The Good Samaritan law

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Should the good Samaritan law be accepted? Originated from the story of the Samaritans who helped the robbed and seriously injured, the good Samaritan law is to punish people who ignore and do not help people in danger. There are some objective facts on this:

1. It is mostly effective when the situation does not do any harm to the witness.

2. It is an act that considers morality as a duty instead of responsibility.

Most of the members of Logic De Cliché were against the law. The reason was that the enforcement of the law would lead to the punishment and even to the imprisonment of countless people. They also argued the standard is too vague to establish it as an official law to punish someone.

There are definitely much more problems than what we have discussed. Since the law makes moral righteousness obligatory, the true meaning of ‘morality’ will disappear and set more untrustworthy society. Morality should be based upon people’s true minds and thoughts instead of the inscriptions on the law. Plus, people worry if they would get conflicted with the problems, resulting in complicated, and troublesome consequences.

Still, there also exist some benefits. Consider the emotional factors. If one of your family dies even though he or she could have been rescued by someone, how would you feel? This, in fact, has really happened in the United States. A child was drowning in water. Right next to the struggling child was a man sitting with a rope beneath his side. If this man cared just a little and threw the rope, the child would have lived. The action did not even require any harm or loss to the rescuer. Nonetheless, he refrained to do so. If the Samaritan law is enacted, much more innocent lives can be saved.

In fact, the Samaritan law has been enforced in many countries. For example, in European countries like France, and some states in the U.S. the law is imposed very strictly.

In Korea, some sort of Samaritan law is applied to the medical treatment of urgent patients. If somebody gets a heart attack, people nearby MUST engage in CPR, call 911, and more. Thankfully, the law protects the ‘helpers’ that if a patient gets injured from the process of the rescue, there goes no blame or punishment to the helper. (such as broken ribs during CPR) This makes the law work more fluently.

Some may say that Samaritan law will work negatively if it is enforced. But considering the present situation, people with individualism is increasing. If some problems occur, people are busy filming the scenery to upload on SNS. Maybe this is the time the law is essential to this whole world, to make the world a better place.