Problem
Doing the Right Thing?
Susan Roth was looking forward to being a mother. She had quit her secretarial job three months before her bady was due so that she could spend the time getting everything ready. Her husband, David, was equally enthusiastic, and they spend many hours happily speculating about the way things would be when their baby came. It was their first child.
"I hope they don't mex her up with some other baby," Mrs. Roth said to her husband after the delivery.
She didn't know yet that there was little chance of confusion. The Roth infant was seriously deformed. Her arms and legs had failed to develop, her skull was misshapen, and her face deformed. Her large intestine emptied through her vagina, and she had no muscular control over her bladder.
When she was told, Mrs. Roth said, "We can't let it leave, for her sake and ours." On the day she left the hospital with the child, Mrs. Roth mixed a lethal dose of a tranquilizing drug with the baby's formula and fed it to her. The child died that evening.
Mrs. Roth and her husband were charged with infanticide. During the court proceedings, Mrs. Roth admitted to the killing but said she was satisfied that she had done the right thing. "I know I couldn't let my baby live like that," she said. "If only she had been mentally abnormal, she wouldn't have known her fate. But she had a normal brain. She would have known. Placing her in an institution might have helped me, but it wouldn't help her."
The jury, after deliberating for two hours, found Mrs. Roth and her husband guilty of the charge.
• Does the fact that intelligence of the child is normal support the mother's claim that killing was justifiable? Might normal intelligence make the "injury of continued existence" even greater than subnormal intelligence?
• Why might some consider the mother's action morally wrong?
• Would the best-interest-of-the-infant standard offer any support for the mother's action?
Designated Donor by Race
"We want to ask you to consider letting Mattie be an organ donor," Barbara Zipple said. She was the nurse assigned by the Transplant Service to talk with the families of patients who had been declared dead, but we're good candidates for organ donation.
"Would they cut her up more?" Lilly Warder, Mattie's mother, asked.
"It's like an ordinary operation," Barbara said. "Once they remove the organs, they'll sew her up again. You won't be able to tell her organs have been donated."
"I don't know." Mrs. Warder shook her head. "It's like stealing from somebody's body. I don't like the idea."
"Do you know what Mattie would have wanted?" Barbara asked. "Did she like helping other people?"
"That's what she lived for." Mrs. Warder put her hand over her eyes for a moment. "Could you make sure they go to black people?"
"That's not something we can promise." Barbara shook her head. "Organs go to people who are most in need, no matter what race or gender or religion."
"Then I'm not sure I ought to give them away." Mrs. Warder shook her head. "Doctors took advantage of black folks in the past, and I'd like to try to make up for that."
• Can Mrs. Warder's attempt to address wrongs done to black people by the medical community be defended on moral grounds?
• Black people are kidney recipients significantly more often than they are kidney donors. Can an ethical case be made for race-based organ distribution system?
Cultures in Conflict
"You don't understand," L'aga said. In my culture, men do what they want with women, and women are glad of it. That's why no Ta'gee man would use a condom."
"I understand what you're saying, Dr. Clare Malloy said. "But just because your culture treats women that way is no justification for putting someone at risk for infection with the AIDS virus."
• On what grounds might one support the position taken by Dr. Malloy?
• Explain why it isn't "cultural imperialism" for Western medicine to impose on the Ta'gee standards of sexual behavior that violate their traditional practices.
• Explain the main contribution of feminist ethics to the medical context and why it does not offer a way of assessing actions, policies, and practices from the outside?