Anc 106-Exam 1 Flashcards
Exam 1 study questions
Ehthics
Philosophical study of morality (moral philosophy)
Morals/Morality
Social customs and practices that determines good and bad, right and wrong
Moral Cognitivism
Moral truths exist and can be known
Moral Relativism/Realism
Moral judgments are true or false only relative to some particular standpoint
Subjectivism
Moral evaluations and appraisals are based solely on our own feelings. Knowledge is merely subjective and that there is no external or objective truth.
Moral Non-Cognitivism
There are NO moral truths that can be known
Cultural Difference Argument
- matter of opinion that varies from culture to culture. They base morality NOT in the claims of the individual, but their community.
Ex: Greeks believed that it was wrong to eat the dead, whereas Callatians believed it was right
Relativism Strengths
- reflects what anthropologists find when they study other cultures
- explains differences within sub-cultures within US (alcohol, abortion, homosexuality, premarital sex, etc)
- explains difference of opinion between individuals
Relativism Weaknesses
- it’s not necessary to explain the difference in cultural practices
- can’t account for moral progress
- morality appears to be based on rather arbitrary standards
- may be more similarity between people/cultures than we initially recognize
3 Teleological Theories and Examples
- Virtue theory (Aristotle)
- Divine Command Theory (Aquinas)
- Utilitarianism (Bentham, Mill)
Virtual Theory
Aristotle: -emphasis on character traits
- teleological in orientation (ends)
- Golden mean
Divine Command Theory
- What is morally right or wrong is that which is commanded by God.
- We cannot know good apart from those commands (religious text)
Limitations of Divine Command Theory
- If that which is good is good only because God commands it, then morality is nothing other than the arbitrary will of God
- If God commands only those things which are good, then there is a standard of morality that is independent of God
Utilitarianism
- Bentham/Mill
- actions are right if they’re useful or for the benefit of the majority
Limitations to Utilitarianism
Baby in a black box, run-away train (save the baby or 5 men tied up on track), hospital screening device
Natural Law Theory (6 parts and 1 example)
- Aquinas
- Built on same teleological approach found in Aristotle
- God provides the ultimate end/purpose
- Everything has a purpose and the purpose is to fit into God’s plan
- Appeals to religious texts and belief’s
- Argues that morality can be determined by understanding Divine Laws/Natural Laws
Ex: A proponent of this view might argue that homosexual sex is unnatural sex because it is contrary to the purpose of sex (procreation)
Deontology
- Immanuel Kant/Principle of Universal Law or Legislation
- Emphasis on moral duties
- Only good without qualification is good will
- Good will is informed by reason/categorical imperative
- Outcomes/consequences may not just justify the means: NEVER as a means only!
Limitations to Deontology (3 examples)
- Lying/cheating/stealing: what’s wrong with it? Is it OK to deceive someone to get a loan?
- Is it OK to protect someone from hurtful information? From being seriously injured?
- Download music without paying for it?
Consequentialist/lism
- morality of an action is to be judged solely by its consequences
- Emphasis is on the consequence of an action
- Primacy given to maximizing pleasure/minimizing pain
- Greatest good for the greatest number
- Act v. Rule of Utilitarianism
- Normative ethical theories holding that the consequences of one’s conduct are the ultimate basis for any judgment about the rightness or wrongness
of that conduct
-Utilitarian Calculus
Utilitarian Calculation
- Is it permissible for them to torture the suspect into revealing the bomb’s whereabouts?
- Can the dignity of one individual be violated in order to save many others?
- Some argue that it is impossible to do the
calculation that utilitarianism requires because consequences are inherently unknowable.
Categorical Imperative
- Principle of Universal Legislation
- Individual must ask if a general rule can be derived such that every person’s similar situation would be compelled to do the act in question.
- Treat others as ends and not means only
Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas
-Natural law theorists
Aquinas -40 days/90 days in utero
- fetus first has a vegetative soul, then an
animal soul, and finally a rational soul when
the body was developed
Virtue Ethics
- Aristotle
- Emphasizes an individual’s character as the key element of ethical thinking, rather than rules about the acts themselves (Deontology) or their consequences (Consequentialism).
Thomas Moore
-“A Man for All Seasons”
-Lord Chancelor to Henry VIII
-Refused to swear to the Act of
Succession/charged with
treason/executed 1535
Griswold v Connecticut
- 1965 struck down Connecticut law that previously barred contraceptives/made it legal for physicians to Rx contraceptives
- First case to cite a right of privacy
Planned Parenthood vs Casey
1992 Pennsylvania law that required spousal awareness prior to obtaining an abortion was invalid under the Fourteenth Amendment because it created an undue burden on married women seeking an abortion
Planned parenthood V Danforth
- 1976 provisions of a Missouri law regulating abortion care were unconstitutional.
- NO LONGER restricted abortion care by requiring written consent for each abortion procedure from the pregnant woman as written consent of the woman’s husband if she was married, or the written consent of her parents if she was unmarried and younger than eighteen.
- House Bill 1211 also required that physicians make efforts to preserve the lives of aborted fetuses
Roe v Wade
- 1973 right to terminate unwanted pregnancy
- established guidelines which regulate state interests in limiting abortions
Federal Conscience Protections
- Immediately following Roe v Wade, states and fed gov’t acted to establish protections for health professionals who refused to participate in abortions
- At federal level, the passage of the Church Amendments (1973 +), after senator Frank Church, provided the first conscience clauses in the US
Church Amendment
Public officials may not req individuals/entities who receive certain public health funds to perform abortion or sterilization procedures or to make facilities or personnel avail if it “would be contrary to their religious
convictions”
-Burwell v Hobby Lobby 2014
Neal Noesen
- Substitute pharmacist refused to refill a Rx for oral contraceptives because he “did not want to commit a sin by impairing the fertility of a human being”
- also refused the Rx be transferred to another pharmacy
- reprimanded, had to take ethics class, pay $20,000 in costs used to prosecute him
- Appeals court upheld lower court ruling that sanctions did not violate his rights
Plan B
- Levonorgestrel, AKA “The Morning after Pill”
- NOT the same RU 486/The Abortion Drug
- Does not stop development of a fetus once the fertilized egg implants in the uterus. So it will not work if you are already pregnant when you take it.
RU 486
- “The Abortion Pill”
- medication typically used in combination with misoprostol to bring about abortion during pregnancy
Religious Objections to Plan B/RU 486 Pill
it is not possible to anesthetize the conscience when it comes to molecules whose aim is to stop an embryo implanting or o cut short someone’s life (Pope Benedict XVI 2007)
45 CFR 88
-may not discriminate in employment, etc to a health care professional related to religious beliefs/abortion, etc
– Ensuring that dept of health and human services funds do NOT support coercive or discriminatory policies or practices in violation of federal law
Took effect day of Obamas presidency
5 Cognitive criteria of personhood
C.R.A.C.A
- Mary Anne Warren in relation to “it’s not really a person” to justify abortion
1. - Consciousness (of objects and events external and/or internal to the being), and in particular the capacity to feel pain
2. Reasoning (the developed capacity to solve new and relatively complex problems)
3. Self-motivated activity (an activity which is relatively independent of either genetic or direct external control)
4. The capacity to communicate, by whatever means, messages of an indefinite variety of types, that is, not just with an indefinite number of possible contents, but on indefinitely many possible topics
5. The presence of self-concepts and self-awareness, either individual, racial or both.
Conscience
- establishes a felt need or disposition to act in accordance with the knowledge of belief, giving a sense of personal integrity when you do the best you can, and a sense of failure, frustration or guilt when you fail to do so
- should be committed ot morality itself and to acting/choosing according to our best judgement of the good and right
Incompatibility Thesis
- conscience-based refusals to provide legal and professionally permitted medical services are incompatible with professional obligations of MDs
- What’s at stake? Abortion/sterilization, contraception, assisted suicide, euthanasia, terminal sedation, refusal of Tx, elective procedures, stem cell-based therapies, reproductive services for minors
Embryo
- Week 2-8 after fertilization: unborn offspring in the process of development
- an unborn or unhatched offspring in the process of development
Fetus
Week 8+ after fertilization
-unborn offspring articular an unborn human baby
Midwife
- midwife is a trained health professional who helps healthy women during labor, delivery, and after the birth of their babies.
- Midwives may deliver babies at birthing centers or at home, but most can also deliver babies at a hospital
Sherri Finkbine
-Took thalidomide for morning sickness. May have caused malformations of her baby so she had an abortion overseas
Humanae vitae
Pope Paul VI 1968 encyclical on contraception and reproductive ethics
1) God is the author of life – al life is precious
2) Procreation is the heart of marriage
3) Openness to procreation affirms the dignity of women
4) Does not mean its always Gods will that a couple conceive
5) Couples may take advantage of infertile periods to temporarily avoid conception
6) Artificial contraception is a cultural recipe for disaster
7) Change the culture instead of ignoring the moral law
Age of Viability
- Weeks 22-27
- “The age at which a premature baby can survive outside of the uterus”
Judith Jarvis Thompson-
- violin argument/pro-abortion
- People seeds- thought experiment employed to consider pregnancies resulting from consensual sex. Here we are asked to imagine living in a world where people seeds fly around; if they get into your house they nest in carpets and upholstery.
Circular Argument
- Circular reasoning is a logical fallacy in which the reasoner begins with what they are trying to end with.
-The components of a circular argument are often
logically valid because if the premises are true, the conclusion must be true
Marquis deprivation
-Don Marquis (Prof @ KU-“Why Abortion is Immoral” paper)
- Abortion is wrong as death is a bad thing because it deprives people of all the experiences, activities, enjoyments, projects that would make up their
future personal life -
Kenneth Edelin
- whose 1975 manslaughter conviction (Roe v Wade) for performing a legal abortion was overturned on appeal in a landmark test of medical, legal, religious and political questions surrounding abortion in America
Alice Roe
- Dr. Edelin had removed her “baby boy Roe” from Alice Roe’s uterus while it was still alive and then failed to provide “him” with life-saving care @ 24-28 weeks
Jane Roe AKA Norma McCorvey
Original plaintiff from Roe v Wade
Henry Wade
District attorney of Dallas County, who enforced a Texas law that prohibited abortion, except to save a woman’s life
Augustine’s view on abortion
- abortion is not homicide but was a sin if it was intended to conceal fornication or adultery
1st Vatican Council
20th ecumenical council of the Roman Catholic Church, convoked by Pope Pius IX to deal with contemporary problems.
Doctrine of double effect
if doing something morally good has a morally bad side-effect it’s ethically OK to do it providing the bad side-effect wasn’t intended. This is true even if you foresaw that the bad effect would probably happen.
of Deaths from Abortion
as of 2013, over 56.5 MILLION
Robert Courtney
- KC Pharmacist 2002
- diluted 98,000 Rx for 4,200 patients (chemo, fertility, antibiotics) to they were ineffective
- Made $50,000 from one pt
- Sentenced to 30 years “I don’t know why I did it”
