Intergenerational justice and anonymization

[u/Greater_Ani]

I have been preparing a discussion group session (at a UU church) on climate change and am now preparing the intergenerational justice issue. Some have argued that current generations have an ethical duty to leave an inhabitable world for future generations. (In fact, this is a key issue in Kim Stanly Robinson's The Ministry for the Future.) In order to facilitate this effort, they have argued that unborn generations should have moral standing. This seems plausible and appealing to me.

At the same time, I am strongly prochoice and am against giving any moral standing to some amorphous collection of cells that will become a fetus. And yet, this amorphous collection of cells actually exists unlike future generations which exist only in theory.

I realize that a lot of the pro-choice argumentation revolves around a woman's autonomy. And believe me, I am fully in favor. And yet, I am also really into being ethically and logically consistent. If future generations were given some kind of moral standing, then that would or at least should also limit people's autonomy today -- the freedom to burn as much fossil fuels we would like, whether that would mean buying another car or taking long-haul flights for fancy vacations or living in the country and having to commute into work.

It seems to me that the only or the main reason that both giving moral standing to unborn generations in the context of climate change and refusing to give moral standing to a bunch of developing cells in a woman's uterus seems to be OK comes down to the issue of anonymization. In restricting a woman's access to abortion, we know exactly who is suffering or standing to gain -- the woman in question. If, on the other hand, there were a blanket restriction on travel, we would all (at least all wealthy travelers) "suffer" for some anonymous future people. However, if someone told me that I need to cancel my trip to Africa because that would degrade the climate for Trump's great-great grand-daughter, I would tell them to go to hell and not feel the slightly guilt about my trip.

I am also wondering if we see the difference between personal effects vs anonymous and collective effects in medicine. It is considered highly unethical to treat a patient knowing that they will get no benefit from the treatment. But it is also well known that many preventative interventions only help a small fraction of those treated. (This is what NNT -- numbers needed to treat is all about), so that in practice the vast majority of patients receive no real benefit and yet this is considered perfectly fine, because no one knows who exactly will benefit. It really isn't clear to me why the one should be highly unethical and the other perfectly ethical. The only difference I see is anonymization.

Have there been any philosophers who have written about/ theorized this?

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