My powerpoint in Philosophy :D

1. Life, Death
and the StateKresta
Padilla

2. Liberalism, the Law and Bioethics

3. The state, the apparatus of government,
has a legitimate interest in both the fact, and
the manner, of the birth and death of its
citizens.

4. Legal is not necessarily what is right, good,
fitting in an ethical issues.
Example:
1. Euthanasia

5. 2. Suicide

6. 3. Death Penalty

7. 4. Smoking

8. 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.

9. 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.

10. 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.

11. 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.

12. 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.

13. Critics of Charlesworth might assert that he overemphasizes
autonomy and takes inadequate account of socially destructive values
and practices in so-called liberal democratic societies.
Charlesworth goes on to defend liberalism against the charge of
ethical relativism just as he distinguishes it from libertarianism which
promotes the idea of limited or minimal government intervention
especially on economic matters. He points out that government in a
liberal society is obliged “not merely to prevent, in a negative way,
restrictions on the exercise of personal autonomy, but actively and
positively to promote the socio-economic conditions within which
personal freedom and autonomy can flourish”.

14. The criminal point has no
place in matters of abortion,
suicide, euthanasia, and
reproductive technology except to
prevent exploitation of the
individual.
According to the liberal view,
the state cannot legislate for
morality, though, by the same
token, it must protect the rights of
those who have a moral objection to
abortion, euthanasia, or certain
procreative technologies.

15. Charlesworth stresses, if choice in these
bioethical issues is to be preserved and to be
meaningful to disadvantaged members of society,
the state and its institution have a particular
responsibility to create conditions of economic
well-being through education, health care,
employment and community support.