The Harm of Death, Time-relative Interests, and Abortion

If a lifeboat is sinking with several normal human beings and a dog aboard, where it is clear that all will drown unless someone is thrown overboard, nearly everyone agrees that it is morally right to sacrifice the dog. Why? While many reasons are offered, most quickly prove unsatisfactory. I will suggest that the best explanation for this considered judgment, an explanation that appeals to timerelative interests, contains a key insight about prudential value. This insight, I will argue, also provides a promising—perhaps the most promising—reply to the Future-Like-Ours Argument (FLOA), which is widely regarded as the strongest moral argument against abortion. By providing a solution to a longstanding puzzle in prudential value theory across species while illuminating the morality of abortion, the Time-Relative Interest Account (TRIA) proves worthy of sustained theoretical attention.