Originally Posted by
gejone
I have to disagree with your response and JonathanIT's describing my view as simplistic. That is unless you also consider comments such as, "Do what you know is right"; "The Golden Rule"; "What does your gut tell you to do", also simplistic. It is usually easy to tell what is ethical, it's sometimes hard to do the ethical thing. I've found that when people ask, they're looking for someone to agree with what they want to do, which isn't always the ethical thing. FWIW.
In this particular situation the "ethical" thing to do is quite apparent. That being said, your reductionist view is simplistic.
Let me pose a classic dilemma where there is ethical ambiguity. Your wife needs medicine and you don't have insurance. You can't afford the medicine from the pharmacy. You decide to steal it to save her life. Now hopefully you won't dismiss such a scenario as unrealistic and shirk the task of evaluating ethical conundrum. I hope you can at least see that there are examples abound where an analogy to pregnancy comes up a bit short.
As for the golden rule, does this apply unconditionally? Is it OK to confine a killer because you wouldn't want to be confined? Is it ever OK to use abusive or torturous tactics to obtain information? While I believe I know what may be right I can see there are many areas where ethical clarity is elusive.