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• Saturday, October 4, 2008 10:27 PM

  ethics_professor

  I wonder how many people on UT are pro-choice and against capital punishment? These are in contradiction, just like being pro-death penalty and anti-abortion. The ethical principle that these issues share is the sanctity of life, but that principle is in conflict in the scenarios above.

  I always enjoy your posts, ethics_professor, but I think that that particular framing of that ethical "principle" really assumes the anti-abortion, so-called "pro-life" position. Those on the Christian right have, I guess, been successful in framing the issue as "when does human life begin?" when a more accurate frame might be "when does a person begin?" (as George Daley of of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute put it in this broadcast of Science Friday here: http://www.sciencefriday.com/pages/2007/Apr/hour2_042707.html). (I'm sure there's an even more exact way of framing the issue in terms of "some being having an cognizable claim on life" but it's not worth formulating for this post.)

  As a way of elucidating the point, Daley refers (at about 43:00 in the broadcast above) to the elegant dilemma, as posed by Ronald Bailey: "A fire breaks out in a fertility clinic and you have a choice: You can save a three-year-old child or a Petri dish containing 10 seven-day old embryos. Which do you choose to rescue?" (found here: http://www.reason.com/news/show/34948.html).

  I understand and agree with your post as a general matter. I think that, with regard to capital punishment and abortion, there are ethical principles that more accurately reflect the pro-choice/anti-capital punishment position and that do not necessarily lead to conflict.

  —Jeff W Read Jeff W's other letters
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