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    The principle of double effect inadequately explains the ... — Carmelics
    Home/Bioethics
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    The principle of double effect inadequately explains the asymmetry between the permissibility of hysterectomy on a pregnant woman and the impermissibility of abortion to save a woman's life

    Bioethics
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    2 reasons for
    1 reason against

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.In the hysterectomy case, the fetal death results from the fetus's inability to survive outside the removed uterus, not from any direct action on the fetus itself.
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    • 2.In direct abortion, the causal chain to fetal death necessarily runs through the fetus as an intermediate link, making fetal death a means rather than a side effect.
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    • 3.Warren Quinn's 1989 analysis of PDE distinguishes 'direct' harm where the victim's condition is used from 'indirect' harm where it is merely affected, placing these cases in categorically different moral structures.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
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    • 1.Philippa Foot's doctrine of doing and allowing entails that causing harm through a patient's own bodily constitution differs morally from initiating a fatal causal sequence targeting the patient.
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    • 2.The hysterectomy physician acts on the uterine disease as primary object; the fetus's presence is medically incidental, not the operative condition being addressed by the fatal means.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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    • 1.Both the hysterectomy case and the abortion case involve grave harm to a fetus as a consequence of the procedure
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    • 2.The distinction between intended means and foreseen side effects is difficult to maintain consistently across these two cases
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    Topics

    Bioethics

    Key Terms

    Abortion(as the central topic of the VR experience)
    A medical procedure that ends a pregnancy before the fetus can survive outside the womb.
    Hysterectomy(medical ethics)
    A surgical procedure in which a doctor removes a woman's uterus (womb), typically done for medical reasons.
    Impermissibility(ethics)
    The opposite of permissibility; when an action is not allowed or is morally wrong according to a set of rules.
    asymmetry(Modal logic frame semantics)
    A frame property expressible in hybrid logic by the formula c→□¬◇c, meaning if world x accesses world y, then y does not access x.
    permissibility(deontic logic)
    The dual of deontic necessity ('ought'); what 'can' expresses in deontic contexts
    principle of double effect(Philosophical ethics; distinguished from the misinterpretation that double effect permits any harm whose ultimate aim is good)
    A moral principle directed at well-intentioned agents who ask whether they may cause a serious harm in order to bring about a good end of overriding moral importance when it is impossible to bring about that good end without the harm. It requires (at minimum): the agent's ultimate aim is a good one ordinarily worth pursuing, the proportionality condition is satisfied, the harm is regretted and minimized, and the harm is not instrumentally intended as part of the agent's means to the good end.

    Connections

    1 topic

    Moral Responsibility1 linked

    Related

    Both the hysterectomy case and the abortion case involve grave harm to a fetus a...In direct abortion, the causal chain to fetal death necessarily runs through the...In the hysterectomy case, the fetal death results from the fetus's inability to ...Philippa Foot's doctrine of doing and allowing entails that causing harm through...

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: double-effect
    View source passageHide passage
    Nevertheless, many criticisms of the principle of double effect do not proceed from consequentialist assumptions or skepticism about the distinction between intended and merely foreseen consequences. Instead they ask whether the principle adequately codifies the moral intuitions at play in the cases that have been taken to be illustrations of it. One important line of criticism has focused on the difficulty of distinguishing between grave harms that are regretfully intended as part of the agent’
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    +3 moreShow less
    The distinction between intended means and foreseen side effects is difficult to...The hysterectomy physician acts on the uterine disease as primary object; the fe...Warren Quinn's 1989 analysis of PDE distinguishes 'direct' harm where the victim...

    Similar

    The principle of double effect must provide principled grounds for dis...78%Both the hysterectomy case and the abortion case involve grave harm to...76%The argument that human beings come into existence at conception is un...69%Shiffrin's principle that harming someone without consent to confer a ...68%
    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (2 for, 1 against)
    Edits
    1 edit