Philosophy - Ethical Subjectivism - Essay Example

A moral decision is the outcome of an objective evaluation of situations where both reason and emotion are to be taken into account. A decision basedmerely on either emotion or reason is apt to be flawed, since that would lack either comprehensive understanding or sufficient involvement. For a balanced view of the situation and an effective solution to it, both emotion and reason are instrumental to a moral decision. While individuals in general create an emotional fracas with regard to the decisions one is forced to take in their lives, public institutions often force.

The need of the hour is to redefine the emotional and rational aspects of decision taking with reference to the changing life situations. As Baby Theresa’s father, I had to consider both the emotional and rational aspects of decision making within a very short span of time. I had to take care that I was not overcome by my emotions in the process. It is difficult for anyone to see her/his newborn suffering every minute in their imminent journey to death. But what is unthinkable is to allow others to take her life for whatever reasons.

What I needed to make sure that these emotional extremes were not the only factors that influenced my decision. Once the doctors explained to me what Anencephaly is, what struck me most was the meaninglessness of Baby Theresa’s extended hours on the face of the earth, since she had no hope at all to lead a conscious life. It was nothing different from a brain death. The only hope to see her ‘live’ meaningfully in some way was to let her organs donated. That way, at least a fragment of her existence could be of use to this world, and we could be content that she lives through the infants who received her organs.

I strongly believe that every form of life in this world has some purpose to serve to the cosmic pattern, and I felt I should help the essence of life in baby Theresa should be allowed the same, instead of watching it perish meaninglessly. Even as we loved Theresa as she was, we knew that the presence of life and the healthy organs she had will never be of any use to her. We would have loved to see her grow up in her own way if there had been the slightest chance of conscious living for her.

On the other hand, she was not destined to have a quality life other than a mere survival for a matter of days in biological terms. We needed to make sure that whatever is healthy in her body is made useful to the world, which is badly in need of what we were willing to provide. One has to face the reality and consider all the children of this world as one’s own, and we did not feel anything wrong about the idea of making the life of our child useful to others. Unnecessary emotional burden regarding the need to ‘kill’ our child at this juncture had to be removed, as we had to perceive this as an opportunity to relieve the child from unnecessary suffering and to give the life element in her a chance to survive in some other form.

We found that the arguments by the so-called moral philosophers lacked a clear understanding of the situation. They were saying things for argument’s sake and sensationalizing the grave situation for their benefit. As the parents of Baby Theresa, our decision was supposed to have some value. We could never forget about our failure to save our child from suffering in biological terms and to give her an opportunity to be of some use to this world. The possibilities of the meaning of our child’s coming to this world were thwarted by the mindless arguments of those who missed the real issues regarding this.

There needs to be a clearly defined norm with regard to situations like this in legal and medical terms. If Anencephaly could be considered equivalent to brain death, people could in general be able to see the issue in an altogether different dimension and many unnecessary legal hassles like this could be avoided in the future.