Baby Theresa

     This semester has been going smoothly. I was worried about my classes before the semester started, but now I can say with confidence that I enjoy every class I'm enrolled in. One of my favorite courses this semester is my philosophy course. It's Technology and Human Values with Professor Justin Caouette. Prof. Caouette explained that this course would act as an introduction to ethics that also applies the various theories and ideologies to technology by answering moral and ethical technological questions. The first four weeks of class are dedicated to this introduction to ethics, and they have been nothing short of amazing thus far. My favorite class was last week when we talked about the Divine Command Theory. Each class, before we jump into our main topic of discussion, Prof. Caouette pulls up a controversial case study, explains it to us, and leads a discussion regarding the study. He says that this should get our ethical juices flowing. Those are his words, not mine. Anyways, before discussing Divine Command Theory last week, Prof. Caouette pulled up a case study titled "Baby Theresa."

     Baby Theresa was born with anencephaly. Anencephaly is a defect in the formation of a baby's neural tube during development. Baby Theresa was born with a brain stem, but without a brain. This being said, Baby Theresa had weeks or two months, at most, to live. Theresa's parents, knowing she would never live a full life and knowing her organs could save the lives of numerous other babies, wanted to terminate the life of their child. However, they were told they must wait until Theresa passes naturally. The issue is that Theresa's organs are slowly failing due to the defective neural development, which is how, eventually, Theresa will pass. However, at that point, Theresa's organs would be no use to any other babies and therefore, Theresa's parents went to court to fight the decision and won with ease. After explaining the case, Prof. Caouette posed these questions: "Was the parents' decision to end Baby Theresa's life in order to save other babies morally permissible? Did they do anything wrong by ending Baby Theresa's life?"

     Many argued that Baby Theresa didn't have a decent enough quality of life to validate keeping her alive. However, Prof. Caouette countered by presenting a string of questions and situations causing us to think twice about the situation. We couldn't come to a conclusion on the line between a quality of life decent enough versus a quality of life not decent enough. Even then, who draws that line? Many also argued the idea of hope. Let's say the parents let Baby Theresa live, knowing that she would live for no longer than two months. After two months and thirty days, a cure to anencephaly could be discovered allowing Baby Theresa to not only live longer than two months, but to live a full life. In conclusion, there was no conclusion. This case study would take months, or years even, to determine it's ethical soundness and validity. However, the discussion was very enjoyable.