Ethically Speaking #2

Continuing the discussion from last week, I would like to share more of the responses from Global Ethics class. It is a class that I am co-teaching with another teacher. He focuses on presenting certain concepts through texts and lectures while I have the pleasure of challenging the students by presenting them with questions and scenarios that force them to apply a set of ethical standards or a decision-making process to a problem.

Working with these students has been nothing less than extraordinary for any number of reasons. The first reason has to be that rather than being told what is right and wrong, these students are being engaged and challenged to reveal what they feel is the proper course of action. It is a revelatory moment when all that we have taught them, all that they have learned and absorbed comes out in ways that we could not imagine. The second reasons is that it empowers these students, preparing them for the roles they will fulfill as adult members in our society. We as parents, educators, and others have placed enormous pressure on these students to perform and to live up to certain expectations. It is interesting to see how they interpret the values we have stated as most important when the moment comes to make a life-altering decision. Lastly, and one that concerns me on several levels is how these students, and through them gain a glimpse of the larger society, understand what it means to be moral. This is prefaced by stating the obvious: that my unique perspective comes finds its roots in the Gospel, in the Christian message concerning life and death, how we see ourselves and others created in the image of God.

While the first scenario challenged these students to make a moral decision that would effect individuals they had never met and formed a personal connection with, this new scenario does the exact opposite. It places two people are intimately close to the individual in seemingly direct conflict.

It is as follows:

If you are a woman, you are faced a difficult decision. You have just found that you have cancer. However, you are also three months pregnant. Your doctors have informed you that in order to survive you must begin radiation and chemotherapy immediately. However, doing so will terminate the pregnancy. If the pregnancy is allowed to continue to term the child will survive but you will not. Your husband has stated that this is your decision and that he will follow your wishes. A last factor to consider is that you have already given birth to one child who is 3 years old.

If you are man, you are being faced with the same scenario. The only change is that your spouse has given you the final decision as to whether or not she will undergo the life-saving treatment. She will follow your wishes.

In this limited hypothetical situation, no amount of science present or future will allow the child to be born now and survive. Also, no amount of treatment will allow the mother to survive to her passed her due date.

The question is clear: Does the mother undergo the treatment or not? What are some of the ethical questions present? What is your rationale for undergoing or forgoing the treatment? How does your definition of human life play into this?

It is easy to see why this question presents the reader with a plethora of concerns. It is a decision that would be deeply personal, painfully emotional, and require careful reflection. One is tempted to believe that there is no possibly correct answer. However, the purpose of the question in this exercise with these students is to convince them to reveal their beliefs and values, which as previously stated has been formed by many sources and influences. I also prefaced this scenario by saying that my wife and, like many young couples, have agonized over this decision and not come to a consensus demonstrating just how confusing it can be.

The student responses were fascinating. But as usual their thought processes are what revealed more. They began asking questions like: what's the mother's job? They also asked what the capacity was of the father to care for two children without another parent? But more than what they asked was what they contended. Some argued that because the mother had already lived a full life that it was not the baby's turn. Others disagreed and said that it was always possible to have another child later on. Still others became more direct, and more extreme by stating that there was not really an ethical decision because the baby was not technically alive or viable which fell into direct contrast with others who stated that innocent life with no voice was more valuable than a life who had a voice to defend itself.

This spurred a discussion on the value of human life which completely threw the class for a loop. I asked them, "what gives value to human life?". They responded with many of the standard answers our society provides.

"How educated you are. We've been taught that education is everything."

"Wealth. That way you can do more and be more."

"How much you can do for yourself and others."

I followed up by asking them if characteristics like race, creed, perceived beauty, language and other things made a difference. They answered by stating that it could potentially make a huge difference. Then I threw them a curveball. I asked them the question that each of us must face when we look in the mirror and we see others. "Does a human being possess a value, an inherent value, that is independent from the perceived value of others?".

A profound silence followed. They asked: "what other value could there be?"

And at that point my heart wept for them. It wept because we have taken great pains to build our children up by acknowledging and celebrating what they do. But we have not always acknowledged the value they have in our eyes and God's eyes simply for being. When I proposed that both the mother and the child had the same inherent value many of them balked at the idea.

"It hasn't done anything yet."

"It hasn't helped anyone, or learned to communicate, or even been born. How can it have the same value as an adult human?"

Therein lies the question. It is a question that many people around the world face in one form or another. It is where our self-interest and our perceived values of individuals meet. It is where the ethical dilemma becomes a dilemma.

At the end of the discussion I challenged the students to strip away everything about themselves and others that deals with what they do, both for themselves and others, and ask "what is left?". What I didn't tell them is that if what is left behind is nothing then we are left with a profound darkness. We are left with a deep chasm where our soul, our createdness in God used to be. As Christians we are called to view each other through the eyes of Christ. We are called to see now what men see but rather what God sees. What God creates he loves. What he loves he sustains. And what he sustains he reconciles to himself. The beginning of any argument about life and death must be at the point where God's creation meets our acknowledgement as co-creators with him. We do not create human life. Rather we are co-creators and stewards of it. After that realization come the integration of our personal experiences, our biases, our self-interests and most of all our brokenness.

I will not give the definitive answer for this scenario. I will not even give my decision. I will say that those agonize about it are certainly in tune with the tension that each of us faces when our consciences are in conflict. If we are preach the Gospel and to raise and educate children who will listen and act on it as well, we must begin by telling them that their value to us is great, but that their value to God is immeasurable.