What's MORAL about mammogram policy?

Rosemary Flanigan

November 20, 2009

There’s value and worth under discussion here—and that value and worth are justified by a utilitarian calculus: balancing harms over benefits. But there is no objective “harm” or “benefit” in utilitarianism. When it comes to mammograms, women in their 40’s might well determine “worth” and “value” differently.

To increase our awareness of how much of our lives are shot through with moral considerations—and how much we should be open to questioning the justification for those judgments or policies or habits that stream along with us—is a hallmark of ethical reflection.

I think of the bundles of institutional “habits” or policies that make up a healthcare organization. We assume that 98% of them can be justified—and we’d never get any work done if we were reviewing them all the time.

But that “ethical component” is integral to the “character” of the entire institution.

Moral Judgements & Ethical Analysis

Rosemary Flanigan
June 4, 2009

Our ethics committee self-education segment today will be on justice—how it ties in with respect for persons, the different forms of justice (to help the members articulate their concerns) and then for a discussion piece, I have distributed an article by Dan Sulmasy (who will be our lecturer on August 6) recounting the story of the demise of seven out of eight Catholic hospitals in New York City in one year!

We don’t come close to having all the facts, but I am going to ask the committee to create possible moral judgments that might arise in one’s mind as we read the article.

First, because we use those moral judgments as the substance for ethical analysis, and second, because those moral judgments we spontaneously make reveal a lot about our meanings of justice. We shall be in the realm of perception, not reality—but we can still argue the justice/injustice of perceptions.

Can’t we???? HELP!!!