She’s allowed to kick Ginger loose. She can’t stab Ginger with a spearfish dart, though. She can kick Ginger free, but not kill her.
Now, if Ginger comes back attacking her, then Ginger is no longer an innocent party, is she?
Causing a death is causing a death. It really is that simple.
The reasoning required to define a moral distinction, or to justify causing 2 deaths instead of 1, is of the type once commonly called “Jesuitical”.
Where does this distinction find its root? Is it because there is a chance that Ginger, kicked off, will be rescued? Because doesn’t that chance exist (though lower) if Ginger is stabbed with a spearfish dart?
Because it allows Mary Ann to tell herself she doesn’t have blood on her hands.
Because you can’t stab a person with a spearfish dart unless they’re attacking you.
It’s the difference between self-defense and murder.
But that doesn’t answer the moral root of this distinction. It’s more of just a restatement. The bottom line is you can do it - what I want to know is why morally you shouldn’t.
What is the moral difference between kicking someone off you, in a situation where that will lead to her demise, and stabbing them with a spearfish dart, in a situation that will lead to her demise?
You can’t feel it?
It’s the difference between actively causing a death, and passively letting happen a death that you did not cause and could not prevent.
It’s the difference between Goldmember personally strangling Austin Powers and throwing him into the tank where the sharks with frickin’ laser beams attached to their foreheads will kill him instead. In only one case would Catholic doctrine, and Bricker, say a murder was committed.
But you can feel it. Being pushed away is a different sensation to being stabbed, but both can be felt.
The second part is closer to what I am getting at though, but I think this is where it breaks down, especially when we start to relax the assumptions. The bottom line is that it is a death you cause when you take the action (hardly passive) of pushing the person away. Clearly by pushing them away you shorten their life - holding onto the stronger swimmer, while still under the assumptions futile, will lead to longer life.
So by taking an action, you reduce the lifespan of the other swimmer. Yet that can somehow under this moral code be described as passive? I don’t get that at all.
My stepmother had two abortions. One was twins. She had a kidney condition that would flare up from time to time. In both cases, she tried to hang on as long as possible, but the doctors basically told her she would die before the baby was born anyway. In early 60’s Canada, this qualified as a medically ncessary abortion and she had no problem, as a strict Catholic, in having one. She wanted children enough that she tried the second time. He daughter and granddaughter, oddly enough, have the same problem.
I went to a Catholic university, and in discussions with people who were studying the Catholic Church’s doctrine told me the general consensus was that a medically ncessary abortion is medically necessary, therefore OK. One fellow told me the analogy is the crazy man attacking you (the guy didn’t mention Romulans, though). If there is absolutely no other way, and the baby will die anyway, then what is the wrong? You are acting to save one life out of two.
OTOH, rape, incest, or “it looks like the fetus has no brain” are not valid reasons for abortion according to the church.
md2000 Abortion is illegal even to save the life of the mother in the Vatican City- the Catholic Church’s doctrine is that there is no such thing as a medically necessary abortion.
Treatment to save the mother which results in the death of the foetus (such as a pregnant woman having chemotherapy or radiation for cancer and then having a miscarriage or stillbirth as a result of the treatment), well, that is ok. Actually terminating the pregnancy to save the mother’s life- not ok.
I find it fascinating that two religious groups, using most of the same texts, can come up with diametrically opposed ideas on abortion in cases where a woman’s life or health is put at risk. Judaism mandates that the life and health of the woman must be saved (and thus the abortion should take place), the Catholic position mandates the opposite.
But I’m not trying to justify abortion in general. I’m discussing the specific question of a pregnancy that endangers the mother’s life, which some people, including many Catholics, feel does not justify an abortion unless the mother’s life is actually, immediately at risk. A woman can not morally get an abortion because she and her doctor know that her physical condition is insufficient to support a pregnancy - she has to wait until it is an actual emergency, risking grave harm to her health or even death. Or just wait until she dies in some places, as irishgirl pointed out.
Let’s try a different angle. My sister has systemic lupus erythematosus. She very, very probably can not carry a pregnancy to term. Attempting to do so is not only extremely likely to kill her, but even if she managed a full-term pregnancy and birth, her health would be severely and permanently impaired.
At what point is she allowed to have an abortion under your rules? Does she have to wait until she’s 95% dead? Is a 50% chance of death enough? Does she have to wait until it’s an emergency and she’s already damaged her health, on the off chance of a miracle? After all, the occasional very dedicated woman with lupus has managed to do so.
Or can she say “well, I very well might die trying to do this, so it’s an abortion for me” right at the very beginning?
Delete*
How many pregnant women live in Vatican City? I thought the only residents were the Pope, the Cardinals, and maybe the Swiss Guard…
But Ginger doesn’t attack, she just keeps clinging and dragging Mary Ann under.
How is kicking Ginger loose NOT an action that causes Ginger’s death? How is this different from stabbing her? Both are actions that Mary Ann takes that cause Ginger’s death.
I like creating hypotheticals, so I’m creating one just out of curiosity to see what people think.
Mary Ann has a rare condition that makes her reproductive system work just fine, up to a point. But there’s a problem. She doesn’t have a uterus. Her innards skip right from fallopian tubes to vagina. She ovulates and the eggs can be fertilized, but they have no potential to catch and they will never develop, unless she’s unlucky enough to have an ectopic pregnancy.
If Mary Ann has sex with her husband, the Professor, she could have a fertilized egg, but it will die.
The RCC says that birth control is immoral. The RCC says a fertilized egg is a person. The RCC says you can’t fertilize eggs in a petri dish and then let them die.
What’s the moral choice for Mary Ann?
Still waiting for someone to explain the difference between “I take action 1 and X dies” and “I take action 2 and X dies”.
It’s been asked several times over in the Pope thread, too.
I guess it’s one of those ineffable things that only True Believers can understand.
Abstinence or an oophorectomy.
For the dead person it’s pretty muc the same.
For the other person is a very important moral distinction.
Situation:
Falling rocks are going to crush me and John, who cannot move. If I go to pick up John the rocks will kill us both. .
ACTION 1: I run away as fast as my legs let me. John dies. I didn’t kill him, I couldn’t prevent his death.
ACTION 2: As I run away I turn around and shoot John before the rocks kill him. He dies. This is murder.
(I’d rather you didn’t start with the name-calling (Re: True believers), it doesn’t contribute to the debate)