3 Practical Ethics

Before leaving the lofty plane of the theoretical, I need to discuss the nature of personhood, because understanding (or trying to understand) what a person is, is essential to making a decision some about major issues in practical ethics: whether or not abortion, capital punishment, and euthanasia (mercy killing) are morally permissible.

Abortion

To begin, it is important to distinguish between person and human. Anything conceived by human parents is human. No human gets pregnant with a cat. But ‘human’ is not the same as ‘person’. We speak of non-human persons, such as gods, angels, aliens from other planets, etc. Historically a person has been defined as a being possessing intellect and will.

The medieval definition of a soul was ‘a non-material substance possessing intellect and will’. Does a fetus have a soul? There is no evidence fertilized eggs have intellect and will. Perhaps a late-stage fetus might, but how would we know?

The existence of a soul has been debated for centuries. Many people don’t believe in the soul at all. Is a fertilized egg a person? When I told my three-year-old daughter how babies are born, I said, “Just think, you were once a tiny little egg.” She replied angrily, “I was never an egg.” My son at the same age, by contrast, had no problem thinking he had once been an egg. He was concerned, however, that he might have stayed an egg. The disagreement between my children may shed some light on the pro-abortion and anti-abortion views of so many people. Do you think you were ever an egg?

According to the medievalists, a soul was in the body relatively soon after conception. For Saint Thomas Aquinas (following Aristotle), ninety days after for a female fetus, and forty days for a male.^[1] This was based on Aristotle’s view that a soul was the source of activity, and you couldn’t have a soul in an unusable body. It wasn’t until 1869 that the Catholic church insisted the soul was present from the moment of conception.^[2] This creates problems such as in the case of identical twins when the egg does not split until later in pregnancy. Before that, are there two souls?

One philosopher, Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia (1596–1662), argued that since a non-material soul would not occupy space, it could not interact with our material bodies. This seems to be a real problem. When I am trying, without result to solve a difficult math problem, I may get a headache. If I break my leg, I may consider this to be permanently disabling, and become seriously depressed. My mind may affect my body. My body may affect my mind. Considerations like this have led some philosophers to deny the existence of a soul because a nonmaterial/non-spatial thing cannot interact with a body in space.

Other philosophers such as David Hume (1711–1776), argued that since we are always changing, there is nothing permanent about us that we can identify as ourselves; we are just a bundle of ever-changing states.

The controversy concerning the nature of the self makes it very difficult to establish whether or not the unborn child has a self at all. So how are we going to make decisions about abortion? Is it right or wrong? I suggest we divide the problem in three ways: Religious, moral, and legal.

Religious

I have already mentioned the Catholic position which refuses to allow directly killing the fetus, even if both mother and child will die. The ‘double effect’ is permitted in the case of cancer of the uterus when the uterus is removed with the fetus inside, and the fetus subsequently dies. It should be noted that killing the fetus is understood by Catholics to be the killing of an actual person and not just a potential person because the fetus has a soul. Some other religions form a spectrum of more or less liberal positions, usually accepting abortion as moral when the life or welfare of mother and child are endangered.

Moral

Apart from religious considerations, other factors may or may not determine the morality of abortion. There is the question of the slippery slope. Where do you draw the line? Maybe it is always okay to dispose of a fertilized egg. Maybe it is okay to dispose of a fetus that has not yet developed a brain. Perhaps it is impossible to draw the line clearly. If it is wrong to kill a baby born at 5 ½ months, why is it morally okay to kill a fetus of the same age?

There are also utilitarian considerations. We consider it wrong, except in the cases of eating meat and medical research, to cause pain to any sentient being. There seems to be some evidence that late-term fetuses feel pain.^[3] If so, one ought not to cause them or any other sentient being, such as an animal, unnecessary pain.

On the other hand, we do have the right to self-defense. We can kill a person deranged by disease, who is trying to kill us, even if that person is innocent because of insanity. Therefore, a mother in danger of death from pregnancy should be allowed to abort at any stage.

The philosopher Judy Jarvis Thompson has argued further that even if the fetus is a person, a woman has the right to refuse to let this person occupy her body. She compares this to an imaginary case of a musician who needs to be hooked up to someone else’s kidneys for nine months to stay alive. We are not, she argues, morally obliged to let him or her stay.^[4]

There are also very devastating consequences of an unwanted pregnancy. Some mothers may not have enough money to feed a baby, especially if they already have others. Some married women become pregnant with someone other than their husband, and they are afraid they will be killed if the husband finds out. Other women become pregnant because of rape or incest when they are young. Still others cannot easily survive the birth of a child. In such cases, the kindest thing to do might be to abort the fetus, especially if it is not long-term.

Legal

Many countries have legalized abortion to protect the rights of women because historically, many women, when not allowed to have abortions, were so desperate, they endangered their lives with illegal abortions. Many women who got pregnant through adultery were often killed by their jealous husbands, so abortion was for them, was an act of survival.

Although not a supporter of abortion in any way, Saint Thomas Aquinas made an important point about the limits of governmental power. He held that because the obligation of the state was to the whole population, there should not always be laws forbidding morally evil acts if those laws would jeopardize the integrity of the body politic. He stated that when one part of the body politic was a threat to the whole, it should be amputated, as one amputates a gangrenous leg to save a life.^[5]

In the case of abortion, laws forbidding the practices were eliminated in many nations because they seemed to cause more harm than good. However, several countries continue to outlaw abortion today, based on moral reasons.

Capital Punishment

Capital punishment, like abortion, involves killing, but in this case, killing what is clearly a person. To understand capital punishment, it is useful to consider the nature of punishment. There are two classic theories about this: retribution and deterrence.

Retribution

This is probably the oldest idea about punishment. Most of us have heard the saying, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”^[6] You kill my brother. I’ll kill your brother. This view has certain advantages. For example, the guilty person is the one to be punished.

Consider this, however, in the light of the section on free will in chapter two: We usually say that no one should be punished for doing something they could not help doing. This is why we usually excuse people from the consequences of crimes if their lives are threatened at gunpoint, if they, for example, steal, or shoot someone. There are also considerations with regard to insanity. If one is deranged and kills someone he or she thinks is a homicidal demon, we may not hold him or her responsible for premeditated murder. Further, if we assume that free will doesn’t exist, it is impossible to hold anyone morally culpable/guilty for anything.

Retribution also carries with it the extra baggage of having to be sure one is really punishing the person guilty of the crime. We have only to consider the vast number of cases that have been overturned due to the discovery of DNA evidence showing that the convicted person is innocent.

The theory of retributive punishment has advantages and disadvantages. It has been argued that the execution of a murderer brings closure to the families of the victims. Others have argued that it spares the state the expense of housing and feeding the guilty. It also ensures that the person executed will not commit any more crimes.

Retributive theory, however, is not without difficulties. As recent cases involving DNA have shown, it is extremely difficult to be sure of knowing who committed a crime. The film “Twelve Angry Men”^[7] dramatically shows how almost all the evidence may point to guilt when a person is innocent. Once a person is dead, one cannot make up for the devastating financial and psychological blows he or she has suffered should they be found to be innocent posthumously.

Others have argued that two wrongs do not make a right and that killing a helpless person is always wrong. In the eighteenth century, the Marquis de Beccaria argued that capital punishment is harmful to the character of both the executioner and society and that it promotes a callous attitude toward human life ^[8]His argument was so forceful that it prompted Catherine the Great of Russia to abolish capital punishment in her country except for treason.^[9]

Deterrence

Deterrence theory is closely linked to utilitarianism discussed in chapter one. Utilitarians argue that it is not important if the guilty are punished, but only that crime be stopped. A common example: parking tickets. Once a relative of mine, Michael, parked in what he thought was a legal spot. Unfortunately, a fire hydrant had been covered by garbage. When he left the car, the garbage was cleared, the hydrant became visible, and the police put a ticket on his windshield. His complaints to the city were useless. He had to pay, although he was certainly not guilty of voluntarily breaking the law. This is known as strict liability. Fines are imposed not as punishment, but only as a means of deterrence. (In this case, Michael’s little son tried to make sure that his dad never parked in front of a hidden hydrant again.)

This view is of course, subject to the same problems associated with utilitarianism discussed in chapter two. A utilitarian might argue that it would be morally okay to punish an innocent person of one ethnic group for killing a person of the same ethnic group, to avoid ethnic strife if the citizens of a city thought the murdered person was the victim of a hate crime. In this case, one would go to illegal means, even a travesty of justice, to prevent further violence. Would you think that this grave injustice was justified because it benefited the majority?

The greatest advantage of the deterrence theory when applied to capital punishment, would be that executions of criminals benefited society (if the death penalty really prevented future capital crimes).

There are no studies, however, that show that executions deter crimes. Some indicate that when capital punishment becomes legal, murders actually increase. How can this be? Some psychological studies indicate that murderers find a perverse, even sexual pleasure in the expectation that they will be executed. Some people want to die without committing suicide: One example is when people who wanted to commit suicide but could not do it themselves, have pointed a gun at a police officer in order to be shot and killed.

Arthur Koestler, in Reflections on Hanging, mentions that when pickpocketing was a public offense and executions were public, the best time for pickpockets to ply their trade was when everyone was busy watching a pickpocketer being hanged.^[10]

Who should be considered for capital punishment? In many societies, children are tried as adults for capital crimes. The first problem with that practice is that it is not clear when adulthood is reached. Different societies have had different ideas on this. In the European Middle Ages, the age of full responsibility was generally thought to be fourteen. Many people married at that age. It seemed, therefore, only reasonable to hold young parents responsible for their actions.

Today, however, there is mounting evidence in neuropsychology that the brain may not develop fully until the age of twenty-five.^[11] The growth of the amygdala, for example, may be delayed, and that is a key factor in moral development, as it plays a role in processing emotions involved in moral judgment. Many modern societies would not agree that a fourteen-year-old is an adult.

If we decide that children should not be penalized in the same manner as adults, where are the boundaries of remediation? Children in many countries are treated as psychiatric patients when they commit a crime. Should this method be applied to adults as well? The psychologist Karl Menninger believed that criminality is a disease, and criminals should be treated as patients in hospitals.^[12] This sounds like a reasonable and compassionate view.

Unfortunately, this would-be compassionate view toward criminal punishment was misused by a tyrannical regime under Stalin to persecute scientists and political freethinkers. When the government decides to decide who is insane, it may lead to the incarceration and ‘treatment’ of anyone who disagrees with the government. On the other hand, prison reforms such as those in Finland, which adopted a therapeutic view, saw a huge reduction in crime.

There is of course another disadvantage. A clever criminal could pretend to be cured, and be released, posing a risk to society.

Further thoughts on capital punishment

I suggested in chapter one that a balance could be struck in ethical theory between rules, consequences, and virtues. Perhaps this is also true about punishment. Perhaps the advantages of retribution, deterrence, and therapy need to be combined in order to have a successful theory of punishment. What are your thoughts on this?

Euthanasia (Mercy Killing)

Mercy killing can be understood in various ways. The most common is the right of a terminally ill patient in great pain to choose to have a doctor end his or her life. Sometimes this can be broadened to include someone not terminally ill but in uncurable, endless pain. Some consider it a right of anyone, no matter what one’s state of health, to end his or her life if one is desperately unhappy, or simply does not want to live. Most advocates would restrict this right to adults, leaving the problem of what to do with children who are in similar states.

If Euthanasia were legalized, terrible suffering would be relieved. Huge medical expenses would be avoided, and the population would decrease.

There are, however, some disadvantages to mercy killing being legal:

1. People may choose death rather than endure painful treatments that may cure them, while those who choose the treatments and survive, may be glad they chose life. In order to avoid this, some proposed programs would insist that the benefits of death be attested to by a medical and/or judicial panel, and only allowed if so approved.
2. People suffering from intense negative emotions, such as the death of a loved one, or the painful ending of a love relationship would lose the possibility that time will heal, and that there may be new loving experiences in the future.
3. Families unwilling to use their resources to help their infirm or aged relatives, may encourage them to ‘take a walk to the mercy killing clinic’. Obviously, free quality healthcare could solve that problem.

The philosopher Philippa Foot suggested the reverse problem in a paper given at New York University. She said that her mother was always berating her for not visiting enough. Foot feared that if mercy killing was legal, her mom could threaten that she’ll just take a walk to the euthanasia clinic, thereby forcing the guilt-prone Philippa to visit her more.

A striking example of unrestricted mercy killing is presented in the film “Soylent Green.” In a society where most are desperately poor, people are encouraged to go to a very attractive and well-liked euthanasia clinic (with coveted air conditioning in a burning hot city) and end it all, viewing beautiful pictures and listening to their favorite music. Take a look at the film, and decide if you find the idea of such a clinic to be a good thing.