ABSTRACT
When it comes to matters of life and death, our society prefers procedure to substance. Instead of asking, "What is the right thing to do?" we ask, "Who should decide?" Sometimes this preference derives from the sober acknowledgment of a problem's intractability. We focus on a woman's right to choose, for example, because the debate on the moral merits of abortion, especially on the moral status of the fetus, has been interminable and fruitless. More often, however, our penchant for substituting process for substance rests on confusion or, worse still, on intellectual laziness.
