A real world scenario
Instead of a hypothetical scenario, I have a real world scenario that happened to a Christian couple I know. They already have a son (their first child), and they were pregnant with a daughter (their second child), but they found out during early pregnancy testing that their daughter had a rare congenital medical condition that is fatal in the vast majority of cases. Several physicians recommended they abort their daughter because their daughter was going to die anyway and because it would be merciful to their daughter to be aborted rather than be born, suffer, then die in relatively rapid succession.
To abort or not to abort
However, as Christians, they believe abortion is unethical. There’s a distinction between passively allowing what’s naturally going to happen anyway vs. actively “terminating” their daughter.
Eugenic abortion
As for the “merciful” argument, if it works, then it “works” not only for unhealthy babies but also for healthy babies. Since everyone is born, suffers, and dies, then it would be morally licit to terminate healthy babies on the same grounds that we want to keep babies from suffering too much. As such, it would seem to be an argument for eugenic abortion, as Steve Hays points out.
Alternate histories
In addition, after their daughter’s death shortly after she was born, this Christian couple later had another child. A perfectly healthy child whom they love very much.
However, if their daughter hadn’t died, but (1) lived, or (2) never been conceived, or (3) been terminated as their doctors originally recommended, then there’s no guarantee their subsequent (third) child would have existed:
1. If their daughter had lived, then maybe the Christian couple would never have tried to have another child. Maybe they would’ve been happy to have had these two children, a boy and a girl.
2. If their daughter had never been conceived, then maybe they would have tried to adopt a child, thinking they might be infertile. If they continued trying to have children, they could have had a different child than their third child, if they had sexual relations at a different time than the exact time they had sexual relations when they conceived their third child.
3. If their daughter had been terminated, maybe they would’ve been traumatized by the ordeal, and as a result not had sexual relations until a later point in time, in which case their third child would’ve been too late to have been conceived, since the conception of their third child requires (among other things) the exact same sperm meeting the exact same egg at the exact same point in time.
Remedial chaos theory
In short, many possibilities could have played out. The point is, if we change a single variable – even a seemingly insignificant variable – then their subsequent history might well have been altered. It could be altered for better or for worse, but the point is it would be altered. In support of this concept:
1. Consider the butterfly effect, which in turn is often used to illustrate chaos theory. A butterfly flaps its wings in South America, and, a few weeks later, a tornado occurs in the United States. Minor perturbations in the air due to the flapping of the butterfly’s wings later resulted in the formation of a tornado thousands of miles away.
Likewise, here are two scenes from Mr. Nobody which depict the butterfly effect on film. The first scene is how the main character’s parents met, while the second scene is how the main character missed out on finding love.
2. Stepping back, we ask, what is chaos? As Edward Lorenz himself said: “Chaos: When the present determines the future, but the approximate present does not approximately determine the future.”
We might elaborate on Lorenz’s brief and breezy definition. Granted, there are different definitions for a chaotic system, but I’ll provide a standard or generic definition here. A chaotic system is a system that is (a) highly sensitive to initial conditions within the system, (b) nonlinear, and (c) deterministic. Change the initial conditions ever so slightly, and there will be different results. The fact that it’s nonlinear means it’s not possible to accurately predict its behavior within the system. As for determinism, here’s a point of contrast: certain aspects of quantum mechanics are said to be non-deterministic, that is, the results are not necessarily determined by initial conditions. This is also why certain aspects of quantum mechanics might be used to illustrate the difference between random vs. chaotic. Of course, my focus has primarily been on the sensitivity to initial conditions aspect, but nonlinearity and determinism have their roles to play too.
3. All said, chaos theory and the butterfly effect may not be perfect analogies to the main point, but I think they’re apt to a significant enough degree.
Epistle of Dude 