When is the taking of human life justified?
Situation: An individual poses a serious threat to innocent human life, and the threat is intended.
Factor: Justice
Pro: When the choice is between the life of an innocent person and an evil aggressor, the innocent person should survive. The wrongdoer does not have the right to take a life; the innocent person has that right, when killing the wrongdoer is the only way to survive.
Situation: A soldier has valid orders to undertake a given mission in a just war. The mission will very likely involve the killing of enemy combatants.
Pro: The killing of enemy combatants can lead to the success of the mission.
Con: War is only a suspension of ethics. All the reasons we give for protecting human life in other circumstances still apply during wartime. There is never a satisfactory justification for taking a human life.
Situation: An individual poses a serious threat to innocent human life, but the threat is unintended.
Case: Tom is climbing a mountain. Tom is attached to a rope that is also attached to His buddy Jim several yards below. Jim loses his footing and becomes suspended only by the rope attached to Tom. Tom holds on, but he realizes that in seconds he will be pulled off the mountain, and both men will probably fall to their death. Tom thinks that he will survive only by cutting the rope and letting Jim fall, although that fall will probably result in the death of his friend.
Factor: Self-preservation
Pro: A person has the right to self-preservation, and that allows the person to take whatever steps are necessary to survive—even if those steps involve the taking of an innocent human life.
Con: Taking an innocent human life is never justified.
Situation: A doctor taking care of a pregnant patient realizes that the fetus, unless it is aborted, will kill its mother.