After reading the story, answer the following questions: Was the man\'s action o
ID: 3491578 • Letter: A
Question
After reading the story, answer the following questions:
Was the man's action of killing his wife ethical?
Does it depend upon which ethical framework you use to analyze the situation (absolute ethics, relative ethics, behavioural ethics, applied ethics)?
What does society think about the man's action?
What would you do if you were in the same situation of watching a loved one suffer excruciating pain and you felt unable to help their suffering?
When is pre-meditated murder socially, morally, and legally acceptable?
A Very Real Story
A husband of more than 50 years said he had run out of options.
His wife, 78, had been seriously ill for the last 15 years. The cost of her medications had become so expensive that they could no longer afford it. He decided that on Monday morning while she was sleeping, he would shoot her in the head to relieve her pain and suffering.
The man killed his wife at 7:30 a.m. while she was asleep. He then put the gun on a dresser, went into the kitchen had some coffee. He then called his daughters to tell them what he had done before calling 911 later that afternoon. He told police that his children knew that his wife wanted to die because she was in so much pain, and that he had been thinking of killing her for several days. The man apologized to police for not calling them earlier in the day but said he had wanted to let his children know what had happened first.
At the police station, the man told police that his wife had been sick for a very long time and had multiple ailments that required numerous medications. The man said that he could not afford to buy all the medications and still keep a roof over their heads.
According to AARP, an advocacy group for people over 50, specialty drugs that treat chronic conditions such as the rheumatoid arthritis that his wife had, are extremely expensive, sometimes costing thousands of dollars per dose.
Records show that the man and his wife had filed for bankruptcy in 2011, and the man worked in retail for a short time to try to pay for the medications. The man was arrested and charged with first-degree premeditated murder. But the case appeared to also highlight the difficulties faced by older people who are retired or on fixed incomes and struggle to pay for their medicine when they are ill or in pain. The man was very emotional about the situation and knew that he was going to jail, but said that he was out of options to help his wife.
Please be sure to validate your opinions and ideas with citations and references in APA format.
Explanation / Answer
The ethicality of the incident cannot be legally decided by anyone besides a judge and jury in a court of law. Common folk can judge the incident as ethical or not on the basis of the ethical framework they use to view the situation.
An absolute ethics believer will find this act absolutely unethical regardless of any other factors.
A person with a Relative ethics framework will look to his/her own societal rules, whether the act is acceptable or not. Since taking another's life is considered wrong in all respects in the modern world, a few will find this act ethical. But in societies where Euthanasia is banned, even though a majority of the population wants it, the act will be viewed as ethical.
A behavioral ethics supporter will view the act in terms of the reason for it, that is the primary reason by the perpetrator was to end suffering.
And, applied ethics framework will look at the social or personal factors in the couple's life.
What society thinks of the man's action will largely fall in one of the above ethical frameworks. People are bound to be in a dilemma themselves about this situation.
Only when one is confronted with and is in this kind of a situation, only then can they know what their course of action will be.
Pre-meditated murder is largely unacceptable. Though, forms of it exist legally as seen in Euthanasia and illegally as seen in all cases, and others which go unnoticed like female infanticide and honour killings.
It largely depends on the society the persons lives in. Also, in the case of the story, the motive behind murder must be extensively scrutinized. To exclude any possibilities of secondary gains to the murder, like life insurance or dysfunctional relations.