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What Is an Ethical Choice

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Ethical Choice

What is an Ethical Choice

Florette T. Willis

English 1010

Ms. Styron

February 1, 2011

What is an Ethical Choice Place yourself in the position of “Trina,” a pregnant, 20 year old single mother of two children and sole care taker of her aging father. Although she works as a healthcare aide, she has difficulty making ends meet. To make matters worse, her mother’s medical bills have become unbearable and the apartment is too crowed for her new baby. As she walks to McDonald’s on a mission to satisfy cravings, she sees a 2010 Cadillac Seville drop off a well dressed man and speed away. He drops his wallet in front of her and disappears into the crowd. To her amazement, the wallet is filled with hundred dollar bills, various credit cards and personal identification items. In an instant, she must decide to either chase the man or slip the wallet into her purse. If she returns the money to the man, she loses an opportunity to handle her responsibilities and alleviate some financial stress. However, keeping the money isn’t fair to the man, regardless of his apparent financial condition. She questions whether she is actually stealing since she found the money. Is it wrong to keep it and maybe mail the credit cards and identification? What would you do in this situation? Ethics is the inner guiding moral principles and values people use to analyze a situation in deciding between right and wrong. (Jones, 2007) It can also indicate the correct form of behavior to prevent harming another person. Since this involves individual choice, the decisions we make can violate our moral compass making us feel guilty. Harvard psychologist Carol Gilligan believes that differences in ethical perspectives are related to gender. More specifically, men and women follow different but parallel paths of moral development that lead them to make choices based on

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