Resolution?

Well, I haven’t come up with a complete resolution but I think we can reason our way to a resolution in a great many cases. Let me start by presenting an analogy. Suppose a young child (for definiteness say the child is under 6 years old and is not mentally mature) happens to wander out onto a roadway. Obviously the child is in potential danger and any responsible adult that happens to notice the child would immediately try to remove the child from danger.

However, let’s assume that before the child can be removed to safety a car comes barreling down the roadway that threatens the child’s life. At this point a decision has to be made by any adult that happens to notice the situation. Should the adult try to save the child before the vehicle hits him/her. Well, if the vehicle is sufficiently far away the decision is relatively easy. A responsible adult would certainly try to remove the child from danger.

However now suppose the vehicle is so close that it is problematic if the child can be removed safely. In fact suppose the vehicle is so close or going so fast that any attempt to save the child is dangerous to the adult as well as the child. The question is legally and morally what should be the adult’s decision? The question is further complicated by the fact that likely the adult has but a split second make the decision.

Obviously the correct decision depends critically on the exact circumstances. Consider the following variation; The adult decides that it is too late to save the child but onlookers disagree (after the fact). Was the decision legal? Was it moral? Should the adult be prosecuted for failing to save the child?

Legally an adult has no requirement to risk their life to save the life of another. There may be a cultural or moral requirement to do so but that is not clear. I don’t know of any mainstream religion or culture that requires you to sacrifice yourself for another in order to save the others life. It doesn’t matter what the onlookers think of the situation. What matters is that the adult involved believes that the risk of action is too high.

Now it may be that the adult is one of the child’s parents who is willing to sacrifice himself/herself in order to save the child. We’d all admire such a response but the key point is there is no legal or moral imperative for the parent to behave in this fashion. In fact, even if there were no danger to the adult there doesn’t seem to be a legal requirement for the adult to act. Even a responsible and loving parent may choose not to act if the situation is obviously hopeless.

Well like all analogies this one is flawed. While it obviously ignores the responsibility issues, it does contain the germ of an idea for resolving the dilemma. That idea is to consider the embryonic mother/child relationship much like the above situation where the child was threatened by a vehicle. If it is determined that the mother’s life or health is threatened then it would seem to me that the two situations are similar and that no moral or legal objection to an abortion is valid. But, as usual, things are far more complex than this simple analogy suggests as many additional factors affect the situation.

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Tags: Abortion, contraception, politics, Science

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 25th, 2009 at 5:03 pm and is filed under Abortion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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