Beyond Moral Distress: Agent-Regret and Lament in Non-Culpable Health Care Acts

Moral analysis frequently fixates only on an actor’s culpability, which is dangerously myopic when assessing healthcare actions. This paper describes the significance of the moral residue that persists even after a satisfactory descriptor of agent-culpability has been reached. Using the 2009 Phoenix abortion case and the conflicting analyses by Bishop Thomas Olmsted and M. Therese Lysaught, this paper shows that both views neglect the “moral remainder,” as Rosalind Hursthouse has called it, failing to describe how the agent has been involved in doing something terrible, even if the action was licit. Arguing that the existence of moral remainders does not necessitate a concession to insoluble moral dilemmas, the paper modifies Bernard Williams’ concept of agent-regret and draws on Paul Griffith’s theology of regret. This demonstrates a broad class of actions that require lament even where no wrong-doing has occurred, concluding that agent-regret significantly expands healthcare analysis, broadening the category of what is currently understood to cause moral distress.