Life, Death and the StateKresta

Padilla

Liberalism, the Law and Bioethics

The state, the apparatus of government,has a legitimate interest in both the fact, andthe manner, of the birth and death of itscitizens.

Legal is not necessarily what is right, good, fitting in an ethical issues.

Example:1. Euthanasia

2. Suicide

3. Death Penalty

4. Smoking

Consider abortion as a matter of public policy for the state.

According to the National Medical Health and Research Council, more than 80,ooo abortions are carried out each year in Australia.

Regardless of the various reasons for these abortions, it is safe to say that abortion is a traumatic experience which touches the lives of a great many Australian women and their families.

There is plenty of evidence that criminalizing abortion produces great social harm:

• Making abortion illegal is likely to create a further toll of human suffering through backyard and self-inflicted abortions

• More unwanted children and a further burden on disadvantaged women.

Because abortion is such a contentious issue and because there are a variety of circumstances in which abortion seems the best choice to families and their doctors, it is futile and even unjust to legislate against personal choice in this matter, although the moral choice remains even when the legal impediments are removed.

To reduce the number of abortions in society, a desirable and responsible goal, social policy measures such as ethics counseling and education along with better support services for women and families are needed rather than legislating to enforce morality.

In Bioethics in a Liberal Society, Australian ethicist Max Charlesworth,

…the essence of liberalism is the moral conviction that because they are autonomous moral agents or persons, people must as far as possible be free to choose for themselves, even if their choices are, objectively speaking, mistaken; and further that the state may not impose one moral or religious position on the whole community but, so long as they do not violate or harm the personal autonomy of others, must treat all such positions equally.

Critics of Charlesworth might assert that he overemphasizesautonomy and takes inadequate account of socially destructive valuesand practices in so-called liberal democratic societies.

Charlesworth goes on to defend liberalism against the charge ofethical relativism just as he distinguishes it from libertarianism whichpromotes the idea of limited or minimal government interventionespecially on economic matters. He points out that government in aliberal society is obliged “not merely to prevent, in a negative way,restrictions on the exercise of personal autonomy, but actively andpositively to promote the socio-economic conditions within whichpersonal freedom and autonomy can flourish”.

The criminal point has noplace in matters of abortion,suicide, euthanasia, andreproductive technology except toprevent exploitation of theindividual.

According to the liberal view,the state cannot legislate formorality, though, by the sametoken, it must protect the rights ofthose who have a moral objection toabortion, euthanasia, or certainprocreative technologies.

Charlesworth stresses, if choice in thesebioethical issues is to be preserved and to bemeaningful to disadvantaged members of society,the state and its institution have a particularresponsibility to create conditions of economicwell-being through education, health care,employment and community support.