I voted “Leroy should give up his seat for perfect strangers, no matter what” because that’s what I’d do, and I believe it’s the right thing. I’d hesitate to say he ‘must’ do it, though - this isn’t the sort of thing you can force on someone.
I couldn’t let the baby drown. As for the mother, I don’t think I could bring myself to say “Give me your kid. You can stay here and die.”
And I’m with si_blakely when he says:
I want to add that even if it does mean I’m old-fashioned and have been indoctrinated by the patriarchy, I think “women and children first” is a noble ideal. And the posts from various men saying they’d give up their lives for it make me want to hug them.
If I was interested in preserving the human species, I’d support the women and children first ideal, but I don’t believe we need to mass reproduce. Giving preference to women is not necessarily sexist if one does so because one is interested in perpetuating the species. From an evolutionary standpoint, we need more women than men if our species is to survive, therefore, it makes sense that a species such as ours would develop the mentality that women and children are less expendable then men. There’s a reason that we’ve typically sent men off to war while the women and children are protected at home.
That being said, even though I’m not keen on helping our species overpopulate, men who still value the woman and children first are more attractive to me, probably for evolutionary reasons.
I’d (hopefully) give up my seat to both the mother and child. I have a hard time pinpointing my actual motivation for doing so, though. I guess it comes down to heaping those that are in trouble. I enjoy it. My job is even tangentially related to helping people in trouble. If I had the opportunity, after death, to look back, I think I would feel proud of my decision. I know I would feel proud of another who made that decision.
A bit off topic, my wife and I had a discussion about a year ago regarding a scenario in which a person (man, woman, child) was being kidnapped, abused, or was otherwise in peril for their life by an armed aggressor. Should I, with 3 children, attempt to interfere even if there was a very high probability that I may be shot and killed?
Really, I was asking her if she would support my decision to interfere…because I hope I would without regard for my own well-being. FYI, she answered that fully supported my taking action to save the fictional person.