by mk

I was listening to this old Radio Lab about Morality while I painted today:

http://www.radiolab.org/2007/aug/13/

In it they describe a moral quandary, that was used in the last episode of MASH, and it is a tough one:

You live in a village during wartime. Enemy soldiers have entered the village, and you are hiding with the other villagers. You all must remain absolutely silent, or be discovered and killed. But, you are holding your baby, and he/she has a cough. The only way to keep your baby silent, and save everyone else, is to smother it. if you do not smother your baby, everyone is discovered and killed. What do you do?

My immediate feeling is that I would smother my baby, and then kill myself once able. I know that my baby will die in either case, and I in one, but everyone else can live if I do it. I have this feeling that only if I share my baby's fate would it be fair.

Currently, I don't have a child. I wonder if my response will change when I do.