That is nonsense. You are still sanctioning murder, and a worse one at that.
Not at all. Define your terms. Murder is the unlawful and intentional killing of another with malice aforethought. I have sanctioned no action which would end anyone’s life. What I have said is that you are not morally permitted to intentionally kill an innocent person.
If you know how to save someone’s life, and don’t do it, that is murder.
Um…no, it’s not. It may be irresponsible and possibly morally culpable, but it’s not murder. If I see someone trapped in a burning house and I don’t rush in to save them, that’s not murder (and the LDS church would agree). Don’t confuse your issues.
If I know that this can of Coke is poisoned, and anyone who drinks it will meet with certain death, and do not warn them not to drink it, that is murder.
Again…no it’s not. Murder is the unlawful and intentional killing of another with malice aforethought. No court would convict on murder on these facts. Now if I intentionally placed the poison in someone’s Coke and served it to them, that’s murder. This is a failure to act when you have a duty to do so, and that’s negligence.
But this isn’t the case at hand. To make this analogy hold, you would have to shoot a man holding a poisoned Coke which someone may or may not drink in order to prevent anyone from drinking it. That’s not moral either.
If someone is seriously ill, and at the point of death, and there is a doctor around who knows how to save his life by applying a simple procedure, but fails to do so, that is murder.
No…that’s either negligence (failure to perform a duty) or medical malpractice. That’s not murder. The doctor would have had to have given the patient the illness and then withhold help for this to be murder. If you’re out of your depth, just say so.
You are effectively saying that it is better to murder the mother, who is a fully mature human being conscious of her life, and capable of experiencing pleasure or pain, than terminate a foetus that has none of those characteristics.
Nope. I’m saying that you can’t murder either party morally.
But by your rationale, it’s better to kill an infant than a child, better to kill a child than a man, better to kill a disabled person than an abled person, better to kill a mentally handicapped person than a normal person – you are justifying all manners of attrocities with your logic. Thankfully, society (and God) would disagree with your logic.
…I knew a woman who had a very complicated kind of pregnancy. I don’t know what the medical name for it is, but the baby develops outside the womb. The fertilized egg attaches itself to an incorrect position outside the womb, and begins to grow there.
It’s called an ectopic pregnancy.
As the baby grew it became increasingly painful. The bigger it got, the more painful it became for the mother. If nothing had been done, she would have ended up dying an agonizing death. When they took her to the hospital and diagnosed the problem, they immediately operated on her and terminated the pregnancy, which of course was the right thing to do.
Possibly. This is big-boy stuff, and requires significant moral rigor. This might be morally justified through the principle of double effect, which I’ve written about
here.
The baby’s head, any day!
Duly noted. Are all of the LDS as pro-life as you?
So you would drive the spike through the mother’s head, would you? Congratulations!
No, I would not. As I’ve stated before, you cannot intentionally kill an innocent person morally. You don’t morally get to murder either party, no matter how you may feel about it.
God Bless,
RyanL
