[Al68]

[ QUOTE ]
"The notion that a lack of action is the same as an action is absurd"

This is all I care about and all I was adressing.

BTW: In Germany, you go to jail for 10 years max if you witness a car accident and do NOT supply first aid to the best of your abilities, and, as an result of that not-supplying-aid, someone dies (You do NOT go do jail if you supply first aid to the best of your abilities and someone dies BECAUSE of that wrongly applied first aid, if you can make a reasonable case that you acted with best intentions). I trust that it's the same in your country.

Claiming that it's immoral to "force" someone to do something that you, and probably about 90-95% of the population deem morally just is ... well ... moral relativism in a pretty hardcore fashion. A philosophical try, btw, that never really got off the ground.

The basic point against MR is, that the normativity that holds your own moral code intact suffers from the relativity you allow to be able to NOT judge others within their moral. (Of cousre, there's a lot more to be said here, which I won't). Plus, of course, MR is usually applied to transnational/transreligious problems. Ehtical questions within a society are usually not the problem, as everyone, being a part of society, implicitely accepts most, if not all, of that societys ethical standards.
In that light, refraining form forcing someone to help a starving baby is not some educated way of dealing with differering ethical standards, it's just plain wrong.

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For your first point, the fact that Germany passed a certain law is not evidence that such law is right.

For your second point, I do not believe in moral relativism. I believe it would be morally wrong for anyone to let the baby die. Whether or not that person believed it was wrong. I would judge him to be wrong, I would judge his lack of action to be immoral. But I would not imprison him. Imprisoning him would be wrong. I am not God. It is not my place to punish immorality. It is therefore not governments place to punish immorality.

The difference is, I do not believe it is a legitimate function of gov't to force the moral standards of the majority on any individual.

And I'll repeat what I said in another post:

Again, if there were only a few such babies, there is no issue, private charity would voluntarily care for them.

If these babies were 10% of the population, and we were all forced to collectively care for them, this would be mass slavery, more slavery than ever existed in the U.S.

Slavery is immoral. Refusing to enslave a nation is not immoral, even if some deaths occur due to this refusal.