PHI208 Week 1 Assignment (Make sure you read the instructions)

Written Assignment Ethical Topics and Questions List

Abortion (Chapter 6) 

· Should abortions be allowed in certain cases, such as when the mother’s life is at risk or when a pregnancy is the result of rape or incest, but not in other cases?   

· Does a fetus have the right not to be killed from the moment of conception, or is that right acquired later in its development?   

· Does a being have to be a “person” in the sense defined by Mary Anne Warren in order to have a right to life?    

· Should a women have a right to an abortion if we recognize the fetus as a person?   

· Is restricting abortion rights an unjust restriction on a woman’s right to make her own reproductive choices? 

· Does Judith Jarvis Thomson’s “famous violinist” analogy show that a woman has a right to an abortion?   

· Do [certain abortion restrictions] place unjust burdens on a woman’s reproductive choices? 

· It would be best to specify the restrictions in the question.

· Should a minor have to get parental consent before obtaining an abortion?   

· Should the father of a fetus have to provide consent to have the pregnancy aborted?   

· Is it moral to have an abortion because … 

· the child will have a developmental disability like Down syndrome? 

· the fetus is not the desired sex? 

· the fetus carries a certain disease?  

· [state another reason]  

·  Does the legality of abortion tell us anything about its morality or vice versa? 

· Do physicians have an obligation to perform a legal abortion if requested?   

· Do physicians refusing to perform abortions have an obligation to refer a woman seeking an abortion to a physicians who does?   

Assisted Dying (Chapter 7) 

· Does a person with a terminal condition have a right to physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia?  

· You may want to choose one or the other. 

· Does a person with a debilitating but non-terminal physical condition have a right to physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia?  

· You may want to choose one or the other. 

· Does a person with a debilitating but non-terminal psychiatric condition have a right to physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia?   

· You may want to choose one or the other. 

· Should a person be able to obtain medical assistance with suicide or euthanasia for any reason?  

· You may want to choose one or the other. 

· Does assisted dying respect human dignity or undermine it?   

· Is euthanasia or assisted suicide contrary to a physician’s role or can it be part of its fulfillment?   

· If we permit assisted dying and/or euthanasia, should the patient first have to obtain the consent of a spouse or other loved one?   

· Should we permit assisted suicide or euthanasia for minors? 

· Should we permit euthanasia for infants? 

· Should physicians be allowed to opt out of assisting with suicide if it is legal and a person requests it?   

· Should physicians be allowed to opt out of performing euthanasia if it is legal and a person requests it?  

Biotechnology (Chapter 8) 

· Should we permit parents to select the gender and/or other characteristics of their children if the technology allows? 

· Is genetic enhancement something we should be encouraging, allowing, strongly restricting, or forbidding?   

· Should athletes be allowed to use performance-enhancing drugs (such as steroids or EPO) or techniques (such as blood doping or oxygen tanks)?   

· Should we permit genetic modification of the germline? 

· Would it be wrong to produce clones of humans as a form of reproduction? 

· Is cloning humans morally permissible if it is for therapeutic rather than reproductive purposes?   

· Is there an ethical justification for the reaction of repugnance many people have toward human cloning? 

· Is there a morally significant distinction between therapy and enhancement in the use of biomedical technology?  

· Should people's genetic information be private (for example, even if it could be useful in solving crimes)? 

Animals and Eating (Chapter 9) 

· Is there an important moral difference between meat, egg, and dairy produced on factory farms and such products produced in other kinds of conditions? 

· Is it wrong to eat meat that comes from animals raised on factory farms? 

· Is it always wrong to eat animals? 

· If one is ethically committed to vegetarianism, must one also practice veganism? 

· Even if it is not necessarily wrong to eat meat, is it wrong to eat certain kinds of meat, specifically... 

· You can focus on specific kinds of meats, such as veal, foie gras, dog, shark fin soup, etc.   

· Is there a moral justification for speciesism (discriminating against sentient beings simply because they are not human) or should all sentient beings be given equal moral consideration? 

· Is it morally wrong to hunt animals merely for sport? 

· Is it wrong to non-medical consumer products, like cosmetics, on living animals? 

· Is there a moral distinction between testing non-medical consumer products, like cosmetics, on living animals and testing medical products, such as drugs?   

· Is it wrong to perform scientific experiments on animals?   

· Is there a moral obligation not to buy products (e.g. beef) whose production has shown to be damaging to the environment (e.g. by contributing to climate change and ocean dead zones)?  

War, Torture, and Terrorism (Chapter 10) 

·  To what degree must we avoid civilian casualties in war? 

· Is it morally acceptable for the United States to torture individuals suspected of supporting terrorism in order to get information out of them? 

· Is it unethical for the United States to detain prisoners indefinitely without trial in places like Guantanamo Bay? 

· Is it acceptable for a nation to use drone strikes on suspect terrorists, even when they are citizens of other nations with whom we are not in conflict? 

· Is it ethical for a nation to go to war against another nation that does not attack it first, such as by engaging in a pre-emptive strike? 

· Is it acceptable for a powerful nation to support the overthrow of the government of less powerful nation if doing so would support its own long term economic and strategic interests? 

· Is it permissible for a country to go to war for the sake of humanitarian intervention as opposed to self-defense?   

Capital Punishment (Chapter 10) 

· Is capital punishment for first-degree murder morally justified? 

· Should capital punishment be used for crimes other than first-degree murder?   

· Should we execute convicted murderers that have mental disabilities?     

· Is it just to use capital punishment when there is the possibility of executing innocent persons? 

· Is the capital punishment system racist? 

· Is capital punishment just if there is evidence of racial bias in the system?   

·  Should capital punishment be at the discretion of a judge or a jury? 

Environmental Ethics (Chapter 10) 

· Do individuals have an obligation to try to limit their contribution to...?  

· Specify an area of environmental impact such as global climate change, water pollution, landfills, deforestation, etc. 

· Do institutions have an obligation to try to limit their contribution to...?  

· Specify an area of environmental impact such as global climate change, water pollution, landfills, deforestation, etc. 

· Should the government put regulations on businesses to limit their contribution to...? 

· Specify an area of environmental impact such as global climate change, water pollution, landfills, deforestation, etc. 

· Is there a moral obligation to boycott products whose production is destructive to …? 

· Specify an area of environmental impact such as global climate change, water pollution, landfills, deforestation, etc. 

· Should people or governments be allowed to develop lands that are habitats for endangered animal species? 

· Should people be allowed to exterminate wild predators such as wolves, coyotes, and mountain lions? 

· Should the United States legalize the production of hemp even if marijuana remains illegal in drug form? 

Same-sex Marriage (Chapter 10) 

· Is to morally justified for legal marriage to be available to couples of the same sex?  

· Should "marriage" be defined in a way that includes certain unions but excludes others?  

· Is there a justification for the state to legally recognize marriages, or should marriage be only a private or religious union?   

· Should people who provide services for heterosexual weddings (cakes, photography, etc.) be free to refuse to provide those services for same-sex weddings?