Abortion, the Death Penalty, and a Dead Body in a Box

Wigwam Jones has a good commentary on the Supreme Court's ruling yesterday from a political perspective that I don't feel like commenting on, but one that I definitely believe to be true.

I'm going to go to the very dregs of my memory and dig out some Philosophy 101 in order to ask the question, is it possible to be for abortion and against the death penalty?

The opposite question is easy, because one can obviously be for the death penalty and against abortion because the embryo can be considered an innocent victim. And although many would argue that many people killed by the death penalty were not guilty, I think it is difficult to argue that the embryo isn't always innocent.

I'm not really for outlawing abortion or the death penalty, but being a recovering Catholic, I'm also not really a huge fan of them either.

Personally, I'd prefer to avoid the death penalty, and I obviously wasn't aborted unless my entire life is the firing synapses of an embryo as it is yanked from its mother's womb.

But avoiding all "world on a blade of grass" metaphysical discussions, let's bring up a Philosopher, named Jeremy Bentham, who lived in the late 18th and early 19th Century, and who now sits in a wooden cabinet.

Well, almost all of him, his head is mummified.

The head you see in the picture is a wax one. I wonder if Jeremy gets to converse every once in awhile with the cracked head of Teddy "Ballgame" Williams.

Jeremy: "Hmm, Teddy, did you fall off a bar stool and get that nasty
crack?"

Teddy: "Oh, go get them to shrink your head some more you Cricket playing
smarty-pants."

Jeremy Bentham believed in a concept called utilitarianism. In short, he believe that happiness could be quantified, and, therefore, the most moral action was the one that produced the most happiness for the most people. Yeah, yeah philosophy professors are hating this over-simplification but interested parties can read more here

One could argue that abortion kills the unborn child but saves the child the pain of being unwanted, the mother and father the pain of trying to raise the unwanted child, or even the pain of having to give that child up for adoption, and then the pain of the child always questing for his or her birth parents etc....

Does sparing these people pain and lack of happiness justify the abortion?

Now this argument could likewise be used to be against the death penalty, that by killing a murderer you may be alleviating some of the pain of the victims family but then adding to the pain of the murder's family in many cases and also the societal pain from justifying killing.

Now there are many scenarios and ways to weigh the situation and that leads to the crux of the problem.

The obvious catch here is who is the one who sets up the standards by which happiness is measured?

Does one measure the level of serotonin in everyone's brain worldwide and then see if a murder's death or an abortion produces more happiness than sadness as some net sum?

I don't really know, but I just like to offer food for thought. And if anyone ever decides to freeze me, please keep my head attached to my neck, I've grown fond of it there.