Do Consequences Determine The Morality Of An Action? (January 30, 2005)

Maybe you have heard some version of the following medical case history. A woman suffering from tuberculosis is pregnant. Her husband has syphilis. They have three children: one blind, another deaf, and the other also has tuberculosis. Yet another child died in infancy. Should she abort her current fetus?

If you say "Yes, perhaps this is a case where abortion is justifiable," you are then verbally kicked in the head with, "Congratulations, you've just killed Beethoven!"

In fact, the real medical details concerning the Beethoven family are different. But what concerns me more than the bad history is the bad moral reasoning that underlies this pro-life argument. It necessarily looks to the future to gain its footing. We must never argue this way for at least two reasons.

First, because it is too easy to play the game the other way. In aborting the child of a sickly mother in bad circumstances it is true that we may have killed Beethoven, but then again we may have killed Jeffrey Dahmer or John Wayne Gacy or even Adolph Hitler. The problem is that when we suggest that abortion is bad because it may knock off some great soul before he is born, then we are defenseless against the countercharge that it is good because it may obliterate some psychopath before he’s any bigger than a tadpole. Moral reasoning by future development is guessing game that you can twist any way you want.

Secondly, we must not condition ourselves to contemplate the morality of an action in terms of its results. There is no sin, no cruelty, no atrocity that cannot justify itself by saying, "But look at the benefit!" That kind thinking makes demons of us. That thinking led Pontius Pilate to condemn innocent Jesus because the result, the pacification of an unruly crowd, was so much preferable to the
alternative, a riot.

A good action is good and an evil action is evil regardless of the consequences. Morality is never retroactive. Abortion is wrong, wrong in itself, and it does not become "more wrong" just because its victim
might have been one of history's greats. Fornication likewise is wrong, always wrong, and becomes no less wrong just because one of its products happens to become a renowned evangelist. Fidelity and selflessness, on the other hand, are good, and must suffer no diminishment in our esteem just because (as Ayn Rand liked to point
out) they sometimes lead to bad results.

As a pastor, I conscientiously resist guaranteeing either good results for godliness or dire consequences for sin - at least within the confines of this life. When it comes to moral decision-making, potential future outcomes are of no concern to us. Obey God and do what is right. That is all.