With the exception of what I’ll consider less significant nuances, I agree.
My previous reply was not made with the intent of justifying abortion. I’m pointing out that there are differences between the statements made the post that I was replying to and how people seem to think and behave. It was stated “To even try to justify abortion means that person is also OK with ANY type of killing,”. But a person that tries to justify abortion is not necessarily okay with any type of killing. The first does not imply the second.
I mention situational ethics because some people consider the situation in which an action occurs. Even you mentioned some one killing in self defense. The self defense situation may impact one’s moral evaluation of that killing. You also mentioned abortion as a matter of convenience, with convenience situations being those in which some would evaluate it as immoral.
Oh I agree that moral decisions are multidimensional. The Church also recognizes that the morality of an act depends upon three features:
- the nature of the act itself
- the motives of the individual
- the circumstances surrounding the act.
This effectively means that all of the features are taken into account to decide on moral culpability or responsibility. So, the 1) act of killing another person may have mitigating features which diminish the responsibility of a person for doing so because they are acting 2) purely to protect or defend and in no premeditated way, 3) an innocent party from being killed by a crazed assailant.
Situational ethics do not function to make acts relatively moral or immoral because once all three dimensions are taken into account, any like act which has similar circumstances and motives will always be weighed as equally wrong or equally right and the agents equally excused or culpable. This is not relativism, it is a way of accounting for all the relevant features of any morally important action.
If aborting an infant after 8 months of pregnancy is in all relevant respects (the three features above) identical to killing a five year old, then the two acts ought to be regarded as equally morally right or wrong. So which is it? Right or wrong? The inconsistency is glaring on the part of abortion supporters.
There are two problems with the issue.
A) Dulled moral sensibilities where decision makers do not have a clear sense of what is right or wrong and therefore do not clearly see 1) the acts as being clearly wrong in themselves. The 2) motives and 3) circumstances do not make the act morally right, they mitigate or completely negate culpability or reduce the responsibility of the agent or exonerate them completely, but never make the act “right.”
B) Not weighing 2) motives and 3) circumstances appropriately when rendering a moral decision. In other words, a motive or circumstance may be given too much weight in excusing the act or when irrelevant factors are allowed to be included in the accounting and wrongly invoke motives or appeal to irrelevant circumstances.
For example, what difference is there, that would make killing a one month old child wrong because his/her existence places a burden on the parents to care for this child that would not make it equally wrong to abort a ninth month pre-born child for the same motives and roughly identical circumstances?
The de facto position ought to be that killing a 3,4 or 5 month child should be treated the same as killing (aborting) a pre-born. Both are killing in the same sense. A proabortionist needs to show that there is a relevant and important difference between a pre-born and post-born child that would make it wrong to kill the post-born but NOT wrong to kill (abort) the pre-born under the same circumstances and for roughly the same reasons.
Appeals to the emotional state of the mother, the financial costs or stresses on parents, etc. that do not excuse killing a post-born child should not count any differently where aborting (killing) a pre-born is being considered. Location or physical dependency just are not sufficient. Abortion is as wrong as killing a post-born child.
Why that is not clear to people is an important question.
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