Embryos as call options

An embryo is just like a call option. This analogy struck me because a couple of things this week have set me thinking about abortion.
First, Zoe Williams said "I've had an abortion, and I'm not ashamed in the slightest." I found this unsettling.
However, I was equally perturbed by Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo's parallel between abortion and stem cell research.
Is there an intellectual foundation for these instincts? Maybe.
Start from the premise (which Catholics reject) that an embryo is not a human life, but a potential human life. This yields an analogy with an out of the money call option. This is not wealth as such; an option to buy a share priced at £10 for £12 is worthless if exercised now. But it is potential wealth. And we have a pretty precise way of valuing it. This analogy has several implications:
1. Even the youngest embryo has a little value. The deepest out of the money option is worth something because there's a small probability it will become in-the-money. In like way, even a day-old embryo has a little value because there's a chance of it becoming a human being.
2. Abortion is always a cost - because you are throwing away something valuable. No-one would throw away an out-of-the-money call option before it expires. However, there might be a justification for abortion, just as there's a justification for selling an out-of-the-money option - if you gain something in exchange. Autonomy might be one such good.
This means it's not good enough for Ms Williams to merely say she's not ashamed of her abortion. She has to believe the benefit of the abortion - her more care-free life - outweighed the cost. She also, of course, has to justify this decision to society, not just herself. Human life is an externality.
3. Later abortions are worse than early ones. This is because an older foetus has much higher probability of becoming a healthy human than an early embryo. The value of an option depends on the probability it will become in the money. Likewise, the value of an embryo depends on its probability of becoming a (worthwhile?) human being.
4. There is a justification for stem-cell research. This is, in effect, an exchange of some call options for others. We are selling call options on human life (the embryos) in exchange for call options on the means of saving life. Whether this is a good trade depends is an empirical question.
This analogy between embryos and call options seems to justify my secular instincts - my queasiness at celebrating abortion but acceptance of stem cell research. It also justifies the legal postion, that early abortions are tolerable.
But is the analogy acceptable? Certainly, it doesn't give us "bright lines" between right and wrong. But why should we assume such lines have to exist?
You might object that it's crass to liken life to mere finance. You'd be wrong. The great thing about finance is that we have the tools to think clearly about it. Why not use these tools in areas where clear thinking is rare?
There's one way, though, in which the analogy does break down. We can tell for sure when an option expires worthless. We can never tell for sure that an aborted foetus would, in fact, have become worthless without the abortion.
We can, however, infer from the bell curve of actually existing humans that many would have done so.

Comments

[dsquared]

[She also, of course, has to justify this decision to society, not just herself]

Absolutely not. If followed to its logical extension this would give "society" an absolutely monstrous right of control over the bodies of its members. Quite apart from anything, every ovum in Zoe Williams' body is a call option on a future human life whether fertilised or not, so under your criterion, she would have to justify every single menstrual cycle that passed without her becoming a breeding machine. For "society". I believe that this was once the political doctrine followed in Romania, but it wasn't very popular.

[Shuggy]

"I've had an abortion, and I'm not ashamed in the slightest."

She seems to think abortion rights are to be preserved by as many women as possible standing up and saying this. I don't know why; how she felt about is is surely irrelevant?

[Emily]

I think it is because the pro-life movement want the woman to shoulder all the guilt. She is trying to break the last taboo on it by saying many women feel relief not guilt. I don't she meant it to preserve rights, just to say that the idea that many think women feel guilty for the rest of their lives is not always the case.

It is not a boast as it is sad when such a decision is made. Just when many women are in such a situation where that kind of decision is made, they are desperate. That is why it is a relief.

[Owen Barder]

I think the analogy with call options is flawed. With an option to buy a share, more shares in the future is better. This is time-consistent: there is an option value to me today of a future share.

But my valuation of future people is not time consistent. Ex ante, it is not valuable (at least, not to me) that there are more people in the future. So I don't attach an option value today to a person's future existence. A person only becomes valuable (and so enter into my utility calculations) once they actually exist.

If you remove the assumption that I attach value today to there being future people, then the options pricing approach does not work, does it?

Owen

[Maynard Handley]

If we are going to say that human life is an externality, who is to say it is a POSITIVE externality. There are plenty of reasons for saying that it is a negative externality, that the cost of this person in resources consumed and pollution generated are almost always going to be higher than the ultimate value generated by this person. Do you really care whether or not John Ericcson lived or died in Sweden in 1271? Me neither. Sure we care about Newton, about Michelangelo. But most lives are not such. Most lives matter little to anyone else but their friends and family --- but their resource consumption and their greenhouse gases affect all of us.