CONVERSATIONS ON ABORTION AND RELATED MATTERS ARISING FROM A CONSIDERATION OF DOBSON V. DOBSON

• Published in: Studia canonica Vol. 42; no. 1; pp. 141 - 180
• Main Author: ALBERT HUBBARD, H
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Ottawa, ON Université Saint-Paul, Faculté de droit canonique 2008; Studia Canonica
• Subjects: Abortion; Catholic churches; Catholicism; Christianity; Contemporary period; Fundamental ethics; General subjects; History and sciences of religions; Moral theology; Studies; Canada; Ethics; Abortion; Catholic theology
• ISSN: 0039-310X

The thrust of [Edward O. Wilson]'s view seems to be that "ethical precepts" are not derived from objective principle, but are simply ad hoc justifications for approving or condemning conduct accordingly as their "inventor" sees fit. He seems to embrace the oxymoronic position of "subjective (or relative) morality." In assessing conduct, we use the word "good" to signify that the act leads to the end desired, the word "bad" signifying that it leads away from that end, and Wilson's thesis seems to be that the ultimate end is the pleasure (or desire) of the actor (his "inventor"). Thus (to borrow an example from the English legal philosopher H.L.A. Hart), it can be said that if A wants to kill B to collect insurance, a "good" way of doing so would be to use an undetectable poison that simulates heart failure, and that administering a dose insufficient to cause death, or using a poison that shows up in the autopsy, would be a "bad" means of trying to get away with murder. However, unless there is some higher end to which murder is an affront, we can only characterize attempts at murder as being "bad" if they are unsuccessful, and we must conclude that the serial killer of whose conduct we learn only after he dies of old age did nothing "bad." It is only if we postulate some final end extraneous to the actor and towards which all means-ends relationships should be oriented that we can judge conduct objectively and it is this ordering of means-ends relationships that constitutes "the moral order." To speak of a "set of rules" is to refer to a finite number of specific measures rather than to the abstract need of rules of indefinite number and changeable content. To "agree on" a set of rules may mean either to accept to be bound by them (perhaps reluctantly), or to embrace them as intrinsically good. Rules may be said to be "rational" simply because they are efficient means to the ends sought without regard to the morality of those ends. The positive laws of Nazi Germany and the former apartheid laws of South Africa were in that sense rational, as are laws that permit abortion as a substitute for contraception. The "greater good" of all may be taken to mean either a universal good that is perceived as "greater" (more important, of higher value) than individual interests, or it may mean the widest number of de facto interests that individuals assert and that can be advanced without serious conflict in order, as [Roscoe Pound] put it, "to make the goods of existence go round as far as possible with the least friction and waste." Are the interests of the unborn and the disabled included in the greater good "of all"? While not all those who reject the notion of eternal damnation are atheists, all true atheists must reject that notion along with all hypotheses of some higher purpose. Only a hypocritical atheist who subscribes to moral relativism would renounce his own interests for "the greater good of all" - which could only be perceived by him as some obscure notion of some vague interest of allegedly transcendental value the recognition of which is inimical to his fundamental belief; and, if convinced he could get away with it, logically, no such atheist would hesitate to gratify his desires by breaking the "agreed upon rules" - not that any of us has in fact been invited to signify agreement to their content.