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    Carmelics

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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
    108,905
    Topics
    42
    Home/Original/inverse
    See Original
    Inverse View

    It is not the case that 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

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    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 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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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 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 against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 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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