Matters of Life and Death
General Comments
The principal concern in Part One is with ethical issues that involve decisions about matters of life and death: reproductive choices, including abortion; choices about how we die, including euthanasia; and choices about how we punish, especially whether we should use the death penalty as a form of punishment.
One of the major issues that runs throughout this section is the question of the value of life. It is important to distinguish two questions:
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.