The issue with the trolley problem is indeed, the same one that the larger field of utilitarianism deals with where if we actually extend the believed occurrence of "killing" in the hypothetical to real world action it's pretty clear we lead to conclusions that can't be reasonably held to. Ultimately, the incongruency lies in the fact that pulling the lever isnt really killing any more than if you were the driver and the brakes were stuck and you had to choose to swerve into less people or stay on track. Physically speaking you are a driver who killed someone, but morally and legally you are not; being an external actor to pull that lever doesnt meaningfully appear to change it to be morally equivalent to murder in any sense.

The argument is about personhood, every other argument misses the point

Well done

I am kind of confused, because it seems like you are starting with the problem being that the debate over abortion is being confronted on the moral level, then you define morals and ethics as two distinct categories and morals being more subjective and ethics based on more objective community standards. Then you bring up the trolly problem and claim the decision causes us to face different ethical reasoning, which brings up my one problem with the video... this is a bad definition of ethics.

Ethics is not an alternative for morals, but rather your philosophical framework that guides your moral decisions. What you are discussing is not the concept of ethics but the concept of what is ethical, what is ethical is the moral actions and ethics systems applied based on the groups consensus, which can still be subjective as you can have different groups disagree on what is the optimal ethical system and can still come to different conclusions based on what their morals are within that ethical system.

For example in the abortion debate, you can bring up many ethical systems, you can argue that from a utilitarian perspective you are weighing an unborn life vs a woman's right to autonomy,  some would consider the life more important to the right to bodily autonomy others think the right to bodily autonomy is more important.

Some food for thought, but I once heard this great idea on what ought to be considered ethical for a society to be successful in the long run, it is simply this, would your society, or parts of it, survive if everyone did this? If everyone just had abortions your society would collapse because there would be no humans left to continue it and no one to take care of the aging population. Of course on an individual level you can talk about medical interventions to save a woman's life which might cause her unborn child to die, or victims of r*pe but that does not project on all people. Conclusion, most ethical frameworks from a consideration of what is good for society would show killing unborn children is either wrong and/or a bad idea.

But of course if you have a different morality, such as that women should get abortions, or that a woman's right to her body is amore important virtue you stand then in direct conflict with the right over the moral issue and there is no ethical reframing that is going to save the clash. It doesn't matter if you follow principles of utilitarianism or virtue ethics, you either take a new moral stance, you stand down on your morals if it is not an important virtue, or you fight it out to the extent that the virtue of this moral matters to you and the virtue of their moral matters to them.

The alternative ethical frameworks that would make allowance for abortion are ones like hedonism which says the ultimate goal is everyone to be happy by letting everyone do whatever they want, the problem is this often proves to be a self=destructive ethical framework for societies and for individuals, many would generally consider this objectively being a bad ethical framework, again unless you have a moral difference that leans towards this ethical framework in the first place.

There are arguments out there that support the idea that there are objective morals, at the very least most people tend to believe their morals are pretty objective, even if it is just that it is objective that they are always subjective. But there is no getting around the moral argument, in fact the left has been havign the most effective response they possibly can which is moral indifference, refusing to move on the moral argument by not caring because they believe in the morality of their own actions. The issue is this like I said earlier, means one side either has to convert their morals, set aside their morals and allow the other side's morals be allowed to be the one society lives by, or to fight until one of the first two happens/is wiped out.

It is at that point everyone has to sit down and ask, is the cause I am fighting tooth and nail for really all that important? And when one side is arguing human life, the other is autonomy and convenience, let's just say that historically people will willingly sacrifice lives for autonomy and convenience, until society gets sick of it and rallies against it. it is inevitable that society will rally against abortion, if not concluding now, probably within our lifetimes it will be banned completely becuase there are enough people determined it is so imoral they will not stop opposing it no matter how you frame it ethically. And then even further decades in the future things will probably switch back as families feel the weight of being unprepared, the desire for autonomy, cases of abuse or medical emergancies.


Now of course, I do believe in virtue ethics, with a utilitarian gradient, meaning there are objective virtues but their application can vary based on what is the chief ethic to follow in the current circumstance, under that ethical framework and with the understnadnign that human life is of objective moral importance, abortion and euthinasia will always be wrong in my view, and I would argue many know this, but are willing to set it aside the same way we conveniently ignore the sweatshop labor that provides our goods, the child slavery to mine the materials in our phones, the unethical treatment of amazon delivery drivers to get your same day delivery. Most people are revolted at harming others, that is until they are removed from seeing the direct consequences of what they are participating in, and it is at that point yo usee the divide between those that care most about themselves with little to no regard for human life, and those that realize their selfish pursuit of their own convenience. We are all hypocrits in this, still I would argue this does establish the obejctive morality of perserving human life and that there is no ethical argument behind keeping legal structures to protect abortion in ALL cases. If we want to discuss edge cases that is a whole different argument but you do not need to have abortion for everyone or no one. In fact you really only need to argue intentional abortion for r*pe as medical treatments leading to the death of an unborn child is a whole different category.