Resolving ethical dilemmas

Answer 1

To resolve an ethical dilemma, a person must either know or identify the ethics and values they hold dear. Based on those identified ethics, the person must then weigh the pros and cons of the available choices. For some people in certain situations, a ethical question never becomes a "dilemma" because the person is firmly grounded in one set of beliefs so there is only one "choice". For example, Sally is asked to help kill her girlfriend's husband. Sally is adamant that "killing is wrong" and she refuses; she instead calls the police. But in other situations, our stated ethics become in conflict with the current situation. Again, using Sally as an example, she has always said "all killing is wrong, even abortion!" But at the age of 40, Sally suffers a low back injury that leaves her in severe daily pain. At age 41, her husband divorces her, leaving her with 4 children to feed. Within a month of the divorce, Sally discovers that she became pregnant just before the divorce, from a night when she tried to "please" her husband so he would stay and not leave her. At 41, with a severe back injury and pain, and needing to support her 4 existing children, Sally considers abortion, even though it is in direct contradiction to her previously held values/ethics. How Sally resolves the "rightness or wrongness" of her ethical dilemma will rest on how she processes the pros and cons, along with reviewing her stated values, in order to come to a decision.

It is important to note that often in life, we can only choose between a "bad" and an equally "bad" choice. Sometimes, "right" and "wrong" has NO clear dividing line. Sometimes all we can do is pick one of the "bad" choices even when we detest both choices.