Reply to Is it ethical to outsource pregnancy?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It’s interesting to me how upset people here are about OP‘s motivations, [b]as if that has any impact on the morality of the act[/b]. I think that the morality comes from how you perform the act, not whether you were doing it from an “acceptable” set of motivations. You can have an unethical surrogacy that you entered into for medical reasons only. You can have an ethical surrogacy because the idea of being pregnant seems yucky to you.

The ethics in it are about how you treat the other person, not what your decision-making process to get there is. [/quote]

That's because motivation absolutely bears on whether an act is moral or not, as does execution.  Carving into a person's chest to perform life-saving surgery?  Moral.  Carving into a person's chest to watch them die?  Immoral.  Carving into a person's chest to perform open heart surgery even though you have no medical training?  Immoral.  Performing a hysterectomy because a woman has decided she doesn't want kids?  Moral.  Performing a hysterectomy because the government has decided that ethnic group should not reproduce?  Immoral.  Performing a hysterectomy in your garage because a woman has decided she doesn't want kids?  Immoral.

Et cetera.  The fact that morally defensible motivation is a necessary but not sufficient factor in determining morality doesn't mean that execution is the only thing that matters.

[/quote]

But none of your examples hinge on motivation.

Life-saving surgery is moral. 
Unnecessary surgery is immoral. 
Performing the procedure you’re not competent to execute is immoral.
Performing a procedure that has been requested is moral.

Not a single one of these takes the decision making process into account, nor should it. You would have to construct some pretty complicated cases to tease this one out.

What if someone performs life-saving surgeries, but they do it only for the ego rush? They’re saving lives for a bad motivation.
What if someone kills those who they sincerely believe make the world a worse place? They’re taking lives for a good motivation.

Gicome up with some cases that actually hinge on motivation and then things will get interesting. I think you’ll find that motivation is very rarely relevant when we judge actions, although it may be relevant when we impose punishments.[/quote]

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