between doing and lettinghappen or between compatriots andforeigners– can be refuted.

Key words: Abortion, Dworkin, globalhunger, moral priorities, civil harmony.

hambre en el mundo, en lugar de lacontroversia sobre el aborto, en la cualambos lados podrían trabajar juntos. En lalucha sobre si, y en qué medida, los abortosdeben ser legales, un gran gasto de esfuerzoes simplemente neutralizando entre lasperspectivas pro-vida y pro-elección,mientras que combatir el hambre en elmundo es mucho menos despilfarrador ycostoso para la armonía civil y para lasituación de la moralidad en nuestra cultura.Varios contra-argumentos, como aquellosque invocan consideraciones sobre el costo-beneficio, la distinción entre hacer y dejarhacer, o entre los compatriotas y losextranjeros, pueden ser refutados.

Palabras clave: Aborto, Dworkin, hambreglobal, prioridades morales, armonía civil.

I. INTRODUCTION

There is, in many countries today, anintense and sometimes acrimoniouspublic and academic struggle overabortion. The main intellectual dispute–henceforth the abortion debate orabortion controversy– concerns thequestion what position the state, andspecifically the law, ought to take:Should they tolerate abortions ondemand, at least in the early stages ofpregnancy; or should such abortions belegally prohibited, and those having andperforming them be punished? Thisdebate is part of a larger, politicalstruggle –henceforth the abortion battle–

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Thomas Pogge

which is about what position the state andthe law do and will in fact take on abortion.

Ronald Dworkin has recently madea serious and sensitive contributionto the abortion debate (DWORKIN,1993). His central claim is that thiscontroversy is best understood not asa debate over whether unborn humanbeings are persons with interests anda right to life, but rather as a debateover how best to interpret a profoundbelief in the intrinsic value of humanlife that is shared on all sides. Themain motive behind Dworkin’sattempt to understand the abortioncontroversy in this new way ispolitical: He shares the goal ofvarious recent authors of findingcommon ground between thedisputants or helping Americans livetogether even while they disagreeabout abortion (and much else)1. Buthe firmly asserts (DWORKIN, 1993:9) that achieving this goal isunreal is t ic so long as one s idebel ieves that women have afundamental r ight to choose anabortion, while the other holds thatabortion violates an unborn person’sright to life.

But aren’t these precisely the beliefs onthe two sides? According to Dworkin:

Yes and no. Those on the pro choiceside do indeed believe that women havea fundamental right to choose anabortion, and Dworkin fully agrees withthem that women have this right, andought to have it legally, during the firsttwo trimesters of pregnancy. Ostensibly,Dworkin addresses then those on thepro life side. His argument is supposedto show that they –the great majority ofthem, anyway– do not really believe thata human fetus has a right to life,however firmly they may think that theybelieve this. It is supposed to show thatthese pro lifers really hold two otherbeliefs. They believe, first, that humanlife in all its forms has intrinsic value, acertain sanctity, which is violated whena human fetus is aborted. Dworkin saysthat this belief is shared by most on thepro choice side, including himself. Mostpro lifers believe, second, that, even inthe early stages of pregnancy, theviolation of the sanctity of human lifethrough an abortion morally outweighsthe ordinary frustrations a pregnantwoman may have to endure by carryingher fetus to term, and that it is thereforemorally wrong to have or perform anordinary abortion, i.e., one not involvingspecial circumstances. Specialcircumstances obtain when the motheris extremely young or her pregnancythreatens her own health or is due to

1 Dworkin specifically mentions in this vein Tribe 1990 and Rosenblatt 1992. Though he makesserious efforts to incorporate the European (mainly British) political experience, his discussion isnevertheless strongly focused on the United States, and particularly on the period since the SupremeCourt, in Roe v. Wade (1973), affirmed a woman’s constitutional right to choose an abortion duringthe first six months of her pregnancy. I follow Dworkin in discussing the abortion controversyprimarily within this context, while sharing his view that the issues are relevantly similar in manyother countries.

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rape or incest. This second belief is, ofcourse, rejected by Dworkin and hisallies on the pro choice side.

If Dworkin’s restructuring of the pro lifeposition succeeds, then the abortiondebate is about how much weight to giveto something we all agree is a disvalue:to the violation of the sanctity of humanlife through an abortion. This would benice for both sides in that thedisagreement would turn out to be basedupon a deeper agreement and also inthat the disagreement would turn out tobe about the weighing of competingvalues –just the sort of issue aboutwhich reasonable persons can disagreewithout losing respect for one another.It would, moreover, be very nice forDworkin’s own pro choice side. Howmuch weight should be given to theviolation of the sanctity of human lifethrough an abortion– this seems to bejust the kind of question we do not wantthe state to settle for everyone. This isso, because this question is intenselypersonal (DWORKIN, 1993: 106, 172),extremely controversial in our culture(DWORKIN, 1993: 151), and also, mostimportantly, “essentially religious”(DWORKIN, 1993: 155). By frequentlyexpressing the belief that we supposedlyall share in terms of the sanctity (andonly rarely in terms of the intrinsic value)of human life, Dworkin prepares theground for the refrain of his text, whichappears throughout with minor

variations: “The crucial question iswhether a state can impose themajority’s conception of the sacred oneveryone” (DWORKIN, 1993: 109).Not surprisingly, Dworkin maintains thatthe only reasonable answer to thisquestion is No. And he warmly inviteshis pro life opponents to come aroundto the view that the disagreement aboutwhether ordinary abortions are wrong,like other spiritual and religiousdisagreements, calls for mutualtolerance rather than criminal lawcoercion by the state: Since we all havecome firmly to accept that the stateshould not be mobilized to preventcitizens from making what some of usregard as religious errors, reformed prolifers will be glad to accept that the stateshould not be mobilized to prevent whatthey regard as a serious underestimateof how gravely an abortion offends thesanctity of human life (cp. DWORKIN,1993: 164f). They can still hold that thestate may encourage reflective,responsible and conscientious decisionsabout abortions by requiring women toabsorb relevant information and byimposing a waiting period upon them2.But reformed pro-lifers will agree thatthe state must not force a particulardecision upon women.

It takes some chutzpah to announce –in the third decade of an intensive publicdebate over whether abortion ondemand should be legal– that one side

2 Dworkin himself opposes such a waiting period as unduly coercive (1993: 173f). But I think hewould hold that the restructured pro life view he outlines could plausibly permit (or even require) it.He is taken to task for this in Stroud (1996).

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to this debate has severelymisunderstood its own most basicbeliefs, that those who often refer tothemselves as the right to life movementdo not really believe that every humanfetus has a right to life. Should it turnout that many pro lifers will indeed –after having Dworkin explain to themthe true nature of their own beliefs–accept his restructuring of their position,then I will surely not want to stand intheir way. I strongly doubt, however,that this will happen, that Dworkinhimself seriously believes this willhappen (and even that Dworkin thinksthat he believes this will happen). Isuspect rather that, while Dworkinostensibly addresses the pro life side,his real target audience is his own alliesin the pro choice camp. His message isthat good liberals owe noaccommodation to pro lifers who seekto outlaw abortion on demand, becausesuch pro lifers are really only trying toimpose their religious convictions upontheir fellow citizens.

In the remainder of this essay, I will firstgive reasons for doubting thatDworkin’s argument will make anyheadway with those on the pro life side.I will do this by criticizing his argument–showing why I do not find hisrestructuring of the pro life positioncompelling (Section II) and why theusual pro life position does not seem tome to be infected by the deep

inconsistencies Dworkin claims to findin it (Section III). I will then try to showthat what Dworkin declares impossibleis possible after all: that significantcommon ground can be developedbetween the pro choice and the pro lifesides, even if the latter do reaffirm theirharshest claim: that abortion, at least inordinary circumstances, is murder(Sections IV VIII).

II.

While the new self understandingDworkin offers to the foes of abortionhas considerable intellectual appeal –much more, certainly, than my briefsketch could reveal– his argumentnevertheless has three important weakspots. The next section (III.) will discusstwo of these, which are weaknesses inhow Dworkin supports his claim that thosenow committed to the standard pro lifeposition have compelling reason toembrace the dramatic revisions he offers.

The present section discusses the third,which is the weakness of the linkbetween Dworkin’s new construal ofthe pro life position and the politicalattitude he believes follows from it. Ifind it doubtful, that is, whetherDworkin’s construal of the pro lifeposition leads as easily to toleration ashe suggests. In fact, his argumentbecomes rather sketchy at this point.He simply says that construing the pro

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life position as giving greater weight tothe sanctity of human life “ties it to animportant tradition of religious tolerationwith substantial roots in all genuinemodern democracies” (DWORKIN,1993: 20). But surely someone mightaccept Dworkin’s construal of the prolife position and nevertheless hold that,quite apart from any religious beliefs,the violation of the sanctity of humanlife through an abortion so plainlymorally outweighs the ordinaryfrustrations a pregnant woman mayhave to endure by carrying her fetus toterm that the state must or at least(through democratic legislativeprocedures) may ban the abortion of anyhealthy fetus, when the pregnancy is notdue to rape or incest and does notseriously endanger the mother’s vitalinterests. Analogous settlements prevailthroughout the developed countries onsuch issues as animal sacrifices,polygamy, and pedophilia. In the firstissue, two disvalues must be balancedagainst each other: a violation of thevalue of animal life and of our humanstewardship for all life on Earth againstthe frustrations endured by thoseprevented from worshipping as their

religion requires. The second issueinvolves balancing the concern todiscourage morally offensive relationsbetween men and women against thefrustrations endured by those preventedfrom shaping their private lives as theyprefer. In these cases, Dworkin as wellas most citizens of the developed West–with strong support from the dominantreligious denominations– do not believethat the state must allow each adult tobalance the two disvalues as he or shedeems fit. Rather, we hold that our statesmust (or at least may) prohibit thepractices in question, which is preciselywhat in fact they do.3 It remains an openquestion, then, why those acceptingDworkin’s new construal of the pro lifeposition should end up supporting thepolitical settlement Dworkin himselffavors: the legality of any abortion ondemand during the first two trimesters.

Dworkin is not the only one who hassought to support this political settlementby appeal to some ideal of religioustoleration. During the past 15 years orso, many arguments of this sort havebeen produced in the United States. Thetwo put forward by Mario Cuomo, then

3 The three analogues clearly show that Dworkin cannot establish the crucial link to toleration merelythrough rhetorical questions like the one cited above (from DWORKIN, 1993: 109), or: “Does a decentgovernment attempt to dictate to its citizens what intrinsic values they will recognize, and why, andhow?” (DWORKIN, 1993: 117). We do dictate in just this way when we outlaw animal sacrifices,multiple marriages, and pedophile relations even if desired by both the minor and his or her parents.The analogues show something else as well. Dworkin argues that women must be legally free to havean abortion, for “if a majority has the power to impose its own views about the sanctity of life oneveryone, then the state could require someone to abort, even if that were against her own religiousor ethical convictions” (DWORKIN, 1993: 159). But this is plainly false. Our widely shared beliefthat the state may prohibit animal sacrifices, polygamy, and pedophilia surely does not entail thatthe state may also require them.

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Governor of the State of New York, andJohn Rawls are the best known.4 Theirgeneral strategy, pervasive inDworkin’s book as well (especiallyDWORKIN, 1993: 156ff), is to arguefor restrictions on the reasons that maylegitimately be adduced in public politicaldebates and in justification of statecoercion. Any exercise of state powerought to be justifiable with reasons thatare available in the shared public cultureand thus generally accessible to all thosesubject to this power. Even if one isconvinced, for instance, that requiringcitizens to attend religious services wouldsave countless souls from eternaldamnation, one is not to support, to votefor, or to help enforce such a measureif all one can adduce in its support isone’s own religious faith, however firmand sincere. The same constraint –byRawls referred to as the “duty ofcivility”– is then invoked to settle theabortion controversy, along these lines:“You propose that abortions be legallyprohibited and punished by the state.Implementation of this proposal wouldconstitute an exercise of state poweragainst your fellow citizens. Such anexercise of state power mustbe justifiable with public reasons. Thenotion that an early human fetus has aright to life on a par with that of a humanbeing already born is, however, groundedin certain religious convictions

–concerning ensoulment, perhaps, or thesanctity of human life– that are not partof our public culture and so not generallyaccessible. Hence the proposed use ofstate power is illegitimate”.

Though I cannot here discuss this viewthoroughly, let me mention threeobjections to it which have not so far, Ibelieve, been satisfactorily answered.First, significant doubts have been raisedabout whether a reasonably clear anduncontroversial distinction can be drawnbetween justifications that are and thosethat are not “generally accessible” or“available within the public culture”.Second, is it really reasonable to demandthat citizens put aside their most deeplyheld moral convictions, that they ignorewhat they firmly believe to be wrongsand injustices of the greatest gravity,merely because the reasons for theirconvictions are not part of the publicculture?5

Third, it can plausibly be argued that theconstraint cuts not only one way. In theargument we have just considered, theconstraint works only in conjunction witha certain assumption about the burdenof proof. It is assumed that what standsin need of justification is the exerciseof state power against women and theirdoctors. Dworkin, though he relies onthis assumption throughout, does not

4 Cuomo’s argument was presented in a 1984 speech at Notre Dame University in Indiana, which isreprinted as Cuomo 1993. Rawls’s argument was developed around the same time and is nowcomprehensively restated in Part II of Rawls (1993). Dworkin cites both arguments with approval(DWORKIN, 1993: 31 and 252n13, respectively).5 Both kinds of doubt are raised, for example, in Greenawalt (1987). See also Galston (1990).

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argue for it or even formulate it clearly.An exemplary formulation of it isoffered by Judith Thomson: “One sidesays that the fetus has a right to life fromthe moment of conception, the other sidedenies this. Neither side is able to proveits case. (…) Why break the symmetryby letting the deniers win instead of thesupporters? The answer is that thesituation is not symmetrical. (…) Whatthe supporters want is a licence toimpose force; what the deniers want isa licence to be free of it. It is the formerthat needs the justification”(THOMSON, 1995: 14). But one mightassign the burden of proof to the otherparty on the ground that it is really thepro-lifers who want a licence to be freeof force: a licence for unborn humanbeings not to be forced out from wherealone they can continue to live, and thatit is really the pro-choicers who wanta licence to impose force: a licence forpregnant women to force their unviableoffspring out of their bodies to certaindeath. To be sure, those forciblyprevented from having an abortion havethe capacity to demand a justificationwhile those forcibly removed from awomb do not. In this respect, thesituation is indeed asymmetrical. Butwhy should this be a morally relevantasymmetry? And if the exercise of force

against a human being needed ajustification only if that human beingherself can demand one, then whyshould we not legalize the killing of latefetuses, and babies, as well?

In the absence of a response to thischallenge, one could then turn the tablesand argue for the legal prohibition ofordinary abortions, as follows: “Youdemand that the exercise of state powerfor the sake of protecting the physicalintegrity of human beings be confinedto those who have been born (or tothose beyond the second trimester).But this proposed discrimination mustbe justifiable with reasons that areavailable in our public culture. Thenotion that the moral status of an earlyfetus is far below the equal moral statusof human beings already born is,however, grounded in convictions –concerning the falsehood of certainreligions perhaps– that are not part ofour public culture and so not generallyaccessible. Hence the proposeddiscriminatory use of state power isillegitimate”6. The availability of such aparallel argument makes clear that theconstraint by itself cannot settle anythingso long as we lack an authoritativeassignment of the burden of proof whichneither side can reasonably reject.

6 This argument is roughly parallel to how the constraint could be adduced –now to universalacclaim– in favor of women’s suffrage: The burden of proof is to be placed on those favoring unequalmoral status. This line of thought has considerable force, I believe, against Dworkin’s argument,which assigns an inferior moral status to a human fetus, a status that is gradually elevated as thehuman and natural “investment” in it becomes more substantial (DWORKIN, 1993: 91 100). It hasno force, however, against libertarian proponents of legalized abortions –discussed below– whoconcede that a human fetus has the same moral status as a human being already born.

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III.

Let us proceed to what I consider theother two important weak spots inDworkin’s argument. First, it is doubtfulwhether Dworkin has really shown thestandard pro life position to be in the kindof deep trouble that would, he believes,push its adherents to look for a plausiblealternative. Without such a push, theymay not take enough of an interest in hisalternative construal to experience thepull of its intellectual appeal. Second, it isdoubtful whether pro-lifers would reallyfind Dworkin’s construal of their positionto be the next most attractive alternative.Indeed, Dworkin does not assert this anddoes not even consider the question.Should the standard pro-life position reallycome to be seen as untenable, then otherplausible new construals, perhaps muchless conciliatory ones, will also emerge;and pro-lifers might well find one of theseother restructurings more attractive thanthe one Dworkin proposes. These twoweaknesses run into each other; theiridentities depend on how precisely orvaguely the standard pro life position isunderstood. Either way, the key questionis whether pro lifers really havecompelling reason to accept as dramatica restructuring of their position asDworkin has proposed to them.

The position Dworkin thinks pro lifersshould abandon, on pains ofinconsistency, can be sketched throughthe following four claims:

(0) Even an early human fetus hasinterests.(1) Even an early human fetus is aperson.(2) Even an early human fetus has aright to life.(3) Abortion is murder.

Pro-lifers generally believe (3) on thebasis of (2) and, in some cases at least,(2) on the basis of (1). Dworkin holdsthat both (1) and (2) presuppose (0),though he correctly concedes that pro-lifers typically take no position on (0).

Clearly, the crucial claims here are (2)and (3). Claims (0) and (1) are abstract,philosophical claims that do not seem tohave a clear and shared meaning withinthe public abortion controversy –and theextensive poll data Dworkin provides donot elucidate how these claims areunderstood or how widely they areendorsed. If (2) and (3) fall, the pro lifeposition will have been dramaticallytransformed and, if they survive, thestandard pro life position will also havesurvived in its essentials. Once someonehas firmly endorsed or denied (2) and(3), his or her views on (1) and (0) areof precious little political, practical, orpersonal relevance. Dworkin denies thison the ground that claims (2) and (3)presuppose (1) and (0) –that, inparticular, it makes no sense to attributea right to a being that has no interests.But he offers no defense for thisassertion. Judith Thomson, the leadingphilosophical theorist on rights and a

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staunch defender of abortion rights,allows that “we lack a compellingrationale” for asserting the dependenceof rights on interests and that shetherefore “know[s] of no conclusivereason for denying that fertilized eggshave a right to life” (THOMSON, 1995:12). This should suffice to show that itis not, pace Dworkin, unreasonabletoday to affirm (2) while denying (0).

The inconsistencies that put pressure onstandard pro life position derive from thefact, says Dworkin, that the greatmajority of pro-lifers are also committedto

(4) Abortion should be legal in somecircumstances.

Dworkin adduces (DWORKIN, 1993:13f) various polls in support of thisattribution. Among the more recentfindings he cites are the following: A1991 Gallup poll found that 48.3 percentof Americans hold that abortion ismurder7. A 1990 Wirthlin poll found that60 percent of Americans consider thestatement that “all human life, includingthat of the unborn, should be protected”either extremely convincing or veryconvincing and that roughly the samewas true for the statement that “everyunborn child has a basic right to life”.The same poll found, on the other hand,

“that only 7 percent said that abortionshould be illegal in all circumstances, andonly 14 percent said that it should belegal only when necessary to save thelife of the mother” (DWORKIN, 1993:14). This is confirmed by a 1992 Time/CNN poll, finding only ten percentmaintaining that abortion should beillegal in all circumstances. The polls doindeed show, then, that large majoritiesof pro lifers –namely somewherebetween 79 percent and 89 percent ofthose who profess to believe thatabortion is murder or that every unbornchild has a basic right to life8 – are willingto permit abortions in cases of rape,incest, fetal deformity, or a threat to themother’s vital interests.

Before proceeding to examine whether(4) really is inconsistent with (2) and (3),I should point out that, even if it were,the inconsistencies could still be resolvedeither way. Dworkin reasons that, since(4) is inconsistent with (2) and (3), thosewho are committed to (4) cannot reallybelieve that a human fetus has a rightto life and that abortion is murder. Butone might just as well reason the otherway around: Since (4) is inconsistentwith (2) and (3), those who believe in(2) and (3) cannot really believe thatabortion should be legal in somecircumstances. Politically, it is a wideopen question how those 38 50 percent

7 36.8 percent agree that “abortion is just as bad as killing a person who has already been born, it ismurder” and 11.5 percent agree that “abortion is murder, but it is not as bad as killing someone whohas already been born”.8 Estimating on the basis of the poll findings I have cited, this percentage would be at least: (48.3%10%)/48.3%, and at most: (60% 7%)/60%.

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of Americans who now believe (2), (3),and (4) would react, if they were toaccept the inconsistencies Dworkinalleges. It is entirely possible that manyof them would join the ranks of what isnow a minority (of 11 21 percent) amongpro lifers: those who hold that abortionshould be illegal in all circumstances9.Such a backfiring of Dworkin’s effortis all the more likely, because he offersno argument at all against this mostradical pro life view –his entire effort isconcentrated on those moderate pro-lifers who accept (4), i.e., favor someexceptions.

It is then perhaps fortunate on the wholefor Dworkin’s cause that theinconsistencies he purports to find arerather dubious. Let us consider first thealleged inconsistency of (2) and (4). Agreat deal of intellectual energy has beenexpended on showing how these twobeliefs are consistent, and Dworkinmakes no effort toward demonstratingthat all these attempts have failed. I

cannot do justice to this vast literaturehere, of course, but let me discuss atleast one well-known and formidableattempt, which argues that the right tolife is limited by basic liberty rights10.

On this view, I do not violate your rightto life by failing to rescue you frommortal danger when this rescue wouldimpose upon me considerable cost.Likewise, a woman does not violate theright to life of her fetus if –through adrug, hot bath, or physical procedure–she separates the fetus from herself. Aright to life includes no right to benurtured and sustained at considerablecost. One is not required to offer thehospitality of one’s body to others formonths at a time, even when their livesdepend on it. The best known versionof this view has been presented byJudith Thomson11. Her essay vividlystresses the great cost involved inundergoing an unwanted pregnancy.Even the right to life of a grown persondoes not, she maintains, require others

9 This, of course, was the position of the Pope John Paul II (1995).10 Two other classic attempts, through which only narrower sets of exceptions might be justified,involve the doctrines of self-defence and double effect. The former limits the right to life so that onemay kill another when this is necessary to protect oneself against a threat he poses, even through nofault of his own. A woman may therefore cause the death of her fetus when it threatens her survival(or perhaps merely her health), even if this fetus has a right to life. The latter doctrine limits the rightto life so that one may perform an action that one foresees will result in the death of an innocenthuman being, if this death is not intended either as an end or as a means and if the good the action willproduce both cannot be attained at lesser cost and is sufficiently large to balance the evil of the deathforeseen. Aiming to preserve the life (or perhaps merely the health) of a pregnant woman, her doctormay therefore take necessary measures that will foreseeably result in the death of her fetus. Althoughthese two ways of incorporating exceptions into the standard pro life position go back at least toAquinas, Dworkin mentions neither of them. Both doctrines are discussed in Grisez (1970) and inDonagan (1977: sections 3.3 and 5.3). See also Anscombe (1981: 54-81), and Foot (1977).11 Thomson 1971. Dworkin briefly mentions Thomson’s view en passant (DWORKIN, 1993: 54,249n4), but he does not engage with its substance.

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to preserve this life at such high cost tothemselves. Her defense of thepermissibility of abortion is thencompatible with assigning to a humanfetus as much of a right to life as tohuman beings already born12.

It may be thought that a view likeThomson’s justifies all abortions and isthus incompatible with anythingrecognizable as a pro life position. Butthis is not so. One can plausibly holdthat I do have a duty to rescue you evenat very considerable cost, if your beingin mortal danger is a foreseeableconsequence of something I havevoluntarily done. And one can theninsist, analogously, that a woman has aduty to complete a normal pregnancy ifher pregnancy is the foreseeableconsequence of her own prior voluntaryconduct. Conceived along these lines,the right to life of the fetus could ruleout the legalization of abortion ondemand and still be consistent with theusual indications of rape, fetal deformity,and serious danger to the mother’s vitalinterests.

Let us now consider the allegedinconsistency of (3) and (4). It is unlikelythat many Americans would affirm that

murder should be legal in somecircumstances. It is therefore alsounlikely that many respondentsunderstood (3) in the sense of “everyabortion is murder”. For, so understood,(3) and (4) together do entail –in a verystraightforward way that makes thisimplication hard to miss– that somemurders should be legal. Instead ofassuming that 38-50 percent of therespondents were either extremelystupid or in favor of legalizing someforms of murder, we should thereforerather assume that they understood theword “abortion” in (3) as referring onlyto those abortions that they believedshould be illegal. This conjecture is notimplausible: The class of ordinaryabortions on demand vastly outnumbersall other abortions (some or all of whichthese respondents claimed should belegal), and this class is also, after all,what the great public abortion debate isalmost exclusively about. People holdingthat abortion should be legally availableonly in exceptional circumstances(rape, incest, fetal deformity, and/ordanger to the mother) often refer tothemselves as anti abortion. And thisshows that they use “abortion” to referto the largest, central class ofunexceptional cases.

12 Thomson’s argument seems quite safe in Anglophone legal systems and moral thought, whichrequire persons to act as “Good Samaritans” only in exceptional circumstances. Thus Donald Reganargues quite convincingly that the finding in Roe v. Wade could plausibly be defended on equalprotection grounds: It is unfair to impose upon pregnant women Good-Samaritan requirements farmore stringent than those imposed on other persons (REGAN, 1979). Societies shaped by continentalEuropean jurisprudence, by contrast, tend to conceive the right to life as imposing stronger positiveduties, whose cost thresholds may lie above the cost of an unwanted pregnancy. In such contextsThomson’s conclusion may then not be compatible with assigning to a human fetus as much of a rightto life as to human beings already born.

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Whether my conjecture is correct or notis, of course, an empirical matter whichonly additional poll data could settleconclusively. One needs to ask thosewho endorse (3) and (4) what the specialcircumstances are under which theybelieve an abortion should be legallypermissible. And one then needs to askthem further whether abortions underthese special circumstances are alsomurder. Now suppose that myconjecture turns out to be mistaken.Suppose, that is, that significant numbersof Americans really do believe thatcertain kinds of abortion, though murder,should be legal nevertheless. Even then,they still would not hold inconsistentbeliefs. There would be an inconsistencyin their beliefs, and hence a compellingreason for them to restructure theirposition, only if they also affirmed

(5) Murder should be illegal in allcircumstances.

But to attribute this inconsistency tolarge numbers of Americans strainscredulity. It is simply incredible thatmany happily believe that all abortionsare murder and all murders should beillegal and some abortions should belegal. In any case, if Dworkin istargeting those who hold this happybelief triplet and hopes to convincethem of the complex pro life view hesuggests, then he surely has his workcut out for him.

In this section, I have shown thatDworkin has failed to prove his

assertion that the standard pro lifeposition is inconsistent. In fact, he hasnot even seriously tried. I have alsosketched, with the help of Thomson’swork, how exceptions can fit into thisposition. I do not know whether thissketch can be specified in a way thatwill ultimately prove philosophicallydefensible. But this is irrelevant. Thedecisive point is that, at the current stateof public and philosophical debate, it isentirely reasonable to believe that claim(4) is consistent with both (2) and (3).

Of course, the fact that Dworkin hasshown no good reasons for taking (2)and (3) to be inconsistent with (4) doesnot mean that his political appeal willfail. Just as people often cling to theirbeliefs even when they have goodreasons to revise them, so they oftenrevise their beliefs even when they haveno good reasons to do so.

IVIVIVIVIV.....

I have criticized a man and a book whichI also admire. It is time, then, to makemyself a target as well by offering aconstructive argument of my own. Myargument parallels Dworkin’s insofar asit also seeks to mobilize elements withinthe conventional pro life position towarda certain modification of it. It differsfrom his by asserting no inconsistencyin this position. My conclusion assertssomething Dworkin explicitly denies:that significant common ground can bedeveloped between the pro choice andpro life sides even if the latter adhere to

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their harshest claim: that ordinaryabortions are murder.

The common ground I will try to developis on a third level, which is generallyignored (and not only by the protagonistsin the abortion debate). Let merecapitulate the two familiar levels. Onthe first level, we have the substantiveissue how abortion ought to be treatedby the law: whether, to what extent, andhow severely abortions should beproscribed and punished. In this debate,a central role is played, quite properly,by the question whether having orperforming an abortion is morally wrongand, if so, how grave a wrong it is. Aswe have seen, those who hold thatabortion should be outlawed generallyclaim that any unborn human being hasa moral right to life, a right to be broughtto term, which has the same weight asthe right to life of those already born.They could also, however, defend theiropposition to permissive abortion lawsby taking a somewhat weaker position:that there is a moral duty not to terminatea human life and that this duty overridesall other ordinarily available moralconsiderations, such as a woman’s moralright to exercise control over her bodyand a couple’s right to pursue their ownhappiness13. Those who hold thatordinary abortions on demand should belegal often claim that there is no suchduty (and hence no moral right to life)at least early in a pregnancy. But it

would be sufficient for them to claimthat the duty (and the right), if it exists,is not strong enough to override awoman’s moral right to exercise controlover her body and a couple’s right topursue their own happiness.

On the second level, we have the metaissue concerning what arguments mayproperly be advanced on the first leveland how the burden of proof should beassigned. Here those favoring legalabortions argue that it would be wrongto impose severe restrictions on theliberty of women on grounds that are“essentially religious” or at least aredependent on a conception of themeaning of human life which is notshared by all and which it is notunreasonable to reject. Those opposedto legal abortions on demand can give asimilar argument: that it would be wrongto withhold from some human beings themost basic legal protections extendedto all others and to do so on groundsthat depend on a conception of themeaning of human life which is notshared by all and which it is notunreasonable to reject.

Claims and counter claims on these twolevels have been put forward, defended,and disputed many times. Yet, they havehad little impact on the abortion battle.However much we might wish to seethis battle decided by arguments ratherthan by sheer political clout, there seems

13 We have seen how either of these views can be combined with the belief that abortion may orshould be legally permitted in certain exceptional circumstances.

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to be little evidence at present that thevast energies expended on attempts todevelop common ground on these twolevels will lead to progress by convincingsignificant numbers on either side tochange their minds.

The relevance of the third issue dependson the fact that, in our world,wrongdoing, injustice, and suffering areso pervasive that those who areresolved to mitigate these evils mustmake painful choices about theallocation of our scarce time, money,and energy. There is not merely theproblem that we must, often underconditions of great uncertainty, choosewhich means to use in order to combatsome particular morally significant evil.14

There is the further problem that wemust choose which particular morallysignificant evil(s) we should try tocombat in the first place. This latterproblem, unlike the problem of choosingmeans, is a genuinely moral problem. Ithas not, however, been much examined.There is a good bit of discussion of moralconflicts and dilemmas, where an agentmust violate one of several determinaterights or duties (hurt someone or breaka promise, kill one innocent or let twoinnocents die, etc.). Very little attentionhas been paid to what one might callmoral competition, where scarceresources must be allocated amongseveral morally important projects orcauses. This lack of discussion may

indicate a preference for leaving suchquestions to private reflection. In aworld in which so many people do nextto nothing by way of trying to combatthe evils around them, one is not eagerto criticize those who care and are doingsomething for having the wrongpriorities. Even at the risk of doing justthat, I will here conduct a somewhatmore public reflection.

What I want to examine is whether, inthe world as it is, one can sustain thisappeal: “Let us, for the time being, quitthe abortion battle and let us insteadconcentrate on another task withrespect to which we can agree that ithas at least equal moral urgency”.Politically, this appeal favors one side –the status quo, whatever it may be in agiven jurisdiction at a given time– bysteering both sides away from theabortion battle. But intellectually theappeal differs from arguments on theother two levels in that it does not bearon the abortion controversy. It does nottouch the merits of the case and thus,substantively, does not favor one sideor the other. Relatedly, my appeal canbe addressed to both sides at once. Notwith exactly the same justificationperhaps, because, in order to convincesomeone that another cause is of atleast equal moral urgency, we may haveto appeal to particular moral beliefs ofhers as revealed by the stand she takeson abortion. But perhaps with similar

14 For example, someone concerned to mitigate world hunger may face the question of whether shecan do this most effectively by doing volunteer work abroad, by going into politics, by writing abook, by becoming a fund-raiser for Oxfam, or by accumulating a lot of wealth for future donations.

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justifications. It would be highlydesirable if both sides could be shownto have reason to work together for thealternative moral cause instead ofworking against each other in thepolitical battle over abortion.

To save space, I will here present myappeal only to one side: to those whobelieve that abortion ought to be illegal.One reason for addressing them first isthat it is they who are currently moreheavily involved in the attempt to changethe legal status quo. Another reason isthat my appeal must initially seemespecially hopeless when addressed tothe proponents of outlawing abortion.They are being asked to put up with(what they see as) the legally authorizedkilling of millions of innocent anddefenseless human beings. Whatexisting or impending evil could be ofcomparable moral importance? Theproponents of permissive abortion laws,in the opposite scenario, are being askedto put up with (what they see as)massive legally mandated infringementsof women’s rights to exercise controlover their own bodies and of couples’rights to pursue their own happiness.This is surely, for them, a very graveevil. But it does not entirely outclassother moral evils, such as the horrifyingevils of rape and domestic violence andthe evils of sexual harassment anddiscrimination, which are still all too

pervasive in our culture. So I am ratherconfident that, if my appeal can be madeplausible to those who believe thatabortion must be outlawed, then it willalso be possible to make this appealplausible to those who believe it shouldbe legal to have and perform earlyabortions on demand. Here I attemptonly the first, more difficult task.

V.

My appeal must point to some cause thatcan compete for moral priority with thecause of outlawing abortion. I choosefor this role the cause of mitigating anderadicating world hunger. Simplifying tosome extent, we can then entertain thefollowing straightforward binary choice.Consider someone who is sincerelyconvinced that every abortionconstitutes the deliberate destruction ofan innocent human life and that this is agrave moral evil. Such a person hasmoral reason to join the battle againstabortion: to participate indemonstrations and blockades ofabortion clinics, to engage in politicalwork aiming for laws or constitutionalamendments that outlaw abortion, andso forth. But then this same person alsolives in a world in which some twentymillion persons, many of them children,die every year from poverty-relatedcauses such as starvation, diarrhea andother cheaply curable diseases.15 Since

15 Many details are provided in Grant (1993). He reports that every year some three million childrendie from simple diarrhea, which could be cured with a 15 cent oral rehydration pack, and some 3.5million die of pneumonia and one million of measles, both also easily curable. Further detailedstatistics can be found in the United Nation Development Program’s annual Human Development

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the needless deaths of unborn humanbeings constitute a grave moral evil, so,too, must the needless deaths ofinnocent children. Our sample person,accordingly, has moral reason to join thefight against world hunger: to donatetime and money to food aidorganizations, to engage in politicalwork designed to stimulate concertedgovernment initiatives, and so forth.

Given scarcity, it is clear that the twocauses compete: Any bit of effort (time,money, energy) devoted to either oneof them could be devoted to the otherinstead. Hence the question: Does itmatter, morally, which of these twocauses one supports? And, if so, whichcause ought to be given precedence?16

Let me sketch three moralconsiderations that favor givingprecedence to the struggle against worldhunger.

First, the Argument from Doubt. Theproper legal status of abortion is highlycontroversial. Honest, intelligent,knowledgeable and, well intentionedpersons have come to oppositeconclusions –there are many suchpersons on either side. This fact givesme some reason to doubt the soundnessof my own conviction in this matter. Thisdoubt is of little relevance in situations

where I must act on my conviction or itsopposite, where I am, for example, askedfor advice by a woman who is consideringan abortion. But the doubt may be ofgreat relevance when I face competingmoral claims. There is virtually no seriousdispute over the question whether thestarvation of children constitutes asignificant moral evil. Almost everyoneagrees that it is morally important tomitigate and, if possible, to eradicate suchunnecessary suffering. Therefore, I have(other things being equal) less reason todoubt my belief in the moral importanceof joining the world hunger struggle thanI have to doubt my belief in the moralimportance of joining the abortion battle.Hence I have a reason to devote myefforts to the former cause in preferenceto the latter –guided by the thought that,other things being equal, I should directmy efforts toward causes in whose moralimportance I have more confidence atthe expense of other causes whose moralimportance is more doubtful.

This argument is quite different from thesecond level argument we haveconsidered in Section II above. Therethe key idea was that I have a duty ofcivility to abstract from certain of mymost deeply held convictions when I findthat they cannot be based on ideasavailable in the shared public culture. I

Reports. Of course, there may be some minor disputes about the exact numbers. But they do notmatter. The numbers I provide in the text would have to be wildly off for my argument to be affected.16 The straightforward binary choice I am entertaining in this paragraph is a simplification, becauseone might be active in both causes. The arguments to come might then be taken to show only that oneshould allocate more effort to one cause than to the other. I leave this complication aside, partly tosave space and partly because morally active persons tend to concentrate their efforts on one cause(and, I think, reasonably so).

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am not to act on such convictions in thepublic arena –at least when this wouldresult in significant state coercion ofpersons who reasonably reject theseconvictions. Here, by contrast, what isinvoked is not a moral duty, but anepistemic principle: When a convictionfinds less support among those whom Iconsider competent to judge matters ofthe relevant sort, then I should be lesscertain of it and act accordingly. Thisprinciple is of broad application.Suppose you are a meteorologist andyour calculations show that a majorstorm will hit some island, destroyingboth of its main cities. Othermeteorologists, whom you respect,believe that only the southern city willbe destroyed. You are not convinced.You will insist that both cities be put onalert. But you should neverthelessrecommend, I believe, that (other things

being equal) scarce evacuation effortsbe concentrated on the southern city.17

Second, the Argument from MoralWaste. Most efforts devoted to theabortion battle simply cancel each otherout. This waste is not merely temporary,because it is likely that neither side willbe able to achieve a permanent victory,i.e., a victory that would not need to bedefended through continued politicalmobilization.18 So the battle will go on,and much moral effort will continue tobe wasted on shifting the legal situationback and forth over the same terrain. Inthe struggle against world hunger, bycontrast, there is no moral waste. Herewe have virtually no opponents who feelmorally called upon to ensure thatstarvation continue despite our efforts toeradicate it. Hence I have another reasonfor devoting myself to the struggle against

17 This epistemic principle probably does not hold quite across the board. In particular, it may nothold when there is some negative logical or causal connection between what people believe aboutsome proposition and the truth value of this proposition itself. A classic example is the so calledcontrarian school of stock market prognosis: If most serious investors are convinced that the stockmarket is about to rise, then (so contrarians believe) the stock market is likely to go down. Theoptimists, after all, are presumably already heavily invested in stocks. So future demand for stocksmust come from non optimists who are turning more optimistic. A large proportion of optimists isthen a bad sign: It shows that there are few investors left who still might turn more optimistic; andit also shows that there are many investors who could turn more pessimistic. In the case of abortion,this limitation of the epistemic principle does not apply. There is no good reason for believing thatan increase in the number of serious persons taking one side of the abortion debate makes it lesslikely that this side has it right.18 The US Supreme Court verdict in Roe v. Wade is no permanent victory, because it may well beoverturned by the same court through the votes of new judges appointed by Republican Presidents.Such an overturning would be no permanent victory either, because the US Congress would thencome under pressure to take compensatory action and the battle would also be carried into statelegislatures, where new anti abortion laws would need to be passed. The hope of settling the matterthrough a constitutional amendment seems extremely unrealistic at this point; and even such anamendment could be overturned again. The 18th amendment to the US constitution, outlawingalcohol consumption, was adopted in 1920 and overturned in 1933 through the 21st amendment.

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world hunger –guided by the thought that,other things being equal, I should giveprecedence to causes where people’smoral efforts will supportand complement one another rather thancancel each other out.

Third, the Argument from CivilHarmony. When we face each otheracross the seemingly unbridgeable abyssof a deep moral controversy –with eachside convinced that what the otheradvocates is morally intolerable– thenit is all too easy to forget how much,morally, we have in common. Aprotracted battle over abortion tends toweaken the moral cohesion of oursociety by undermining the sense thatwe are jointly committed to a schemeof shared principles, values and ideals.A protracted struggle for the eradicationof world hunger would heighten thissense: It would unite us against acommon “enemy” rather than pit usagainst each other as in a civil war.Hence I have a third reason to devotemy efforts to the struggle against worldhunger –guided by the thought that,other things being equal, I should giveprecedence to moral causes that uniteme with others over causes that put meat odds with them.

One might object to the last twoarguments that noone should be askedto switch causes, as it were, withoutassurances that those on the other sideare willing to do likewise. I disagree.For one thing, such assurances areimpractical. It is simply impossible tonegotiate a phased withdrawal from theabortion battle on the model of thephased withdrawal of intermediaterange nuclear missiles from Europe.Moreover, the above arguments aremeant to demonstrate (for now only tothe pro-life side) that even the worst casescenario of unilateral withdrawal ispreferable to continuing the battle overabortion. Suppose that only those on oneside of the abortion controversy wereto heed my appeal. They would then bedoing something that, from their ownpoint of view, is of at least equal moralimportance as continuing to hold up theirside of the abortion battle. Yes, the otherside might then win. But this, too, couldhave its good side. For the other sidewould then have no more work to do onthe abortion front, and at least some ofthe moral effort they would havedevoted to that cause is therefore likelyto flow into other moral causes, such asthe eradication of world hunger, whichare supported by both sides.19

19 A proponent of permissive abortion laws might present the following counterargument: “Perhaps,if we allowed abortion to be outlawed, much moral effort would be freed up for other causes. But the“moral case load” would dramatically increase as well. There would be large numbers of additionalbabies born unwanted and into the worst of social circumstances. It is then unlikely that our quittingthe abortion battle would enable us significantly to reduce the incidence of moral evils.” I won’t herego into the complex empirical issues that a proper evaluation of this counterargument would have toaddress, because I want to concentrate on formulating the appeal to those on the other side, whobelieve that abortion should be legally prohibited.

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VI.

Turning now to possible objectionsagainst giving precedence to the worldhunger struggle, let us first consider theDistinction between Doing andLetting Happen. Deliberately bringingabout some given harm is generallyconsidered to be much more wrong thanmerely failing to prevent a like harm.So while the evil of a child dying ofhunger is indeed at least equal to theevil produced by an abortion, it is stillfar more wrong to have or perform anabortion than to fail to save a child fromdeath by hunger. It is therefore moreimportant to support the battle againstabortion than to work against worldhunger.

As it stands, this counterargument isunsuccessful, because its conclusiondoes not follow from its premise. Thepremise entails only that it is moreimportant not to have or perform anabortion than to save a child fromstarvation. But the conclusion (and ourinitial question) concerned a differentcomparison: the importance ofpreventing abortions had or performedby others versus the importance ofpreventing hunger deaths. Such failuresto prevent are, in both cases, instancesof letting happen. And nothing in theargument shows that it is more importantnot to let abortions happen than not tolet (the same number of) children die ofhunger. Of course, it might be said thatto prevent killings is always morallymore important than to prevent other

deaths. But this is a different distinctionwhose moral significance (so far) enjoyslittle recognition in ordinary or academicdiscourse. It is generally not thought lessimportant to rescue one innocent childfrom drowning than another from beingdeliberately killed.

The objection can be renewed byinvoking the further DistinctionBetween The Responsibilities OfParticipants And Those OfNonparticipants. The children whoare starving to death in the poorcountries are foreigners. Insofar as wefail to help them, we let their deathshappen; we surely do not participate intheir deaths in any way. The humanbeings whose abortion we might betrying to prevent by changes in the laware, however, our compatriots. In theirdeaths we do play a role and we thusdo, in a sense, help bring these deathsabout. For, as citizens of a democraticsociety, we co determine, and thusshare a special responsibility for, itslaws and social institutions. Permissiveabortion laws are unjust in that theyengender a larger number of abortiondeaths than would occur if abortionwere more stringently prohibited andstrictly punished. By upholding suchlaws, we citizens are responsible notmerely for letting these additionaldeaths happen. We are responsible forhelping to bring these deaths about byparticipating in maintaining andenforcing a legal system that, bypermitting abortions, foreseeablyresults in these extra deaths.

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To illustrate the force of this revisedcounterargument, consider the case ofslavery as it existed in the US before1860. Slavery was not a popular crimecommitted by individuals, like therobbing of mail coaches, but it was aninjustice deeply embedded in thepractices and institutions of the UnitedStates: in its voting laws, fugitive slavelaws, and so forth. The creation,continuation, and enforcement of theselaws was authorized by the electorate.And the members of this electorate,unlike their foreign contemporaries,were therefore, morally, participants inthis slavery. A wealthy Swede mighthave been as well positioned, causally,as most US citizens were to protectslaves or to lobby for legislative reform.But he was not a participant in theinjustice, and for him the suffering ofthese slaves was thus morally on a parwith much other suffering the worldover. US citizens, by contrast, eventhose who owned no slaves themselves,did bear a special responsibility, becauseit was their legislation that authorized,and thereby engendered, widespreadslavery.

I fully accept the significance ofdistinguishing between theresponsibilities of participants andnonparticipants. I agree that the moreadvantaged participants in an institutionalscheme bear an especially weightyresponsibility for the justice of thatscheme and the harms it produces. Ifthe scheme is unjust and these personsdo nothing about it, then they are

violating not merely a positive duty tohelp victims of injustice anywhere, buta more weighty negative duty not toparticipate in the imposition of unjustinstitutions.

I challenge, however, a key suppositionof the revised counterargument: that ourrole with respect to world hunger is thatof nonparticipants. It is at least not clearthat, insofar as we do not protect theglobal poor, we merely let their deathshappen, that we do not participate intheir deaths in any way. For thefollowing hypothesis is plausible: Thepresent global scheme of political andeconomic institutions profoundly affectsthe living conditions of the global poor.So long as the present world orderremains intact, we can expect, forexample, that vast income differentialswill persist and that the daily number ofdeaths from poverty related causes willremain in the tens of thousands. Byforeseeably producing these effects, thepresent global order is unjust insofar asthere are feasible (i.e., practicable andaccessible) institutional alternatives thatwould not produce such catastrophichuman suffering.

This hypothesis may seem to beexposed to a devastating critique:“Extreme poverty and its distribution areobviously due to local causes. For somepoor countries have decent governmentswhile others are pervaded by corruption;some are embroiled in frequent wars andcivil wars, while others are not; someare developing rapidly while others are

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getting poorer every year; starvation isrampant in some and rare in others.Therefore, our global institutionalscheme has very little to do with thedeprivations suffered in the developingcountries”.

This critique appeals to true premises,but draws an invalid inference. That ourglobal economic order, obviously, cannotexplain local variations in deprivationsdoes not entail that it cannot explain theirglobal incidence. This parallels howJapanese culture may figure in theexplanation of the Japanese suicide rateor how the laxity of US handgunlegislation may figure in the explanationof the North American homicide rate,without thereby explaining particularsuicides/homicides or even inter citydifferentials in rates. In the latter twocases the need for a macroexplanationis obvious from the fact that there areother societies whose suicide/homiciderates are significantly lower. In the caseof global economic institutions, the needfor a macroexplanation of the overallincidence of malnutrition, say, is lessobvious, because –apart from somerather problematic historicalcomparisons– the contrast to observablealternative global institutional schemesis lacking.

And yet, this need is perfectly clear uponreflection. Global institutional factors

have a considerable influence onnational factors (e.g., on the political andeconomic institutions of esp. the poorersocieties as well as on their cultures,technologies, and natural environments)and also on how such national factorsaffect individual lives. Our current worldorder is characterized by global marketsfor resources and commodities inconjunction with a division of the planet’sland surface into clearly delimitedterritories within which the holders ofeffective power are recognized ashaving jurisdiction over the territory’spersons and resources. These world-order factors certainly play a role inexplaining the high incidence ofundemocratic rule in the poorersocieties as well as the vast inequalitiesin income among persons worldwide.This can be seen most clearly byreflecting upon how even rather minor(and clearly feasible) global institutionalreforms would alter the overall incidenceof human deprivation20.

If our global institutional scheme isindeed unjust on account of itsforeseeable distributional effects, thenthe more affluent citizens of thedeveloped countries –being the mostadvantaged participants of this scheme–bear a special responsibility for thisinjustice: It is through our participationand support that those institutions areupheld; and we are also in the best

20 I have tried to support the relevant hypothesis by elaborating some examples, such as sharingglobal resources more equitably and protecting democratic governments of poor states from debtsincurred by undemocratic predecessors. See Pogge (1989: esp. §24 – 1995b – 1996).

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position to alleviate their worst effectsand to work for institutional reforms. Weare then not like uninvolved bystanders,who merely let massive starvationhappen. Rather, our position is analogousto that of non-slaveholding US citizensbefore the Civil War, who wereparticipants in the enslavement ofblacks. By collectively imposing theexisting global free market system withnational ownership of territorialresources, we are bringing about astable and predictable incidence ofdeprivation, thereby effectivelyexcluding large segments of humankind,those who cannot translate their basicneeds into effective market demand(purchasing power), from all but themost minimal benefits from planetaryresources. By supporting this system,we participate in the starvation ofmillions.

The objection can be renewed one lasttime by invoking the further DistinctionBetween Established And EngenderedHarms.21 What makes abortion deathsespecially outrageous from a moral pointof view is that they are officially andexplicitly permitted by the law, forwhose content we citizens shareresponsibility. Hunger deaths, bycontrast, however regularly andforeseeable they may be produced bythe current global “rules of the game”

are not officially permitted by theserules. That this distinction makes a moraldifference is shown, for instance, byreflection upon penal systems: We findit morally intolerable officially toauthorize certain harms –roughinterrogation methods by the police, lowstandards of evidence in criminal trials,disproportional punishments (such as thedeath penalty for drunk driving)– evenif harm overall is thereby reduced22.This shows that, in assessing the justiceof an institutional scheme, we assignmore weight to harms it officiallyauthorizes than to harms it merelyforeseeably produces.

What this argument shows, convincinglyin my view, is that it would be unjust fora society officially to authorize the killingof some human beings even if a muchlarger number of deaths from povertycould thereby be avoided. But I havenot been trying to convince pro-lifers thatpermissive abortion laws are to beaccepted as just –e.g., on the groundthat there will be fewer prematurehuman deaths with them than withoutthem. To the contrary, I have acceptedall along, if only for the sake of theargument, that permissive abortion lawsare a very grave injustice, and I amwilling to concede on this basis that, ifwe had to choose between institutionsthat authorize abortions and others that

21 This distinction was first introduced in Pogge (1989: §3). I have since revised my view about itsmoral significance.22 See Pogge 1995a, Section V, for a detailed discussion.

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produce extreme poverty (both roughlyat current levels), the latter should beaccepted as just. But our situation is notthis, not one in which we must settle ona design priority among conflictingvalues. Institutions that do not permitabortions and also do not produceextreme poverty are easily feasible inthis world. So current institutions areunjust in both respects. As participantsin such doubly unjust institutions weface then a situation in which we mustsettle on an implementation priorityamong competing values: Which ofthese two injustices is it more urgent toovercome?23

My claim is that in this case the priorityis reversed: In implementation, thelarger injustice, which kills more humanbeings, must take precedence over thesmaller that kills fewer (assuming equalprospects for eradicating either). Thisis so because the key reason for theopposite priority in matters of designdoes not apply here: By giving priorityto the eradication of world hunger, oneis not morally accepting the legalauthorization of abortions on demand.The priority becomes even more

compelling in the present case where,as we have seen in the previous section,considerations concerning doubt, moralwaste, and civil harmony all favor thegreater urgency of combating the worldhunger problem.

VII.VII.VII.VII.VII.

This claim can surely be attacked invarious ways. I will here focus on thethree objections that strike me as themost important.

First, it may be said that, though theproblem of world hunger is of greatermagnitude than the problem of abortion,moral responsibility for this problem ismuch more widely diffused. Every oneof us thus bears a smaller shareof responsibility for the former problemthan for the latter. We should, therefore,other things being equal, concentrate ourmoral efforts on the abortion problemat home, for which our individualresponsibility is greater24.

Let us accept the moral mathematicsthis objection invokes25 and concedethat each well placed US citizen, sharing

23 For the distinction between design and implementation priorities, see (POGGE, 1989: 127).24 I interpret the notion of responsibility this objection appeals to in objective terms: One bears moreresponsibility as one’s conduct is more seriously wrong. Saying that we are responsible for worldhunger means then that we act wrongly in upholding the social institutions that produce it. Anysubjective notion of responsibility as guilt or blameworthiness is thus left aside. But let me say thatobjective responsibility entails subjective responsibility only under certain conditions, such as theabsence of genuine and excusable factual and moral error.25 It could easily be challenged –for example by the claim that, when two persons together murdera third, the moral responsibility of each of the two is as weighty as that of a single murderer wouldbe. I am not trying to resolve this issue here, but merely responding to an objection in its own

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responsibility for both injustices, bearsa smaller share of responsibility for theworld hunger problem than for the USabortion problem. If roughly three timesas many persons bear significantresponsibility for the injustice of ourglobal institutional scheme (on accountof the poverty it produces) as bearresponsibility for the injustice of thedomestic institutional scheme of the US(on account of the abortions itproduces), then each advantaged UScitizen bears a roughly three timeslarger share of responsibility for USabortion deaths than for global povertydeaths26.

This factor of three is handilyovercome, however, by the muchlarger number of poverty deaths. Thenumber of persons dying fromstarvation and easily curable diseaseseach year is est imated to besomewhere around 20 million, whilethe number of annual abortion deathsin the US is only 1/15 of that.27 While

three times more persons shareresponsibility for the injustice (onaccount of world hunger) of our globalinstitutional scheme, this is more thanmade up for by the fifteen timesgreater magnitude of this problem. Iassume here that the weight of (theresponsibility for) an injusticeincreases with the number of deathsit engenders. This is in the spirit ofthe moral mathematics stipulated bythe objection under discussion. For,surely, if the responsibility for aninjustice gets diluted as more personsparticipate in it, then it must increaseas more people get victimized by it.Otherwise those imposing unjustinstitutions could reduce theirresponsibility simply by pooling theiroperations. Our moral responsibilityfor poverty deaths outweighs then ourmoral responsibility for abortiondeaths: Each of us, those who helpuphold the current world order and thecurrent permissive abortion regime inthe US, is responsible for about five

terms. For a sophisticated, if preliminary, treatment of moral mathematics, see (PARFIT, 1984:Chapter 3).26 Our global economic order is upheld and enforced chiefly by the “G 7” countries: the US, Japan,Germany, France, Italy, the United Kingdom, and Canada, whose combined GNP is 68 percent of thecombined GNP of all countries. The population of the US constitutes about 39 percent of theaggregate population of the G-7 countries. When one adds the remaining eleven EU countries plusSwitzerland, Norway, Hongkong, Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand, the combined GNP risesto 79 percent of the world total and the US population share shrinks to 32 percent. So it seems fairto suppose, in the spirit of the suggested moral mathematics, that each advantaged US citizen –however this group is defined– bears about a three times larger share of responsibility for the USabortion problem than for the world hunger problem. My calculations are based on the 1994 populationand GNP figures provided in (UNDP, 1997: 194, 202, 218, 223).27 The latest figure released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is 1,330,414 for 1993,after a peak of 1,429,577 in 1990. Admittedly, the true number is higher, because some abortions areperformed unofficially –through a high dose of some widely available birth control pill, perhaps, orthrough a dose of privately imported RU 487. This is irrelevant, however, because outlawingabortions will certainly not reduce the number of such unofficial abortions (but rather increase them).

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times as many poverty deaths asabortion deaths28.

Second, it may be said that, even so,responsibility for domestic injustice(producing deaths of compatriots) shouldcount for more than responsibility forglobal injustice (producing deaths offoreigners). If this view were putforward as a piece of national chauvinismto the effect that American lives, say,are intrinsically more valuable than thoseof non Americans, it would not be worthdiscussing. But the view may be perfectlyuniversalizable: Each person has moremoral reason to care about the fate ofcompatriots than that of foreigners.

This is indeed something many believefirmly. One role national borders play inour world is that of defining spheres of

responsibility. The preeminentresponsibility for any person’s securityand welfare is assigned to his or hercompatriots.29 And so we may indeedbe tempted to think that, when childrenare starving in Ethiopia, Brazil, andBangladesh, this is primarily theresponsibility of other Ethiopians,Brazilians, and Bangladeshis, and onlyvery tangentially ours.

However convenient, this thoughtcannot support a plausible objection.After all, the assignment of preeminentresponsibility to compatriots is itself partof our present institutional scheme,whose justice was put into question bythe above explanatory hypothesis aboutworld hunger. The fact that our globaleconomic institutions produce such highrates of deprivation is in good part a

28 In making this rough calculation, I have ignored two important factors that would greatly strengthenmy response to the objection. First, one can reasonably hold against an institutional scheme onlyavoidable deaths. What matters is how many more deaths it produces than its best feasible institutionalalternative. Through feasible institutional reforms we can probably eradicate deaths due to globalpoverty much more fully than deaths due to abortion, as outlawing abortion would increase thenumber of illegal abortions. Our responsibility for US abortion deaths is then significantly less than,and our responsibility for world hunger deaths about the same as, I am suggesting in the text. Second,the catastrophe of global poverty does not manifest itself in deaths alone. It affects some 1.3 billionpersons (about 23 percent of world population) who fail to reach “that income or expenditure levelbelow which a minimum nutritionally adequate diet plus essential non-food requirements are notaffordable” (UNDP, 1997: 5, 238). By upholding global institutions that produce massive globalpoverty, we are responsible also for a great deal of suffering on the part of those who, for the timebeing, manage to survive. Permissive abortion laws, by contrast, produce little serious harm beyondthe deaths they engender. Note that my response to the objection can easily be extended to citizensof any rich country smaller than the US — one with a tenth of the US population, say. An advantagedperson in this country bears the same share of responsibility for the world hunger problem as anequally advantaged person in the US and a roughly ten times larger share of responsibility for thenational abortion problem, whose magnitude is, however, only roughly one tenth of that in the US.29 I ignore complications arising from the fact that persons may live away from their home country,temporarily or permanently. In such cases, the assigned responsibility for their security and welfareis shared between their fellow nationals and fellow residents.

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consequence of the current assignmentof responsibilities, in which the poor aretold to look for relief from others littlebetter off than themselves, while theaffluent take care of one another. Wehave a deeper, ultimate responsibility forimposing the current global order,together with this assignment ofresponsibilities. And we cannotdisconnect ourselves from this ultimateresponsibility, no matter how manyborders we institute and no matter howfirmly we declare that our preeminentmoral task is to look after one anotherrather than to eradicate world hungerand poverty30.

There is another flaw in the objection.The widely accepted moral priority forcompatriots is understood to cover onlypositive, not negative duties: Notrescuing a compatriot is consideredworse than not rescuing a foreigner, butkilling a compatriot is not normallyconsidered worse than killing aforeigner. My argument has been that,by helping to uphold unjust globalinstitutions, we share a negativeresponsibility for the deaths theseinstitutions produce just as we share anegative responsibility for the deathsproduced by unjustly permissive nationalabortion laws. Since negative duties are

at stake, the suggested priority forcompatriots does not apply in any case.

Third, someone with consequentialistleanings, convinced that we shouldmake those moral efforts that offer thebest probability weighted cost/benefitratio, may claim that we can be moreeffective if we devote our efforts to theabortion battle rather than to the struggleagainst world hunger. Assessing such aclaim is anything but straightforward.We might begin by splitting thecomparison into two central cases:extrapolitical efforts aimed at mitigatingthe effects of unjust institutions, andpolitical efforts aimed at reforming suchunjust institutions themselves. In bothcases, we might initially do thecomparison in terms of lives saved.

Consider two organizations supported byvolunteers and donors. One works toconvince US women that they shouldnot have abortions. It prints information,organizes demonstrations at abortionclinics, counsels women considering anabortion, helps arrange adoptions, andso forth. What difference does such anorganization make to the US abortionrate? The honest answer is, I suspect,that no one really knows. But it is

30 For a more extensive argument to this conclusion, see (POGGE, 1992: 79 98). I point there to thecounterproductive incentives provided by a conception of justice whose basic requirements onsocial institutions can be weakened or evaded through the introduction of national borders. Theseincentives may well have played a role in the decolonization movement of the 1960’s and in theSouth African homelands policy. Even if not: That a moral conception provides such incentives —whether they affect conduct or not –should make us suspicious of this conception.

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entirely credible that such anorganization may every year convincethousands of women whowould otherwise have had an abortion.

The other organization combats globalpoverty. It provides food, water, andshelter to persons in acute distress. Wecan get a sense of how cost effectivesuch measures are from the fact thatmuch of today’s misery occurs inregions with annual per capita incomesbelow $300. In such regions, where afamily of five can get by on $200 a year,it is extremely cheap, by Westernstandards, to improve people’s livingconditions enough to increase theirchances of survival dramatically. As iswell known from UNICEFadvertisements, one pack of oralrehydration therapy (ORT) can curelife-threatening diarrhea for just 15cents. Such an organization can be evenmore cost effective when it is notresponding to acute emergencies: It mayprovide capital and expertise forinvestments that very poor people,compelled to live hand to mouth, cannotmake on their own: grants or microloansfor seeds, wells and irrigation, tools andsimple machinery, livestock, literacy andnumeracy, medical knowledge andsupplies, and start up capital to open abusiness or cooperative. Support forsuch investments helps save lives notjust in the current year, but for years tocome. Funding the construction of a wellthat supplies safe and convenientdrinking water, for example, can have alasting impact on the infant mortality rate

in some area. This is one reason why itis difficult to calculate anything like aprecise ratio of dollars donated to livessaved: The larger a time horizon wechoose for evaluating the differencemade by some program or initiative, themore uncertainty we face about howthings would have developed in itsabsence. It is entirely possible that a$300 investment will save thousands oflives over the next fifty years. But it isvirtually impossible to be certain ofsomething like this, even ex post.

The first comparison does not supporta clear cut conclusion. But there are twofactors that favor the cause of worldhunger. Even with somewhat higherstart up and monitoring costs, it is muchcheaper to operate in a Third-Worldenvironment than in the United States.Moreover, it is easier to make lastingcontributions to the struggle againstpoverty: contributions that, withoutrequiring additional efforts, will continueto save lives in years to come. Theseconsiderations are surely not conclusive.But they may suffice to cast doubt uponthe claim that extrapolitical efforts toprevent abortions are more costeffective than extrapolitical efforts toreduce global poverty.

The second comparison concernsorganized political efforts aimed atinstitutional reform. As regards abortion,the aim is to have laws against abortion(providing for severe punishments)adopted and enforced in one’s state.Even if this project succeeds, the

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abortion rate would not be reduced toanywhere near zero. Many womenwould travel elsewhere to haveabortions. Others would obtainabortifacient drugs from abroad or on thedomestic black market, or woulduse other means of inducing an abortionthemselves. Others again would finddoctors or quacks willing to performillegal abortions. Still, the number ofabortions would probably declinesignificantly, as more care would betaken to avoid unwanted pregnancies anda larger share of such pregnancies wouldbe brought to term.

As regards world hunger, the aim is toinduce the US government to take anactive role, in concert with otherWestern governments, in enabling theglobal poor to meet their basic needs.To some extent this will involveincreasing development aid to trulyneedy areas (which are often of littlepolitical or strategic interest). It mayinvolve reforms in our global marketsystem designed to insulate Third-Worldpopulations from precipitous declines intheir exchange entitlements due tofluctuations in the price of some essentialexport or import commodity31. It may

also involve reforms in our globalpolitical system designed to reduce theincentives toward undemocratic forms ofgovernment. Finally, it may also involvesome institutional mechanisms throughwhich the benefits of the world’sresources, as well as the burdens ofvarious externalities, would be more fairlyshared around the globe32. If the cold waris over for good, it seems entirely realisticto assume that popular pressure on G-7governments could lead to significantreforms of this kind. In fact, it is possibleto eradicate world hunger in less than adecade –and at minimal cost (below onepercent of GNP of the rich countries).

The second comparison, again, does notsupport a clear cut conclusion. Significantpolitical efforts would be required to inducethe US government, and state legislatures,to take effective action against abortion.The same is true for initiatives against worldhunger. But there are two factors that favorthe latter cause. If we concentrate on theabortion battle, much effort will be lost tomoral waste. Moreover, even a small stabat the world hunger problem –say one tenthof the reform needed to eradicate worldhunger– would save at least two millionpersons annually from starvation33. No

31 For some idea of the effects of such fluctuations, and for the notion of exchange entitlements, see(SEN, 1981).32 One such mechanism, involving a fair sharing of the benefits of deep-sea mining “to benefit allpeoples, with special regard for the least developed countries,” was to have been part of the Law-of-the-Sea Treaty. It was killed, however, with the acquiescence of other rich countries, by the ClintonAdministration. Other mechanisms that have been proposed are a Tobin Tax (TOBIN, 1994) and aGlobal Resources Dividend (POGGE, 1995b: section 3).33 “At least,” because such a partial program could concentrate on those measures, projects, andpolicies that are most effective. It is likely that (beyond some threshold) intelligent efforts to combat

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realistically achievable victories onnational abortion fronts could save thatmany lives.

I conclude that arguments from costeffectiveness are unlikely to underminemy thesis that we should giveprecedence to the struggle againstglobal poverty over the battle againstabortion. I have based this conclusionsolely on considerations concerning livessaved34. If we take a broader view, myconclusion becomes even morecompelling. First, efforts to combatThird-World misery cannot be neatlytargeted at those 20 million persons whowill needlessly die next year (as if wecould know in advance who they willbe). Such efforts must be directed, morebroadly, at the 1.3 billion global poor whoare now at risk. Reducing needlessdeaths among them by two millionwould involve helping some tens ofmillions of persons to become more selfsufficient. Second, if tough laws againstabortion were passed and enforced,many women and doctors would end upwith lengthy prison terms. This may bejust what they deserve. But as thesepeople are jailed, they leave behindfamily members and relations: spouses,

children, parents, and friends. Theseother persons suffer as well, though theycan hardly be said to deserve it. Third,joining the battle against abortion ratherthan the struggle against world hungeralso has significant costs in terms of civilharmony –a topic to which I will nowreturn in the final section.

VIII.

You may think that the appeal I havepresented may itself undermine civilharmony. So far, those who wereprimarily concerned to combat worldhunger had no quarrel with those fightingon either side of the abortion battle. Myappeal is liable to open up a new frontby initiating a battle over which of thetwo causes is morally more important.

In response, let me say that my appealcan at most initiate a new controversy,not a new battle. What is at stake in theabortion dispute is a question that mustand will be answered, one way oranother. There is only one position thelaw can take on abortion in eachjurisdiction. What is at stake in myappeal, however, is of an entirelydifferent character. I am certainly not

world hunger will have declining marginal effectiveness. The “earlier” efforts can focus on situationswhere destitute persons are geographically concentrated and easy to reach, and where it does nottake much to help them become self sufficient.34 I have also assumed that the death of an unborn human being due to abortion –no matter how earlythe stage of pregnancy– is morally equivalent to the death of a child or adult due to starvation. I haveassumed this, because this is what many who have joined the battle against abortion believe. Butthose who find merit in my Argument From Doubt, or those who believe that the extreme, drawn outsuffering involved in disease or starvation makes such a death significantly worse, may conclude thatwe should give precedence to the struggle against world hunger, even if we could save an equalnumber of lives in either cause.

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trying to have morality legislated, so thatit will be illegal to devote time, money,or energy to the abortion battle inpreference to the struggle against worldhunger. The choice between moralcauses is one that each of us makesprivately, guided by our own conscience;and this is certainly the way it shouldremain. Still, we normally do not makesuch choices in isolation. We discussmoral topics and priorities with oneanother. My appeal is meant as acontribution to such a discussion. If it iscontroversial, and will lead some readersto consider new ideas or arguments, somuch the better. This does not pose athreat to civil harmony35.

By contrast, one great cost of theabortion battle is the breakdown of trustand good faith among citizens. One sidesuspects its opponents of considering

abortion a convenient method of birthcontrol; the other suspects its opponentsof a self righteous attempt to enslaveeveryone else to their religiousconvictions. My hope is that we canbegin to overcome such deep suspicionand animosity by working together on acommon moral cause. A concertedeffort to eradicate global poverty coulddo wonders for the moral cohesion ofour societies36.

It might even help us resolve the abortioncontroversy sometime in the future.Having worked together against worldhunger, each side will be able toappreciate the moral sincerity of itsopponents, and we will then be in amuch better position to find a solutionthat both sides can live with. Here wecan begin with mutually acceptablemeasures designed to reduce the

35 There is one kind of battle related to the topic of world hunger that exists quite independently ofmy appeal. There are those (myself included) who believe that we should, as a nation, devoteourselves to initiating the kinds of institutional reforms in our world economy that are necessary toeradicate world hunger. And there are others who believe we ought not so to commit ourselves(perhaps because such reforms, by diminishing the gap between rich and poor in the world, wouldreduce our standard of living — or, by lessening the dependence of the poor upon the rich, reduce ourpolitical clout.) This, again, is a disagreement about a question that must and will be answered, oneway or another, in each nation. And so, if there are significant forces on both side, this disagreementmay spawn political battles over whether this or that developed country shall be committed to thestruggle against world hunger. But such battles are much less divisive than the abortion battle. Ouropponents are not saying that our objectives are morally wrong (as is the case on both sides of theabortion battle). They are not even denying that our objectives are morally worthy. They are merelyarguing that it is morally permissible to slow down or abandon the pursuit of these objectives onaccount of countervailing considerations that they deem to be morally significant as well. Also, suchbattles do not pose anything like the same threat to the standing of morality in our culture.36 It might do wonders, also, for the moral ties between nations. The relations between Japan, the US,and the Europeans –often strained by selfish and petty intergovernmental bickering over tradematters– could certainly benefit from the experience of collaboration on a moral program. And sucha program would also do much to initiate trust and friendship between the peoples of the developedand the less developed countries.

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number of abortions: improvedavailability of, and information about,birth control, day care, and adoption, aswell as improved social support forsingle mothers. We will also be able todraw upon rapidly expanding medicalexpertise: It will be possible to abortmany pregnancies in ways that do notresult in a death. To be sure, politicaland medical progress cannot completelyresolve the controversy. There may stillbe more born and unborn infants thanadults are willing to raise (or bring toterm). And there will still be the tragiccases of rape, incest, grave fetaldeformities, and serious danger to thepregnant woman. It is not clear whatsort of regulation or deference toconscience the law should impose inthese matters. My point is that citizenswith faith in one another’s moralsincerity will be in a much better positionto fashion a solution that is morallytolerable for most of them.

This brings me to a final thought.Whatever our moral convictions, wemust be disheartened and alarmed bythe low esteem in which morality is heldin our culture. Two factors play majorroles in explaining this fact. First, thosewho put forward moral claims andarguments are routinely, and oftenaccurately, suspected of self righteousbigotry or of being concerned topromote their own interests. Wheresuch selfish or self righteous motives arenot readily apparent, they are gladlyconstructed and imputed by opponents.

Second, and relatedly, serious moraldisputes are almost always interminable,so that it must seem as though moralityis just so much background noise, somany rhetorical effusions that nevermake a difference to what happens,because they never convince anybodyanyway.

In this respect, a concerted effort toeradicate world hunger could have atremendous positive impact. It wouldfocus our attention on a moral topic onwhich, at least on reflection, we have adeep and shared conviction: It is morallyintolerable that we have arranged aworld of plenty so that many humanbeings, through no fault of their own,must live on the brink of starvation. Itrings hollow to say of this conviction thatit is merely an opinion that can be justas easily denied as affirmed. And it alsorings hollow to suspect those who areworking to eradicate world hunger ofself serving motives or of self righteousbigotry. So the struggle against globalpoverty has the potential of deepeningour understanding of what morality is,and of what role it could play in ahealthier public culture. Thoughmaterially costly, this struggle maygreatly enrich our lives and our culture.This is not to deny the obvious: The mostimportant reason for making aconcerted effort to eradicate worldhunger is, of course, the prospect ofreducing world hunger.

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Thomas Pogge

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CUOMO, Mario. 1993. “Religious Belief and Public Morality: A Catho-lic Governor’s Perspective”, in his More Than Words. New York.

DONAGAN, Alan. 1977. The Theory of Morality. Chicago.

DWORKIN, Ronald. 1993. Life’s Dominion: An Argument about Abortionand Euthanasia. London.

FOOT, Philippa. 1978. “The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine ofDouble Effect”, reprinted in her Virtues and Vices. Berkeley.

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– 1992. “Loopholes in Moralities”, in Journal of Philosophy 89.

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