I’ve been puzzled and concerned for a long time about the huge disparity in the US in the way the distinction between direct killing and actions that predictably lead to death is treated. For those who espouse a critically important distinction here, it is always wrong to end a pregnancy, just as it is always wrong to end a life in case of dreadful illness. For many this issue appears to eclipse all others.
Those whose alleged main moral concern appears to be preventing such direct killing (in the centrally bioethical context) maintain a powerful and well-funded campaign to get their own way. (I say alleged because, as we all know, many have no problem with capital punishment and/or war). Where the law fails to reflect their views, they find ways to ensure that the relevant services are unavailable anyway, by intimidation, violence, or economics. This state of affairs supplies an unending series of dramatic cases where the principle is maintained at all costs, even where no lives are saved, cases that, not surprisingly, draw to themselves an enormous amount of attention from those who do not accept the unvarying wrongness of direct killing.
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