Meditation 49: Killing Human Beings

Killing a human being is thought to be wrong. Yet humans often kill each other. Are there any moral borders to the wrongness of killing a human being, or is it wrong absolutely? Does it make a difference if, or where, one draws the line? Most of the time we know what killing a human being is, and we know that it is wrong. There is no law of nature that enjoins us to engage in mass slaughter, yet wars are perpetual. Murder out of greed, spite or rage is obviously wrong. Yet we condone the taking of human life in self-defense, and we condone or forgive it in other cases where there are extenuating circumstances. Are there such circumstances in the case of killing unwanted fetuses or moribund hospital patients? Sometimes the rationale for abortion and euthanasia is given in terms of a distinction between a person and a human being. Persons have full consciousness, memory, and personal identity. Neither a fetus nor a moribund patient qualifies as persons. They are incapable of doing what we expect from full persons.  Killing them, though often regrettable, is not always morally wrong.

Trouble arises if one conflates personhood with being human. It then seems as though we do not actually take human lives when we practice abortion and euthanasia. This cannot be the right defense of the morality of abortion or euthanasia. We must concede that fetuses and comatose patients are human beings. If we think of fetuses or moribund patients as subhuman or not human at all, then our arguments for the morality of these practices are no better than those which have been, and are being, used to promulgate ethnic cleansing and genocide. So sometimes we end human lives, and it is not always wrong. It may be the merciful thing to do, both for the life to be or the life that was, and for the lives affected by these deaths. Ideally, women would not need recourse to abortion, but there will always be circumstances for some women that will make abortion the lesser of evils. The choice is theirs. The moribund cannot choose. This makes the use of medical directives very important.  The lengths to which we may wish to go to prevent inevitable death must also be made a matter of choice. There are extenuating circumstances in both directions, and it is no simple matter to choose correctly. However, what we gain in simplicity by condemning all killing of human beings, we may lose in justice and mercy.