Download Eight Key Questions/ Nine Moral Principles

Eight Key Questions:
Fairness - How can I act equitably and balance legitimate interests?
Outcomes - What achieves the best short- and long-term outcomes for me and all others?
Responsibilities - What duties and/or obligations apply?
Rights - What rights (e.g. innate, legal, social) apply?
Liberty - How does respect for freedom, personal autonomy, or consent apply?
Authority - What do legitimate authorities (e.g. experts, law, my religion/god) expect of me?
Character - What action best reflects who I am and the person I want to become?
Empathy - What would I do if I cared deeply about those involved?
Nine Ethical Principles:
1) The principle of autonomy (or liberty) is the reciprocal duty to respect the free will and decision-making
capacities of autonomous persons insofar as this capacity is not used to harm others.
2) The principle of integrity upholds the practice of truth-telling and public disclosure of all necessary and
essential information to safeguard those whose lives would otherwise be negatively impacted by deceit or
unnecessary secrecy.
3) The principle of non-maleficence stipulates that we all have a duty to avoid causing needless harm or injury
to other persons, whether directly and deliberately, or through carelessness, culpable negligence, or inexcusable
ignorance.
4) The principle of beneficence (or professional care or service) says that we should act in ways that promote
the welfare of other people, according to reasonable expectations and standards of due care.
5) The principle of respect for persons (or the principle of human dignity or value of life principle) is
understood as a moral ideal that requires everyone to treat all other human beings in a way that recognizes and
respects their inherent dignity and worth as unique, irreplaceable individuals. People should never be treated as
something less than ends in themselves or as mere means for someone else's interests.
6) The principle of equality (or impartial and equal treatment of persons) is generally connected with some
notion of justice or fairness and the impartial rule of law. The basic idea is that law-abiding citizens should be
treated as having equal status before the law.
7) The principle of privacy is understood as a legal immunity from unnecessary intrusion by the state (or any
other political agency or civil authority) into the private lives of citizens. Privacy does not simply refer to private
ownership of physical things and places, but also to one's personal capacity to think and believe as one wants
and to have the freedom or autonomy to make decisions that intimately affect one's personal life.
8) The principle of distributive justice says that human beings should treat each other fairly and justly when
distributing risks, burdens, and benefits among themselves in civic society.
9) The principle of retributive justice broadly refers to the procedures for determining guilt or innocence and the
application of just and fitting punishment for convicted criminals.
Abortion Cases for Debate/Speech
Case 1: Rape victim in mental hospital
Case 2: Ectopic (out of place) pregnancy/pregnant woman with leukemia
Case 3: Marlise Munoz case—brain-dead woman whose body was sustained via artificial
support because she was pregnant; similar to PVS cases except that she was
clinically dead
Case 4: IVF-created human embryo destroyed for stem cell research (ESCR) and/or
selective reduction of implanted embryos
Case 5: Sherri Finkbine case—prescribed drug causing fetal birth defects
Case 6: 16-year old woman pregnant, single, and financially strapped
Case 7: 25-year old career woman pregnant and financially capable
Case 8: Late- or later-term abortion, say for non-therapeutic (elective) reasons
Starting Questions for debate/speech:
A. How would you rank these cases from most to least ethically justifiable?
B. Where would you draw the moral line separating moral permissibility from
impermissibility? Why there and not higher or lower?
C. Where would you draw the legal line (legal permissibility as contrasted with illegality or
criminality)? Would you make the legal line identical with the moral line?
D. What assumptions are you making about the moral status of the unborn, the civil
rights of the pregnant woman, or the circumstantial features in which she finds herself
pregnant?