With reference to other aspects of human experience, explore the view that the principle of the sanctity of human life cannot be questioned. Justify your answer.

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With reference to other aspects of human experience, explore the view that the principle of the sanctity of human life cannot be questioned. Justify your answer.

We must consider the implications for medical and bio-ethics if such a principle is disregarded. This is the slippery slope argument – that once we disregard the intrinsic value of human life with regards to the unborn, others will follow. For example, people worry that if voluntary euthanasia were to be made legal, it would not be long before involuntary euthanasia would start to happen. Using a historical example, Hitler’s persecution of the Jews was a gradual slippery slope as opposed to a sudden purge; what started out as discrimination slowly turned into genocide. We should take this as a warning of what could happen if we do not value the sanctity of life.

The principle of the sanctity of life can afford protection to those who are vulnerable in society, e.g. the young, the elderly, the infirm. When people are led by greed they may be reluctant to take good care of the vulnerable because of cost or other inconveniences, but the principle of the sanctity of life demands that all people be respected. For example, in Japan there is a big social problem surrounding neglect of an aging population; the Christian church in Japan seeks to apply the principle of the sanctity of life and take cate of society’s marginalised.
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The sanctity of life ties in with the belief in moral absolutes. Many Christians, such as the apologist Matt Slick, regard Christian theology as teaching a hierarchy of moral absolutes known as graded absolutism, where in the case of a conflict between two absolutes, the duty to obey the higher one (God) exempts one from the duty to the lower ones (fellow humans or, still lower, property). Divine Command Theory is an absolutist meta-ethical theory that an act is obligatory if (and only if) it is commanded by God (William of Ockham argued that if God had commanded ...

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