Case Study #1: “But, Doctor, our daughter didn’t want this!” In the state of Kansas, a married couple, Janet and Jack, experienced the merciless and brutal aspect of life. The married couple were expecting a child and one day as they were driving home from an ob-gyn appointment, a distracted elderly driver ran a red light and crashed into their car. The accident resulted in the death of the husband and a persistent vegetative state (PVS) for the wife. Previous to the accident, Janet had completed her healthcare directives, naming her husband, now dead, as her primary agent and her parents as the secondary agents. In her directives, she made a clear statement about life prolongation: if she were somehow, “to end up in anything like PVS, from …show more content…
Since this theory considers actions as “good” if they create the most amount of “happiness” for the most amount of people and the least amount of “unhappiness” the least amount of people, one could argue that most family members of both the husband and the wife would be much happier if the wife could deliver the baby. It would allow them to see a positive outcome from a horrible situation. On a larger scale, the state of Kansas may perceive the unborn child as potentially a positive addition to society, and thus, although the parents may be unhappy, the rest of society may be happier with the addition of a citizen who can potentially help the world be a better place.
Conversely, a theory that may condemn this Kansa’s law as unethical is the theory of cultural relativism. According to this theory, ethical truths depend on the individuals and groups holding them, thus, although Kansas may view their law as ethical, other countries around the world may view it as completely unethical. For example, according to Jackson (daily news), “Abortion is illegal under all circumstances in El Salvador — even if the life of the woman is at risk.” Essentially, this theory suggests that culture plays a significant role in determining wheter this law is ethical or