• What is the value of life? Here it is useful to contrast someone like Kant, who claims that human life is "priceless," with utilitarians, who maintain that everything—including life—has to be valued in terms of utility.
• I will typically use a couple of examples to "bracket" the question of the value of life. Many students are resistant to the idea that a price tag can be placed on human life; others may be all too willing to do so.
• We all place a value on human life. In order to raise questions about the idea that it is impossible to place a price tag on human life, I use the example of the speed limit. There is a clear correlation between speed limits and deaths due to traffic accidents. How many students, I ask, would be willing to lower the speed limit by 10 mph if it would save 1,000 lives a year. (Lower speed limits also mean increased costs for products, etc.) At some point, everyone will draw the line, saying the trade-off just isn’t worth it. Notice, too, that we are dealing with innocent lives here, at least in part—many of the people who die in auto crashes are hit by speeders even though they are observing the law themselves.

• Sometimes we’re not willing to place a price tag on human life. Typically, I use an example of a street person whose organs, if transplanted, would save the life of someone of unquestionable value to humanity. (I let students choose who this will be.) To stack the deck further, I make the homeless person a cruel and mean person without family or friends and with a terminal illness and only about three months to live. Could we just kidnap this person and transplant the organs against the person’s will, thereby killing the homeless person?

• Using these examples, I then begin to develop the question of whether and how we value human life.

• Given whatever value you determine that life has, how are we best to respect that value? Here the question is one of behavior, and it is important for students to see that historically there has been a certain elasticity here. Does respect for life entail eschewing the death penalty, or is this maximal punishment an indication that we value life highly and consequently punish those who take it away.

Throughout this section, it is helpful to return time and again with students to the issue of consistency. How do their views of the death penalty, for example, relate to their views on abortion?

Some philosophers and theologians have taken the consistency issue a step further and developed what has been called the "seamless garment" position. This position enjoins us to respect (the sanctity of) human life in all its forms. As a result, it is opposed to abortion, active euthanasia, the death penalty, and killing in war. This is a very strongly consistent position, one that values human life in all its forms.

A note on war and killing. For various reasons, I have not included a section here on the ethics of war and of intentional killing in other situations (such as police work). However, it is certainly conceptually appropriate to include these issues in this general section.