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a claim about the status of the fetus (i.e. that it is different from the woman's body). Again, like it or not this is not a moral claim but a factual or definitional claim. While I am not saying that this disagreement is easily resolved I am saying that it is not a disagreement over fundamental moral principles.

I suspect that this analysis could be done with most other issues as well. If we only look closer and examine the claims made we could see that there is much agreement in moral principles even among people who differ on such issues as euthanasia, abortion, capital punishment, etc.

But, why does the belief still persist that everyone has different morals? It could be a simple misunderstanding of what agreement really looks like. Let's suppose that everyone operates on the exact same moral principle: the Golden Rule. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. If everyone acted in accordance with this moral principle (most religions have this as a moral principle and I suspect many secular moral codes also include it) would we all agree about abortion, euthanasia, and the countless other issues facing us? I doubt it. Why not?

Well, look at the principle itself. It is universal (based on our assumption) in the same way that everyone must eat is universal. But, it does not specify what each individual would have done unto them even as everyone needing to eat doesn't specify what they need to eat. If I act such that I do unto others as I would have them do unto me and you act that way as well, we could still act differently simply because I prefer different things done to me than you do! Of course these differences are not necessarily differences in our moral preferences though they could be. The point I am making is that even if everyone acted in accordance with the same moral principle we could still end up with major disagreements.

So, where does that leave us? In truth it seems that if we examine our own reasoning on ethical questions and closely compare it with others we'll see that we have much in common with respect to our moral principles. But, if we only look out the outcome we may mistake this disagreement for something much deeper. I suspect that this is the major cause of the belief that we all have different morals. We are not willing to take the time to ask ourselves and others why we believe what we do with regard to morality. It is not sufficient to simply say we all have different morals and leave it at that. At it's best this is simply false and at worst precludes any chance for moral consensus.

Learn more about this author, Kevin J. Browne.
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