Care and moral understanding › Responsibility and the place of the self

Gilligan's discussion of women considering abortion develops the relation between moral conflict and responsibility. She examines how participants understand choices that affect their lives and their relationships. The interviews are part of her inquiry into moral judgment; they should not be read as a decision rule telling every person what conclusion to reach about pregnancy.

Her account traces a movement through concern for personal survival, a conception of goodness associated with self-sacrifice, and a more inclusive responsibility that considers self and others together. These are features of her proposed interpretation of development. They are not established here as an invariant sequence that every woman or every person must pass through.

The criticism of self-sacrifice matters because care can be interpreted as requiring the self to disappear. If every personal need is called selfish, the person providing care has no recognized standpoint from which to question a demand. Gilligan examines the difficulty of taking responsibility for one's own life while remaining responsive to other people. The problem is how to include the self without treating others as irrelevant.

Imagine someone who agrees to every request from a friend while concealing exhaustion and resentment. The friend believes the arrangement is freely accepted because the difficulty has never been voiced. A conversation acknowledging the limit could make the relationship more honest. This possible outcome illustrates why speaking about one's own needs need not be a withdrawal from responsibility. It does not guarantee that the conversation will be easy or that the parties' needs will fit together.

The converse error is to treat any personal preference as sufficient reason to ignore someone else. Including the self among those who matter is not the same as giving the self automatic priority. A responsible judgment must still explain how the different claims bear on the action. Gilligan's argument makes that explanation more demanding than a simple opposition between selfishness and goodness.