Situational Ethics

Mary represents a short-lived demographic. Girls that resort to prostitution in the desperate attempt to pay their school fees rarely make it to graduation day. One world consumes the other and learning to cope with physical and emotional trauma leaves little energy and eventually concern for essays and math tests. It’s supposed to be a sacrifice for a better life—a means to an end, but too often it just means the end of hope and continues to feed the insidious cycle of AIDS, abuse, and abject poverty. Mary doesn’t know the statistics. She does, however, feel the weight of their truth and wants more than anything to crawl out from under it.

I don’t yet know the specifics of her situation. I don’t know if her mother encouraged her to sell herself or if Mary chose to do it out of love and a loyalty to help her mother financially. Either way, their very real lives have been besieged by the complexities and consequences of having to choose survival over rather obvious moral principles. I can’t help but think back to the situational ethics stances I so fervently debated years ago in college. They are now beyond embarrassing.

The more I do this work, the more I realize my opinions don’t matter much. Mary doesn’t need my opinion. She needs my love and compassion. She doesn’t need someone telling her that prostitution is harmful. She needs a way out of it. She doesn’t need to be told that her mother, whom she loves, is a terrible person for imposing or condoning the only way she knows how to pay for her education. She needs to be told there is a better way and we are the ones that can help her.

It’s not about guilt. Showing you Mary’s tears is not geared to shame you out of your Starbucks. It’s merely to present the perspective that’s as neglected as the fourteen-year-old who owns it. Saving her life doesn’t require hundreds of thousands of dollars. It doesn’t require years of medical research or depend on the passing of heady legislation in order to act on her behalf. So who can we blame? We have the reactions that we do, guilt or otherwise, because her story is raw, candid, and unbiased, but mostly—we’re torn because it’s so punishingly avoidable. Two dollars a day puts the ball back in our court and demands an answer from each of us. Are we really going to let this continue?

Total Attorneys has answered no to that question repeatedly. You’ve answered by way of time, talent, resources, costumes, and facial hair. On the day of that interview, Mary got to see the result of all that for the first time. It was in the form of a beautiful building; one that was home to vulnerable girls just like her. My prayer is that we’ll soon hear the story of how the Total Impact House and its programs therein changed Mary’s life as well, and the only “situational ethics” dilemma she faces is in the form of debate at the university she one day attends.