Bodily Rights

This article argues that consent must be revocable. I present two arguments for this conclusion. On the argument from informed consent, irrevocable consent lacks validity because it cannot be sufficiently informed. On the argument from bodily integrity, irrevocable consent lacks validity because we do not have the authority to deny our future selves the ability to protect our bodily integrity. I explain why the argument from bodily integrity captures unique moral problems raised by irrevocable consent and illuminates an important but (...) undertheorized distinction between autonomy and bodily integrity. (shrink)

As the science and technology of the brain and mind develop, so do the ways in which brains and minds may be surveilled and manipulated. Some cognitive libertarians worry that these developments undermine cognitive liberty, or “freedom of thought.” I argue that protecting an individual’s cognitive liberty undermines others’ ability to use their own cognitive liberty. Given that the threatening devices and processes are not relevantly different from ordinary and frequent intrusions upon one’s brain and mind, strong protections of cognitive (...) liberty may proscribe neurotechnological intrusions, but also ordinary intrusions. Thus, the cognitive libertarian position “hog-ties” others’ use of their own liberties. This problem for the cognitive libertarian is the same problem that ordinary libertarianism faces in protecting individual rights to property and person. But the libertarian strategies for resolving the problem don’t work for the cognitive libertarian. I conclude that the right to mental privacy is weaker than what cognitive libertarians want it to be. (shrink)

This article argues that non-consensual vaccination is morally impermissible, for the same reasons for which sexual assault is not permissible. Likewise, mandatory vaccination is morally akin to sexual harassment, and therefore is not to be allowed.

I argue here that our rights in our bodies are not well explained by self-ownership – and thus, also, that we cannot infer any further distributive implications of self-ownership from intuitions about body rights via inference to the best explanation. And I sketch an alternative view, on which we do indeed own our bodies, but not because we own ourselves. Self-ownership, I argue, provides a satisfying explanation only if we take it seriously: not as a mere metaphor, but as an (...) expression of a literal, reflexive ownership relation between me and myself, whatever I myself am. I go on to canvas the most prominent theories of what human beings like me literally are, arguing that each of these theories makes it hard to see how our self-ownership can ground our rights in our bodies. In the second half I consider and refine alternative, interest-based, explanations of our rights in our bodies, drawing on suggestions in this direction from Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen and Alan Wertheimer. I show how it is possible in principle to affirm that body ownership rights remain (in a sense) natural rights, even on the sort of interest-based view of ownership that many (including myself) take to preclude all or most fully natural property rights. I argue that many body rights can be grounded prefiguratively, in facts about the possible emergence of sufficiently just authority-assigning practices, rather than (as with most property rights) in their actual existence. Finally, I return to the distributive issues that motivated much interest in self-ownership in the first place – particularly, the question of whether and in what way our rights in our bodies generate rights in other things, by labor or otherwise. Without actually answering this question, I show how the account developed here would proceed in doing so: not by positing body rights as a methodologically prior constraint on rights of other kinds, but rather by considering the implications entire systems of rights and duties have for the interests of those who possess and are bound by them. (shrink)

Since March of 2020, the world has been brought to its knees by unscientific and unethical mandates. These mandates have destroyed the world economy and the lives of countless innocent individuals. The “cure” that has been offered by medical bureaucrats and politicians has been more deadly than the disease (COVID-19). The imposition of ludicrous lockdowns, mask-wearing, coerced vaccination, and vaccine passports have not only proved to be ineffective, but also much more harmful than SARS-CoV-2 and all its variants. COVID-19 has (...) a recovery rate of close to 99% for most of the world’s population, however, despite this, institutions and power-hungry individuals have trampled upon our civil liberties and ignored our inalienable human rights. It is precisely as Thomas Paine famously stated: “The greatest tyrannies are always perpetrated in the name of the noblest causes.” -/- Many lives have been gratuitously lost because of the administration of deadly medical treatments, and the rejection of effective treatments that follow genuine science. In the process, informed consent has been disparaged and desecrated. For over two years, we were instructed to “trust the science,” but the “science” advocated by medical bureaucrats and greedy politicians was the reason why the world was turned upside-down. In the face of these crimes against humanity, justice will only be brought by real courts and real judges, but this will require the awakening of a critical mass. This book serves as an instrument for this awakening. (shrink)

La pandemia mundial del coronavirus ha supuesto una de las mayores conmociones de nuestra historia reciente y, como tal, parece obligarnos a repensar nuestros modos de organización y formas de vida e, incluso, como se propone aquí, a plantearnos cómo podríamos habitar el colapso. En este escenario incierto y desconocido, la filosofía, con sus múltiples enfoques y subdisciplinas, se presenta como un lugar privilegiado para analizar las vertiginosas transformaciones que han dado lugar a esta “nueva normalidad”. El presente monográfico aglutina (...) una serie de contribuciones realizadas por distintos investigadores e investigadoras de la Universidad de Oviedo, que han tratado de abordar la crisis sanitaria global desde diversas perspectivas filosóficas y humanísticas. Entre los temas que se estudian en estas páginas, figuran los relativos a la gestión de la pandemia y la comunicación científica sobre la misma, las relaciones entre pobreza, salud mental y suicidio o el alcance de la revalorización del mundo rural. También se utilizan las herramientas del análisis biopolítico para examinar la gestión de los cuerpos durante la pandemia a partir de tres ejes distintos: el tratamiento de los enfermos, los nuevos dispositivos de control y la gestión de la pandemia en las instituciones de encierro. Además, varios de los capítulos se ocupan explícitamente de un tema inherente a la mayoría de las reflexiones que componen este volumen: a saber, el de la necesidad de un cuestionamiento profundo de la sociedad occidental contemporánea y la insostenibilidad de su forma de vida. (shrink)

The rare but severe cerebral venous thrombosis occurring in some AstraZeneca vaccine recipients has prompted some governments to suspend part of their COVID-19 vaccination programmes. Such suspensions have faced various challenges from both scientific and ethical angles. Most of the criticisms against such suspensions follow a consequentialist approach, arguing that the suspension will lead to more harm than benefits. In this paper, I propose a rights-based argument against the suspension of the vaccine rollouts amid this highly time-sensitive combat of COVID-19. (...) I argue that by suspending a vaccine rollout, a government infringes people's right to take the risks they deem worth taking for their health. I also consider four potential objections to my argument and explain why none of them undermines my argument. (shrink)

This article asks whether personal ventilators should be redistributed to maximize lives saved in emergency condition, like the COVID-19 pandemic. It begins by examining extant claims that items like ventilators are literally parts of their user’s bodies. Arguments in favor of incorporation for ventilators fail to show that they meet valid sufficient conditions to be body parts, but arguments against incorporation also fail to show that they fail to meet clearly valid necessary conditions. Further progress on this issue awaits clarification (...) of difficult normative, conceptual, and metaphysical questions about the possible boundaries of a person’s body. Rather than relying solely on incorporation arguments, we propose an argument against reallocation from widely accepted anti-discrimination principles. Possession of a personal ventilator is an obvious marker of disability identity; thus, reallocating ventilators from those that already possess them discriminates on the basis of a stigmatized trait – a paradigm case of presumptively wrongful discrimination. This discrimination claim, taken together with uncertainty about the bodily status of ventilators, yields a strong presumption against personal ventilator reallocation. (shrink)

In Righting Health Policy, MacDougall argues that bioethics has not developed the tools best suited for justifying health law and policy. Using Kant’s practical philosophy as an example, he explores the promise of political philosophy for making normatively justified recommendations about health law and policy.

In “Racial Justice Requires Ending the War on Drugs,” Earp and colleagues argue that the personal use or possession of all currently illicit psychoactive substances should be immediately decriminal...

The debate regarding the role of conscientious objection in healthcare has been protracted, with increasing demands for curbs on conscientious objection. There is a growing body of evidence that indicates that in some cases, high rates of conscientious objection can affect access to legal medical services such as abortion—a major concern of critics of conscientious objection. Moreover, few solutions have been put forward that aim to satisfy both this concern and that of defenders of conscientious objection—being expected to participate in (...) the provision of services that compromise their moral integrity. Here we attempt to bring some resolution to the debate by proposing a pragmatic, long-term solution offering what we believe to be an acceptable compromise—a quota system for medical trainees in specialties where a conscientious objection can be exercised, and is known to cause conflict. We envisage two main objectives of the quota system we propose. First, as a means to introduce conscientious objection into countries where this is not presently permitted. Second, to minimise or eliminate the effects of high rates of conscientious objection in countries such as Italy, where access to legal abortion provision can be negatively affected. (shrink)

Is the “act itself” of separating a pregnant woman and her previable child neither good nor bad morally, considered in the abstract? Recently, Maureen Condic and Donna Harrison have argued that such separation is justified to protect the mother’s life and that it does not constitute an abortion as the aim is not to kill the child. In our article on maternal–fetal conflicts, we agree there need be no such aim to kill (supplementing aims such as to remove). However, we (...) argue that to understand “abortion” as performed only where the death of the child is intended is to define the term too narrowly. Respect for the mother, the fetus, and the bond between them goes well beyond avoiding any such aim. We distinguish between legitimate maternal treatments simply aimed at treating or removing a damaged part of the woman and illegitimate treatments that focus harmfully on the fetal body and its presence within the mother’s body. In obstetrics as elsewhere, not all side effects for one subject of intervention can be outweighed by intended benefits for another. Certain side effects of certain intended interventions are morally conclusive. (shrink)

What does it mean to respect life and health in an innocent fellow-human being? Separating conjoined twins where one twin will die as a result need not involve the intention to kill or harm. Arguably, however, not all side-effects are “mere” side-effects which could, in principle, be outweighed by sufficiently good intended effects. Rather, foreseen serious harm for an innocent person we non-therapeutically affect can be morally conclusive when linked to the intention to affect the person’s body or invade the (...) space it fills. In the case of infant conjoined twins, such as the Maltese twins Jodie and Mary, the twin who dies from separation has no unjust, or any, intentions as regards the twin saved. She thus has the moral immunity of any innocent person from lethal bodily invasions and other serious bodily harm. Neither the final act which killed Mary nor previous acts of cutting into Mary, including parts shared with her twin Jodie, were therefore morally permissible. (shrink)

A xurisprudencia constitucional española (STC 37/2011, de 28 de marzo, entre outras) ten establecido como fundamento do consentimento informado o dereito á integridade física e moral (art. 15 CE). O Tribunal Constitucional configura o consentimento informado como un deber de abstención do profesional sanitario, é dicir, como unha negación da competencia do profesional sanitario na terminoloxía de Hohfeld. Así pois, o consentimento informado queda conformado como un dereito negativo ou de defensa, polo que concibilo como liberdade xurídica ou facultade de (...) autodeterminación positiva esixiría a revisión do seu fundamento constitucional. O presente artigo pretende precisamente revisar a natureza iusfundamental do consentimento informado a partir da obra de W.N. Hohfeld e Robert Alexy. (shrink)

We argue that at least some corvids morally ought to be granted a right to bodily liberty in the US legal system and relevantly similar systems. This right would grant immunity to frivolous captivity and extermination. Implementing this right will require new legislation or the expansion of existing legislation including the elimination of various "pest" clauses. This paper proceeds in three parts. First, we survey accounts of the moral grounds of legal rights. Second, to establish an overlapping consensus supporting corvid (...) bodily liberty rights, we survey the empirical literature on corvid cognition. Third, we illustrate what a corvid right to bodily liberty might look like, by looking to recent developments in animal law, as well as previous advocacy on behalf of primates and cetaceans. (shrink)

John Martin Fischer has published a trilogy of papers discussing Judith Jarvis Thomson’s ground-breaking “A Defense of Abortion”. Fischer claims that neither the unconscious violinist nor the people-seeds thought experiment is persuasive, and he concludes that Thomson’s arguments are incomplete in the sense that they require further support to secure the permissibility of abortion in their respective contexts of pregnancy resulting from rape and pregnancy resulting from voluntary intercourse and contraceptive failure. My aim in this paper is to identify three (...) ways in which Fischer fails to faithfully capture the force of arguments in ADA. I also suggest that these failings are indicative of a general under-appreciation of how the arguments in ADA support a feminist strategy for resisting anti-abortionist arguments. The strategy is to emphasize that these arguments fail on their own terms when one takes into consideration the sacrifices expected of women carrying unwanted pregnancies compared to the sacrifices expected from men in other relevantly similar social contexts. To ignore this aspect of ADA shows a failure to appreciate its potential for supporting a feminist argument based on the equitable applications of our concepts of risk and responsibility. (shrink)

This book addresses the endangerment of children’s bodies in affluent societies. Bodily integrity is an important part of a child’s physical and mental well-being, but it can also be violated through various threats during childhood; not only affecting physical health but also causing mental damage and leading to distortions in the development of the self. The authors give an account of three areas, which present different serious dangers: (1) body and eating, (2) body and sexuality, and (3) body and violence. (...) Through an in-depth examination of the available theoretical and empirical knowledge, as well as a thorough ethical analysis, the central injustices in the mentioned areas are identified and the agents with responsibilities towards children displayed. The authors conclude by providing invaluable insight into the necessity of an ethical basis for policies to safeguard children and their bodies. (shrink)

Available from UMI in association with The British Library. Requires signed TDF. ;The language of rights has become highly respectable in Church circles and in the works of Christian ethicists, especially since the end of the Second World War. The literature on this subject is immense, yet much of this writing avoids the basic analytical issues presented by this form of moral language. This thesis begins with the conviction that theologians can learn a good deal about the value of the (...) language of rights from recent literature on the subject in moral philosophy and in jurisprudence or legal philosophy. ;Once one begins to study the analytical issues connected with the language of rights, one is confronted with the possibility of a radical scepticism regarding its value. Thus, the opening chapters of this work attempt to show forth this scepticism and to overcome it. In doing so one is challenged to clarify the concept of rights with the help of various useful distinctions, e.g. between 'human rights' and 'special moral rights', 'mandatory' and 'discretionary' rights; and a 'cluster' of legal concepts borrowed from Wesley Hohfeld and applied in the moral sphere: 'Claims', 'liberties', 'powers' and 'immunities'. These clarificatory distinctions help to overcome scepticism and provide a flexible form of moral language, useful both to philosophers and theologians. ;If philosophy is the 'handmaid of theology' in helping analyse and clarify the language of Christian ethics, it must be recognised that the Christian tradition has much to offer in understanding the proper significance of the human need to claim what is due. Although this thesis is primarily methodological and metaethical, I insist on uncovering basic normative ethical positions underlying the language of rights. In particular, I stress the Christian understanding of human dignity as the foundation of the language of rights. ;In the second part of my thesis I try to show how the clarification of the language of rights helps in discussing the issues involved in the area of reproductive rights. This includes some analysis of the values associated with human procreation and the normative relationships expressed by the language of rights and duties. The complexity of rights-language is shown in the context of a discussion of controversial subjects, from population control to treatment for infertility. (shrink)

This paper examines the reasons why corporal punishment in the judicial sphere has fallen into moral disfavour in recent decades. Standard objections to the practice, both practical and ethical, are considered and found to be inconclusive. It is argued that corporal punishment is not inevitably more cruel or demeaning than conventionally preferred punitive methods and that consideration should be given to its limited experimental reintroduction.

The ethics of abortion considers whether abortion is immoral. Pro-choice philosophers think that it is not immoral, while pro-life philosophers think that it is. The axiology of abortion considers whether world would be better if the pro-choice or pro-life position is right. While much attention has been given to the ethics of abortion, there has been no attention given to the axiology of abortion. In this article, I seek to change that. I consider various arguments for thinking our world would (...) be better if the pro-choice position or the pro-life position is correct, ultimately concluding that it would be better if the pro-choice position is right. This is unfortunate, however, since there is no good reason to think the pro-choice position is correct. (shrink)

This book rethinks procreative responsibility considering the continuous development of Assisted Reproductive Technologies. It presents a person-affecting moral argument, highlighting that the potential availability of future Assisted Reproductive Technologies brings out new procreative obligations. Traditionally, Assisted Reproductive Technologies are understood as practices aimed at extending the procreative freedom of prospective parents. However, some scholars argue that they also give rise to new moral constraints. This book builds on this viewpoint by presenting a person-affecting perspective on the impact of current and (...) future Assisted Reproductive Technologies on procreative responsibility, with a specific focus on reproductive Genome Editing and ectogenesis. The author shows that this perspective is defensible both from a consequences-based person-affecting perspective and from a person-affecting account that considers morally relevant intuitions and attitudes. -/- . (shrink)

This book explores how considerations of justice apply to procreative decision-making. -/- Despite its immense personal significance, procreation is an inherently other-regarding endeavor. By its very nature, the decision to procreate is the decision to bring into existence another morally considerable being, one who will be exposed to the full range of harms, benefits, and risks that accompany a typical human life, and one who cannot by its nature ever consent to being born. Moreover, when this decision is undertaken in (...) a community of persons, it is also a decision to affect the lives of others in a host of profound if often underappreciated ways, from its effects on population size and environmental sustainability to its consequences for a community’s distribution of resources. In many ways, of course, these interests coincide: adults need children for their parenting projects, societies need citizens for the maintenance of their institutions, and children themselves are often happy to have been brought into existence. However, as the book demonstrates, the various interests that are implicated by procreative decision-making can also come into conflict as well, and in ways that raise basic questions of justice. Through a systematic examination of six of these questions, the author argues that taking adequate stock of the conflicting interests at stake in procreative decision-making leads to a narrower view of the conditions under which it is morally permissible to procreate and a much more demanding conception of our procreative responsibilities. -/- Procreative Justice will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working on the morality of procreation and related areas of philosophy, including bioethics, intergenerational ethics, environmental ethics, population ethics, and the ethics of the family. (shrink)

Pallikkathayil argues that restrictions on abortion are inconsistent with the usual demands that states place on their citizens. States don't require their citizens to make their bodies available for the protection of other people's interests. Yet, when abortion is restricted, women who can be pregnant are less entitled than other citizens to decide on how their bodies are to be used; then, states fail to treat women as equal before the law. The argument is supposed to hold even if one (...) assumes that fetuses at various stages of development are as morally considerable as (already born) children, and even if, moreover, fetuses have passive citizenship status – that is, if they have claims to state protection. Pallikkathayil's argument comes at excessive theoretical costs, rulling out (a) general duties to help others in the protection of vital interests via relatively non‐burdening donation, e.g. of blood, and (b) plausible although demanding special duties of procreative parents. Nevertheless, I agree with Pallikkathayil's conclusion that existing legal restrictions on abortion violate the state's duty to treat its citizens as equal, and are hence illegitimate; namely, because they fail to hold all procreators ‐ whether or not gestational ‐ equally liable. (shrink)

Most states in the United States have conscience laws protecting conscientious refusal to perform some medical service. Yet many state conscience laws protect providers from being even indirectly involved with some procedure they find objectionable, which can include not only referrals but also simply informing patients of medically indicated but morally contentious options. I argue that such policies are unjust, offering too much protection for integrity in the face of competing values and patient interests. In other words, these policies grant (...) too much weight to integrity. One promising response to this concern is that in addition to integrity, the state should protect professionals so that they avoid complicity that could undermine their moral right to hold others accountable. I argue that this response fails, since it is implausible that these professionals actually lose that right in such contexts. I conclude that these policies should be restricted to better protect patient interests. (shrink)

In Dobbs v. Jackson, the Supreme Court found that ‘the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion.’ Rather, individual states must determine whether a right to abortion exists. Following Dobbs, state abortion laws have diverged significantly. This has generated confusion over what the law permits. Consequently, some pregnant individuals reportedly have not received timely treatment for life-threatening conditions. Clear guidance on abortion policy is essential, therefore, since continued confusion risks lives. Sweeping calls to improve patient access to abortion will (...) not provide clear guidance, however, since ‘abortion’ is defined differently across jurisdictions. In fact, there are six variables to consider when defining ‘abortion’: (1) the definition of ‘pregnancy,’ (2) whether prescribing abortifacients counts as an abortion, (3) whether abortion successfully terminates pregnancy, (4) whether abortion has some characteristic intention, (5) whether providers must know that they likely will harm fetuses, and (6) whether providers must know that their patients are pregnant. States address each variable differently, so ‘abortion’ means different things across jurisdictions. One may respond that legislators are solely to blame for confusion here, since medical experts, by contrast, possesses a clear definition of ‘abortion.’ Not so. ‘Abortion’ is defined inconsistently throughout medical literature too. As such, both legal and medical domains would benefit from careful discussions of ‘abortion.’ Attending to the six variables identified here is a good starting place. In this essay, I suggest how best to think about each and I propose a definition of ‘abortion’ well-suited for developing clear abortion policy in a polarized society. (shrink)

A global trend of institutionalised pronatalism situates low fertility as a site of demographic disaster – positioning primarily women’s bodies as both its cause and solution. In light of such demographic dread, assisted reproductive technologies (ART) may be utilized by pronatalist states as a strategy for fertility recovery, rather than as a benefit for individual aspiring parents. In other words, ARTs are at risk of being co-opted by nation-states for problematic demographic designs which do not advance emancipatory goals. The underlying (...) issue of pronatalism, however, is not always explicitly acknowledged in feminist bioethics as a barrier to ethical ART usage. In my paper, I argue that it would be a mistake to assume ART can be used for emancipatory ends if we do not, at the same time, critically investigate its connections to institutionalised pronatalism. (shrink)

This Open Access book is about the risks and the ethics of human germline gene editing, i.e., the possibility to make heritable changes to the DNA of early human embryos or germ cells. Is there something particularly morally problematic about editing the human germline? Is there something unique about germline editing, and, if so, does this suggest that we ought not to edit the human germline, or only in particular circumstances or for particular purposes? What would be a wise and (...) responsible approach to editing the human germline from a moral perspective? The book has three broad aims. First, to present an inclusive map over the current scholarly debate on the ethics of human germline gene editing. Second, to provide a philosophical and critical guide to the various ideas and arguments in this debate. Third, to apply an ethics of risk perspective and defend a morally cautious position on human germline gene editing. (shrink)

East Asian countries such as South Korea have recently made headlines for experimenting with different methods to incentivise people to have (more) children, in a bid to reverse declining birth rates. Many such incentives—child benefits, cash bonuses, dating events, and so on—appear morally innocuous at first glance. I will demonstrate in this analysis, however, that they amount to stopgap measures which reveal fundamental shortcomings with the way various nation states are approaching the so-called ‘problem’ of fertility decline.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently issued its first approval of an oral contraceptive medication for access without a clinician’s prescription. One might expect this will lead to fewer people seeking to terminate unplanned pregnancies, including in states that imposed severe restrictions on abortion care following the Supreme Court’s reversal on abortion rights in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Despite the clear potential health benefits, increased accessibility of oral contraceptives offers no real solution to ongoing threats to patients’ (...) reproductive health and moral rights created by post-Dobbs abortion restrictions. To secure their patients’ reproductive health and well-being, clinicians must work to maximize the benefits of OTC oral contraceptives without relenting in their advocacy for safe and accessible abortion care. (shrink)

White progressives in the U.S. are currently experiencing two profound reckonings that typically are assumed to be unrelated. On the one hand, the Dobbs verdict overturned the assumption that the right to choose with respect to abortion is too socially entrenched, juridically settled, or politically sacred to be denied. On the other hand, climatological conditions of possibility for comfortable existence are increasingly under threat in locales in which residents have come to expect to enjoy secure lives and livelihoods. This essay (...) highlights what Indigenous communities across the U.S. already know well. Namely, threats to reproductive freedom and climate crisis are neither new nor separable. Both phenomena have common colonial roots that continue to proliferate. Each is a result of the disruption and destruction of Indigenous kinship assemblages. Indeed, in aiming to remediate their current reckonings, white progressives routinely (if unthinkingly) support forms of settler state violence that perpetuate reproductive and climate injustice in Indigenous communities. We appeal to white progressives, notably including white feminists, to embrace the proposition that their reckonings cannot be properly understood, nor successfully addressed without prioritizing Indigenous futurity. We call for centering forms of Indigenous feminist praxis that facilitate robust Indigenous coalitions of anti-colonial resistance. (shrink)

Some physicians in the United States have strong moral objections to the recent bans or near total bans on abortion in this country. The objections are particularly vehement among those who have been abortion providers. They are concerned about the impact of the new restrictions on patients—on their lives and health, especially patients who are socially marginalized and will not be able to travel to “friendly” states to have abortions (i.e., states that legally permit abortions). They are also worried about (...) the status of women, which they fear will be unequal to that of men in a society where women are not permitted to make such intimate decisions about their lives. For these physicians, not to mention their patients, the bans on abortion are morally devastating. They, the physicians, might even feel compelled by their conscience to provide this care—to engage in what some call the “conscientious provision” of care—even though they could lose their careers and their freedom by doing so. There is currently no legal protection for the conscientious provision of abortion care in the U.S., although there is substantial protection for the conscientious refusal of that care. Physicians working in jurisdictions that have abortion bans put themselves at serious legal risk if they defy these bans for reasons of conscience. In general, their freedom of conscience is very low compared to that of physicians who conscientiously refuse to provide abortions in jurisdictions where abortions are still legal. Using theories of conscience and conscientious objection that I develop in Conscience in Reproductive Health Care (Oxford 2020), I argue that this situation is morally untenable. (shrink)

In this article, I confront Jessica Flanigan’s recent attempt to show not merely that women have a right to commit prenatal injury, but also that women who act on this right are praiseworthy and should not be criticized for this injury. I show that Flanigan’s arguments do not work, and I establish presumptive grounds against any such right—namely, prenatal injury, by definition, involves intentional or negligent harm and, as such, may be subsumed under a wider class of actions that are (...) presumptively wrong. (shrink)

Steven Landsburg argues that from a legal perspective, “most abortions should be unrestricted.” This conclusion, he claims, follows from combining insights from Judith Jarvis Thomson (1971) with a “careful Rawlsian analysis,” where “Rawlsianism is the industry-standard approach” for settling conflicts like those that arise in debates over abortion policy. If correct, then “the right approach to policy questions” implies that abortion access should remain relatively open. Here, I argue that Landsburg has drawn from Rawlsian tools the wrong conclusion about abortion. (...) I defend what he terms “naive Rawlsian”: the view that as a matter of justice, “many abortions . . . should be prohibited.” If correct, then “the industry-standard approach” for settling conflicts (as Landsburg calls it) should lead society to prohibit abortion in most cases. Proponents of abortion who wish to avoid this outcome, therefore, should abandon the “industry standard” approach to conflict resolution. (shrink)

This issue of Christian Bioethics explores theological, metaphysical, and ethical questions surrounding emerging reproductive technologies. Narratives concerning such technologies are often manipulated via “language games.” Language games involve toying with language to ensure that one’s vision of the good gains or retains political prominence. Such games are common in academic discussions of “artificial womb” technologies. Abortion proponents, for example, are already using language to dehumanize subjects within “artificial wombs.” This is unsurprising. Were relevant subjects considered persons, then abortion access (and (...) other forms of “reproductive autonomy”) might be curtailed. Here, I show that abortion proponents’ language games often depend on dubious metaphysical claims. Second, I argue that Christians should oppose dehumanizing language games, since those games undermine “neighbor-love,” which Christians are commanded to show others. I also highlight how discussions of other technologies—such as medication abortion—are affected by confused (or manipulative) language. Ultimately, the language games I critique aim to preserve and expand the “rights” of the powerful to dehumanize, control, and kill vulnerable human beings. Since neighbor-love commands Christians to provide for “the least of these,” however, Christians must expose these manipulative language games, refute them, and resist the corrupt ideologies from which they flow. (shrink)

In cases in which we must choose between either (i) preventing a woman from remaining unwillingly pregnant or (ii) preventing a fetus from being killed, we should prevent the fetus from being killed. But this suggests that in typical cases abortion is wrong: typical abortions involve preventing a woman from remaining unwillingly pregnant over preventing a fetus from being killed. And so abortion is typically wrong—and this holds whether or not fetuses are persons.

Herjeet Kaur Marway recently proposed the Principle of Procreative Justice, which says that reproducers have a strong moral obligation to avoid completing race and colour injustices through their selection choices. In this article, we analyze this principle and argue, appealing to a series of counterexamples, that some of the implications of Marway's Principle of Procreative Justice are difficult to accept. This casts doubt on whether the principle should be adopted. Also, we show that there are some more principled worries regarding (...) Marway's idea of a strong pro tanto duty not to complete injustices through one's procreative choices. Nonetheless, we believe Marway's arguments point in the right general direction regarding duties and structural injustice. Thus, in the final part, we suggest a positive proposal on how it would be possible to respond to the cases we raise. More specifically, we explore the suggestion that agents have a pro tanto duty to participate in eliminating structural injustice. Importantly, this duty can be satisfied, not only in procreation choices but in multiple ways. (shrink)

This paper reconsiders Tommie Shelby's (2016) analysis of procreation in poor black communities. I identify three conceptual frames within which Shelby situates his analysis—feminization, choice-as-control, and moralization. I argue that these frames should be rejected on conceptual, empirical, and moral grounds. As I show, this framing engenders a flawed understanding of poor black women's procreative lives. I propose an alternative framework for reconceiving the relationship between poverty and procreative justice, one oriented around reproductive flourishing instead of reproductive responsibility. More generally, (...) the paper develops a methodological challenge for nonideal moral and political philosophy, especially concerning the obligations of the oppressed. Specifically, I argue that in the absence of descriptive and conceptual accountability, the moral gaze of the philosopher risks preserving, rather than destabilizing, oppressive ideologies. (shrink)

Uterus transplantation (UTx) is an experimental surgery likely to face the issue of organ shortage. In my article, I explore how this issue might be addressed by changing the prevailing practices around live uterus donor recruitment. Currently, women with children – often the mothers of recipients – tend to be overrepresented as donors. Yet, other potentially eligible groups who may have an interest in providing their uterus – such as transgender men, or cisgender women who do not wish to gestate (...) or to have children – tend to be excluded as potential donors. Moving forward, I recommend that donor inclusion criteria for UTx be broadened to be more inclusive of these latter groups. (shrink)

Should involuntarily childless people have the sameopportunities to access parenthood as those who are not involuntarily childless? In the context of assisted reproductive technologies, affirmative answers to this question are often cashed out in terms of positive rights, including rights to third-party reproduction. In this paper, wecritically explore the scope and extent to which any such right would hold up morally. Ultimately, we argue for a departure away from positive parental rights. Instead, we argue that the state has an imperfect (...) duty to benefit involuntarily childless people in relation to their parental aspirations. (shrink)

Gender-based forms of administrative violence, such as reproductive violence, are the result of systems designed to enact population-level harms through the production and forcible imposition of colonial systems of gender. Settler statecraft has long relied on the strategic promotion of sexual and reproductive violence. Patterns of reproductive violence adapt and change to align with the enduring goals and evolving needs of settler colonial occupation, dispossession, and containment. The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision to end the constitutional right to abortion in (...) Dobbs v Jackson is but one instance of this larger pattern. We analyze reproductive and obstetric violence and the structural trauma they produce through the lenses of i) historical continuity and ii) the global architectures of neoliberal settler capitalism in order to connect reproductive rights rollbacks in the U.S. with the expansion of reproductive violence across a world connected by colonial globalization. (shrink)

Procreative obligations are often discussed by evaluating only the consequences of reproductive actions or omissions; less attention is paid to the moral role of intentions and attitudes. In this paper, I assess whether intentions and attitudes can contribute to defining our moral obligations with regard to assisted reproductive technologies already available, such as preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), and those that may be available in future, such as reproductive genome editing and ectogenesis, in a way compatible with person‐affecting constraints. I propose (...) the parent–child relationship argument, which is based on the moral distinction between creating and parenting a child. Hence, I first argue that intentions and attitudes can play a role in defining our moral obligations in reproductive decisions involving PGD. Second, I maintain that if we accept this and recognize reproductive genome editing and ectogenesis as person‐affecting procedures, we should be committed to arguing that prospective parents may have moral reasons to prefer reproduction via such techniques than via sexual intercourse. In both cases, I observe an extension of our procreative responsibility beyond what is proposed by the consequentialist person‐affecting morality. (shrink)

Responses to Brad Skow, Reuven Brandt, Camisha Russell and Amanda Roth's commentaries on *Conceiving People*.

Is moral or other regret for abortion an indicator that abortion may not be morally or prudentially choice worthy? This paper examines the work of Kate Greasley in this area, who offers an explanation of any asymmetry in openness to regret between women who have abortions and women who give birth. The latter, not unlike Derek Parfit’s 14-year-old who conceives deliberately, may feel duty-bound not to regret their decision (in their case, to continue their pregnancy) and to affirm the life (...) of their child. In response to Greasley, testimonial evidence of one group cannot be dismissed simply because regret may be less available to another group of decision-makers. Moreover, if moral regret for childbearing is uncommon, this is not because mothers have a moral duty, as Greasley argues, not to regret even a morally mistaken choice to conceive. On the contrary, one must separate the evaluation of choices and of the results of these choices, whether positive or negative. Regret, while not infallible, can elucidate values at stake in choices, and testimonial evidence in the form of regret should be taken more seriously in regard to certain kinds of choice. (shrink)

In this article, I critique the commonly accepted distinction between commercial and altruistic surrogacy arrangements. The moral legitimacy of surrogacy, I claim, does not hinge on whether it is paid (‘commercial’) or unpaid (‘altruistic’); rather, it is best determined by appraisal of virtue-abiding conditions constitutive of the surrogacy arrangement. I begin my article by problematising the prevailing commercial/altruistic distinction; next, I demonstrate that an assessment of the virtue-abiding or non-virtue-abiding features of a surrogacy is crucial to navigating questions about the (...) moral legitimacy of surrogacy; in the final part, I reject other moral heuristics that might be proposed as alternatives to the commercial/altruistic dichotomy, and reiterate that a virtue-ethical framework is the most suitable way forward. (shrink)