I say there’s a difference between killing a person and letting events unfold as a passive observer, even if the same death is the result.
And while I can’t prove it, I contend that most people recognize it.
Note the difference in response to these two scenarios:
A trolley is running out of control down a track. In its path are five people who will surely be killed when it hits. You could flip a switch, which will lead the trolley down a different path, a sidewalk. Unfortunately, there is a single person – a heavy man – on that sidewalk. Flip the switch or do nothing?
Most people agree that the switch should be flipped.
Now the second scenario: the five people are still in the path of the trolley. But now you are on a bridge over the tracks with the heavy man next to you. Your own body would be too light to stop the train, but that if you push the stranger onto the tracks, the stranger’s large body will stop the trolley and save the five lives. That, unfortunately, would kill the heavy man.
Most people would agree that it would be wrong to push the man… EVEN THOUGH THE SAME RESULT ensues.
Wait, is the heavy man Newt Gingrich? Is the heavy man recently returned from a spiritual cleansing, like confession, and thus blessedly pure, having not had enough time to blot his Permanent Record? What about my intentions here? Is one or several of the five people a hottie, with an overwhelming lustful craving for smart-ass old farts? Hell, might push two fat guys in, just to be on the safe side.
Is the heavy man the kind of man who would jump in front of the train, if only there were time enough to explain? What if my intention were just to rid the world of another fat guy, and saving those other people never crossed my mind. If Jesus were there, would he help me push?
All of the above seems to be assuming the fetus is a human being, which as you know is not an assumption shared by your interlocutors.
As to your last question, it’s not relevant whether the “born human being” should give up their life or not–the question is whether the government ought to pass a law requiring that “born human being” to die.
So…in the first scenario you propose, it’s not your fault the heavy man got struck by the trolley, even though it happened as a direct and foreseeable consequence of your deliberate action?
Just so I know, are all Catholics, and/or everyone who is pro-life profoundly hate women, are brainless, and live detached from human reality? Or is that just Bricker?
I’m pro-life, at least in the sense that my visceral reaction to abortion is very negative. I don’t like it. So? My body, my business, her body, her business. My degree of respect and/or affection for women doesn’t even necessarily enter into it. None of my beeswax.
You’ve been drugged by that Human Centipede crazy-ass doctor. When you awake, you find yourself with another victim of CAD. You’re both in a room slowly filling with deadly nitrogen gas. Some quick math says that you have 5 minutes to live. Fortunately there’s an unlocked door.
Unfortunately, your other victim is unconscious and shackled to the wall. You have no way of unshackling him. Also, your finger has been surgically attached to a hole in his femoral artery, such that your finger is the only thing preventing him from bleeding to death in a matter of seconds. You find a pair of scissors in your other hand.
Option 1) You cut out a small section of his femoral artery and head for the door, while he bleeds to death.
Option 2) You cut off your finger and head for the door. He dies 4 and a half minutes later.
Option 3) You let fate resolve the situation. You both die.
ISTM that some anti-abortion people really do believe in option 3, which I put squarely in “sick fuck” territory.
The Catholic Church, from what I understand, says that option 2 is the way to go. This would be the removal of a fallopian tube.
Anyone else with a brain would choose Option 1 and keep their finger.
There are a few issues with making this hypothetical line up with ectopic pregnancy.
First, the heavy man is a true innocent in your example. In ectopic pregnancy the embryo is causing the death of both itself and the mother. I feel people would be much more sympathetic to tossing the fat man if he had endangered the passengers in the first place.
Second, there is no sense of ‘over use of force’ in any of your options. We have advanced enough so that it is medically unnecessary to remove a fallopian tube so one of your options should have a sense of unnecessary sacrifice forced on an innocent person.
I submit the below.
There is a train with one innocent person on board who just happens to be the owner of the train company. A track maintenance worker is working in the switching booth and is about to switch the train to a track that will have it collide with the switching station (poor design I know). He is rocking out to the latest Hendrix album and cannot hear you shout and you have no time to cover the distance between yourself and the switching station.
You can:
a. Let events proceed knowing with the uncanny confidence of the hypothetical that the train will crash killing both the passenger and the maintenance worker.
b. Due to a fortunate stroke of luck you have your sharpshooting gear with you and are the world’s best shot. You can shoot the maintenance worker and save the passenger with the only harm done being the maintenance worker.
c. You also have a rocket launcher with you that you can use to take out the whole switching station. You know for a fact that this launcher is so kick ass that it will destroy the station, kill the worker, and make it so a train will never pass this way again!
You are telling me that most people would choose c. over b.?
I can’t see, rationally, how taking an action that knowingly causes the death of a person plus wider spread unnecessary destruction is better than a targeted response that causes the death of a person but no unnecessary damage.
Please elucidate. How is a human scientifically determined to be brain dead, a “human.”
No emotions, communication, needs, wants, feelings, emotions, growth or anything else we associate with being alive. Is a definitive vegetative state (life-support in cases of brain death) the way to go? Who benefits and why?
I know the answer. Do you? I have a cousin on life-support since he went into a comma from a motorcycle accident four years ago last moth. Brain-death diagnosed from the start.
Other than insane Catholic faith by his Mom, what’s the point?
There are some gases, such as sarin, which are deadly in smaller quantities because they attack the nervous system and others which don’t necessary cause death if there is oxygen present, but if they completely replace the oxygen then they are deadly.
IIRC, “deadly” is more typically used for gases which are deadly in smaller quantities.
All this talk of humans is a misnomer, what we care about, or what we should care about, are what makes a Person. A tumor is ‘human’ in that it contains human DNA, an embryo is ‘human’ for the same reason. Neither are Persons though as one requirement of Personhood, indeed it may be the only important one, is a functioning brain. As such it is OK to destroy them, even more so when these ‘human’ things are harming an actual Person.
The Catholic church disagrees of course because they believe in magic. Adults believing in magic in the 21st century is obviously nonsense but if no harm comes of it, so be it. However here we have people believing in magic causing direct harm which is damn scary.
Educate your children in science people and the belief in magic will go away. Eventually.
Your intention in flipping the switch was to direct the trolley away from five people. The fact that the single man is hit was an unintended secondary effect.