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Robin
Can anyone take some time to look for any mistakes, if there are mistakes :) It is for my philo class.
The principle of double effect states about the permissibility of an action with a foreseen serious harm, such as death of a person, as a side effect of promoting some good end. In this case, the question is which action the husband should take for it to be considered permissible according to the principle.
 The husband is faced with two possible options given by their doctor: firstly, they can choose to follow the doctor’s recommendation to be able to save the mother by removing the tumor in her body as soon as possible, but it would seriously harm the fetus’s physical form and, in the worst case scenario, it could fatally injure the baby resulting to death or, secondly, the couple can continue the pregnancy and delay the operation until the birth of the child, but the risk would be too great for both the mother and the child since the tumor is growing exponentially. 
Applying the said principle, to be considered as permissible, one’s action must be able to meet the following conditions: First, the action in itself from its very object is good or at least indifferent; second, the good effect and not the evil effect is intended; third, the good effect is not produced by means of the evil effect; fourth, there is a proportionately grave reason for permitting the evil effect. Based on the given conditions, we could say that both the first, considering the intention is to save the mother even with the foreseen death or injury of the baby as a side effect of the said action, and the second option, to risk the chance of saving both the mother and the child, are permissible and in no way they conflict with the said conditions.
 Personally, if I were the husband in that circumstance, I would choose to save the life of my wife by taking the first option. Although both are permissible, I would choose the option where I would be able to save both of them despite the inevitable deformity or harm to the life of my child rather than risking the chance of saving their lives.
 Considering the accountability of the agents in the said situation, they are not considered accountable even if there would be harm foreseen since there is indirect voluntariness which means that the foreseen harm is not intended by the agents despite the knowledge of the consequence. Also, there is also less freedom because the decision is influenced by the risks inherent to the options to be made. Simply saying, the good end outweighs the bad which makes it morally acceptable.

Jul 30, 2016 9:25 AM
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Comments · 3

Hey Robin,

I can't go through your text word for word, as I normally get paid to do this, and I don't want to have to charge you for my comments. Haha.

That being said, I would like to offer a little advice to improve the readability of your homework:

- You can try to break up your long sentences into shorter ones, especially for the 2nd and 3rd paragraphs.

- In the 1st paragraph, you can either say "talks about..." and leave the rest as is, or use "states that..." which would mean you have to change the structure of the rest of the sentence.

- Before you launch into "the husband" in the 2nd paragraph, you can try to give a background first as to how he and "the mother" (I'm assuming that is the wife) and the doctor and the baby came into the picture. You could say, "In the case of a husband and wife faced with a choice between..."

- In the last paragraph when you go from "husband" and "wife" to "agents," you can make the transition clearer, by saying something like, "Considering the accountability of the agents, which in this situation would be the husband and the wife (?)..." I'm not sure if they are the agents but you know what I mean.

I hope this helps :)

July 30, 2016

Hi Robin.

Since I don’t know anything about “the principle of double effect” this is a difficult text for me to suggest corrections for, but I noticed a couple of things that I would have done differently (I do not claim infallibility - what I have written is just what I think):

“The principle of double effect states about the permissibility of”. You have to specify what is being stated (in this context "state" needs an object). You could perhaps instead write:
“The principle of double effect makes statements about/regards/concerns/deals with/treats the permissibility of …”
“with a foreseen serious harm”: You are sure you mean “foreseen”, right? “Foreseen” means “expected/predicted/anticipated”. Otherwise you should use “potential/possible”.
“which action the husband should take”: “take an action” sounds strange to me. I would say “choose an action”
“The husband is faced with two possible options given by their doctor: firstly, they can choose to follow the doctor’s...”  Who are  “their” and “they”? I can guess it from what follows, but it’s not clearly stated.
“it could fatally injure the baby resulting to death or”: resulting in death
“rather than risking the chance of saving their lives.”: You don’t “risk a chance”. I would instead write:”...of my child rather than risking not being able to save their lives.”
“influenced by the risks inherent to the options to be made.”: I would write “inherent in”
“options to be made” sounds strange to me. Seems to me you will have to rephrase the sentence.
“Simply saying”: I would write “”simply put”.

July 30, 2016
Thanks guys, i appreciate your comments and suggestions. I guess I'm being too wordy and i need to improve, especially, on how to make a smooth transition. Again, thanks for the help.
August 3, 2016
Robin
Language Skills
Cebuano, English, Filipino (Tagalog), Japanese
Learning Language
English, Japanese