The aim of this paper is to examine whether it is morally wrong to ban only male citizens from leaving a country in wartime, and if it is, why it is the case. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky declared martial law and ordered general mobilization, at the same time prohibiting male citizens aged 18 to 60 from crossing the border. The justifiability of the ban is in dispute, and opponents have made a case in both legal and (...) moral dimensions. In the moral dimension, there are arguments based on consequentialism, individual freedom, and fairness or non-discrimination. In this paper, I focus on the third argument and argue that the ban unfairly and morally wrongfully discriminates against male Ukraine citizens on the basis of their gender. First, I define discrimination and apply it to our case. Second, moving from the descriptive definition of discrimination to its moral wrongness, I argue that the male-only ban is unfair and morally unjustified. Third, I argue that the ban can also be deemed morally wrong from one of the prominent views in the field of the ethics of discrimination, namely the deliberative freedom view. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to consider whether, when, and why it is morally right to treat members of socially disadvantaged racial or ethnic groups favorably when allocating scarce medical resources. Since the COVID 2019 pandemic has had different impacts on racial and ethnic groups, some U.S. states have given racial and ethnic minorities preferential access to COVID-19 vaccines, leading to controversy over the moral and legal permissibility of doing so. I examine three arguments for affirmative action—the compensation, equality-of-opportunity, (...) and antidiscrimination arguments—and argue that both the equality-of-opportunity and antidiscrimination arguments have the potential to provide well-founded justification for race-based affirmative action for the allocation of scarce medical resources. I also consider further moral requirements that instances of affirmative action based on both or either of the two arguments should comply with for them to be justified. (shrink)