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Added by: Deryn Mair ThomasAbstract:
A threat to women is obscured when we treat “abortion-as-evacuation” as equivalent to “abortion-as-killing.” This holds only if evacuating a fetus kills it. As technology advances, the equivalence will fail. Any feminist account of abortion that relies on the equivalence leaves moral room for women to be required to give up their fetuses to others when it fails. So an account of the justification of abortion-as-killing is needed that does not depend on the equivalence.
Schouten, Gina. Fetuses, Orphans, and a Famous Violinist: On the Ethics and Politics of Abortion2017, Social Theory and Practice 43 (3): 637-665-
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Added by: Sara PeppeAbstract:
In this paper, I urge feminists to re-center fetal moral status in their theorizing about abortion. I argue that fundamental feminist normative commitments are at odds with efforts to de-emphasize fetal moral status: The feminist commitment to ensuring care for dependents supports surprising conclusions with regard to the ethics of abortion, and the feminist commitment to politicizing the personal has surprising conclusions regarding the politics of abortion. But these feminist insights also support the conclusion that, conditional on fetal moral status, care for unwanted fetuses would be a social obligation that only derivatively falls to women who are unwillingly pregnant.
Comment: Best discussed alongside Judith Thomson's "A Defense of Abortion" and Liam Murphy's "The Demands of Beneficence." Challenges a widely accepted intuition about the ethics of abortion and can be used to illustrate the vulnerabilities of thought experiments that appeal to intuitions. Demonstrates the useful argumentative move of assuming premise P for the sake of argument (even if you don't endorse P) in order to examine the implications that follow from P.
Walda Heywat (Wäldä Hewat, Mitku), Sumner, Claude. Hatata [II] (~1692)1976, In Ethiopian Philosophy, Vol. 2. Addis Ababa, Addis Ababa University Press-
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Added by: Sara Peppe, Contributed by: Jonathan EgidPublisher’s Note:
Translating to 'an investigation', this is the second of two 17th century ethical and rational treatises from present-day Ethiopia. Walda Heywat (Wäldä Hewat) continued the work of his mentor, Zera Yacob (Zär'a Ya'eqob, Wärqe), and expanded on it, turning it into more of a practical guide. Hatata (II) is considered to be more in line with more traditional views in its approach to topics such as marriage and abortion. However, where as Zara Yacob's ideas were relatively individualistic, Walda Heywat was particularly known for his social ethics. In his writing, he states, "God did not create me only for myself, but placed me in the midst of other created [men] who are equal to me." He also adds, “Man cannot come to existence, grow and serve by himself without the help of other men."
Comment: Covering themes such as abortion, marriage, religion and morality this text represents a way to develop further knowledge of the Ethiopian philosophy in the 1600s. Also, it shows how some philosophical ideas developed from Zera Yacob to Walda Heywat. It may therefore be used as a supplemental text to the previous Hatata in offering an introduction to Ethiopian philosophy. As with the first Hatata, it may also be useful as a tool to explore enlightenment ideals as they predated work by European philosophers, such as Descartes and John Locke.
Little, Margaret Olivia. Abortion2008, In R. G. Frey & Christopher Wellman (eds.), A companion to applied ethics. Malden: Wiley. pp. 313-325.-
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Simon Fokt
Introduction: It is often noted that public discussion of the moral status of abortion is disappointingly crude. The positions staked out and the reasoning proffered seem to reflect little of the subtlety and nuance - not to mention ambivalence - that mark more private reflections on the subject. Despite attempts by various parties to find middle ground, the debate remains largely polarized: at its most dramatic, with extreme conservatives claiming abortion to be the moral equivalent of murder, even as extreme liberals think it devoid of moral import.To some extent, this polarization is due to the legal battle that continues to shadow moral discussions. Admission of ethical nuance, it is feared, will play as concession on the deeply contested question of whether abortion should be a legally protected option for women. But, to some extent, blame for the continued crudeness can be laid at the doorstep of moral theory itself.Comment:
Steinbock, Bonnie. Life Before Birth: The Moral and Legal Status of Embryos and Fetuses1994, Ethics 104 (2):408-410.-
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Simon Fokt
Abstract: This book provides a coherent framework for addressing bioethical issues in which the moral status of embryos and fetuses is relevant. It is based on the 'interest view,' which ascribes moral standing to beings with interests, and connects the possession of interests with the capacity for conscious awareness or sentience. The theoretical framework is applied to up-to-date ethical and legal topics, including abortion, prenatal torts, wrongful life, the crime of feticide, substance abuse by pregnant women, compulsory cesareans, assisted reproduction, and stem cell research. Along the way, difficult philosophical problems, such as identity and the nonidentity problem are thoroughly explored.Comment:
Little, Margaret Olivia. Abortion and the Margins of Personhood2008, Living on the edge: the margins of legal personhood: symposium 2; 331-348.-
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Simon Fokt
Publisher's Note: When a woman is pregnant, how should we understand the moral status of the life within her? How should we understand its status as conceptus, as embryo, when an early or again matured fetus? According to some, human life in all of these forms is inviolable: early human life has a moral status equivalent to a person from the moment of conception. According to others, such life has no intrinsic status, even late in pregnancy. According to still others, moral status emerges when sentience does. Until the fetus is conscious - a point somewhere at the end of the second trimester, it has no moral status at all; after it is conscious, it does.Comment:
Little, Margaret Olivia. Abortion, intimacy, and the duty to gestate1999, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 2 (3):295-312.-
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Simon Fokt
Abstract: In this article, I urge that mainstream discussions of abortion are dissatisfying in large part because they proceed in polite abstraction from the distinctive circumstances and meanings of gestation. Such discussions, in fact, apply to abortion conceptual tools that were designed on the premiss that people are physically demarcated, even as gestation is marked by a thorough-going intertwinement. We cannot fully appreciate what is normatively at stake with legally forcing continued gestation, or again how to discuss moral responsibilities to continue gestating, until we appreciate in their own terms the goods and evils distinctive of gestational connection. To underscore the need to explore further the meanings of gestation, I provide two examples of the difference it might make to legal and moral discussions of abortion if we appreciate more fully that gestation is an intimacy.Comment:
Jackson, Jennifer C.. Toleration in the Abortion Debate1992, In: Bromham D.R., Dalton M.E., Jackson J.C., Millican P.J.R. (eds) Ethics in Reproductive Medicine. Springer, London pp 189-200-
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Added by: Barbara Cohn, Contributed by: Simon Fokt
Abstract: What methods, what strategies, is it defensible for us to employ when campaigning on a contentious moral issue? What kinds of intolerance may we legitimately manifest towards the opposition in our endeavour to win converts and influence opinion? Could we be justified in refusing on principle even to engage with the opposition in public debate? And what of the legitimacy of 'playing' on people's emotions, or of not correcting misinformation put about by some of our supporters which helps our cause? Or, in making use of premises in argument that our opponents accept but we do not or, of appealing to arguments that we know to be invalid but by which the opposition may be taken in?Comment:
Inness, Julie C.. Privacy, Intimacy, and Isolation1996, OUP USA.-
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Simon Fokt
Publisher's Note: This book undermines privacy scepticism, proving a strong theoretical foundation for many of our everyday and legal privacy claims. Inness argues that intimacy is the core of privacy, including privacy appeals in tort and constitutional law. She explores the myriad of debates and puts forth an intimacy and control-based account of privacy which escapes these criticisms.Comment:
Harman, Elizabeth. Creation Ethics: The Moral Status of Early Fetuses and the Ethics of Abortion1999, Philosophy and Public Affairs 28 (4):310-324.-
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Simon Fokt
Introduction: There has been considerable discussion of the moral status of early fetuses and the ethics of the choice whether to abort a pregnancy. But one tenable view about the moral status of early fetuses has been regularly ignored. As a consequence, a very liberal view about the ethics of abortion is more attractive than has previously been thought. Let us use the term 'early fetus' as follows: (1) 'early fetus': a fetus before it has any intrinsic properties that themselves confer moral status on the fetus. I assume that there is a nonnegligible period of time in which fetuses are early fetuses in my sense; it may be as short as a few weeks or as long as several months, depending on which intrinsic properties can them- selves confer moral status. One plausible view says that an early fetus is a fetus before it has any conscious experience and before it can properly be described as the subject of experience.Comment:
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Reader, Soran. Abortion, Killing, and Maternal Moral Authority
2008, Hypatia 23 (1):132-149
Comment: This text explores a common justification for the permissability of abortion, which the author describes as an equivalence between "abortion-as-killing" and "abortion-as-evacuation". The author also examines a series of dilemmas which arise from traditional pro-choice discussions of abortion (at least at the time of writing), such the two-horned dilemma which appears to trap pro-choice advocates in only two camps: one in which the fetus is morally signficant (and therefore can only be aborted, but not killed), and another in which the fetus is morally negligible (in which case, it does not matter). Reader challenges this dichotomy and aims to show that fetal killing can be justified without claiming that fetuses are negligible by focusing on relationship, in general, and motherhood, in particular. Therefore, the text would be most useful as a primary or supplemental reading in an intermediate or advanced course studying contemporary analytic debates on abortion or feminist thought and critical gender studies.