PBA303H: Double-Effect Reasoning

Prerequisite: PBA203Y

• Simple example: a mother cleaning her child's wound with alcohol that causes her child to scream out in pain¹⁾
  • The child's pain is a direct result of her willful and direct actions
  • Yet we can see that her child's pain is not part of her moral object, that reason grasps the difference between the effects and the choice that's actually being made – to heal her child
  • This is double-effect reasoning, how we can understand the difference between the moral object and the effects when good and evil and intertwined
• Classic example (even though it's incredibly rare): cancer in the uterus during pregnancy
  • First, you do everything you can to save both lives
  • But say you get to the extreme (and exceedingly rare) point where: if you do nothing, both will die; and no matter what you do, the child will die (pre-viable, etc.)
  • If you take an action, one effect will be good and the other evil
  • You start by proposing for yourself the moral object that you are going to choose, the most accurate descriptive of the choice: I'm going to remove the uterus to treat the life-threatening cancer that saves the only possible life that can be saved.
  • Now, double-effect reasoning helps you to test the moral object to make sure you're not playing word games with yourself to make it look like you're not doing evil
    1. Action itself must be good or indifferent (can't do evil)
       • this is not the moral object, otherwise you wouldn't need the other conditions
       • this means: you give the best most accurate attempt to propose what your choice will be, and then ask if that is good or indifferent
    2. Only the good effect is intended, the evil effect is foreseen but unintended (can't intend evil):
       • Am I only intending the good effect?
       • If I could save the child, I would. You've done everything possible (e.g. chemotherapy)
    3. The evil effect is not the means by which the good effect comes about (can't depend on evil):
       • Is the death of a pre-viable child the thing that cures cancer? No. Even if the child weren't in the uterus, you would still remove the uterus.
       • The death of the child is not what brings about the good effect.
    4. There is a proportionate reason for allowing the evil effect:
       • We are not talking about proportion between the evil and the good, e.g. whose life is more valuable
       • Is the choice you are making is duly and justly proportionate to the aim you claim to achieving?
         • e.g. self-defence, if you're being attacked by a child whose just slapping at you and you pummel the child, that's not proportionate to the aim you're claiming to be achieving
         • If the aim is to save the only life you can through cancer, is removing the child who we cannot save proportionate? Yeah
         • Wrong: “you're pregnant and you have cancer, but no worries, we can remove the uterus”
           • Not proportionate, but using double-effect as a get out of jail free card – you haven't done everything you can to explore your options to save both lives
           • That doctor could not say the moral object of that case is simply to cure cancer