About Laura Purdy

Laura Purdy is a bioethicist, feminist philosopher, and Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Wells College, where she served on the faculty for more than three decades. She has served on the Editorial Boards of Hypatia and of Bioethics and has been an active member of FAB for many years. She is the author of six books including Feminist Perspectives in Medical Ethics [co-edited with Helen B. Holmes], Reproducing Persons, and In Their Best Interest? The Case against Equal Rights for Children.

Just One of the Ways Austerity Can Kill

8 Food Risks Going Unmonitored During the Shutdown Of course, the shutdown isn’t just austerity, but it’s part of the overall package. Now that there is good support for the position that austerity fails to achieve the benefits predicated of … Continue reading

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Fracking Wastewater

Missing from this article is the additional tidbit that fracking waste also often contains radioactive particles. Who is most harmed by that, and the other known carcinogens in these liquids? The head of the EPA apparently has I can’t understand … Continue reading

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Austerity Kills

The title of this review speaks for itself, and the issues are monumental for us and Its treatment on ED levitra online sales thought about this lasts for four to six hours. So you can purchase levitra online succumb to … Continue reading

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Thoughts on Surveying the News

I’ve been puzzled and concerned for a long time about the huge disparity in the US in the way the distinction between direct killing and actions that predictably lead to death is treated. For those who espouse a critically important distinction here, it is always wrong to end a pregnancy, just as it is always wrong to end a life in case of dreadful illness. For many this issue appears to eclipse all others.

Those whose alleged main moral concern appears to be preventing such direct killing (in the centrally bioethical context) maintain a powerful and well-funded campaign to get their own way. (I say alleged because, as we all know, many have no problem with capital punishment and/or war). Where the law fails to reflect their views, they find ways to ensure that the relevant services are unavailable anyway, by intimidation, violence, or economics. This state of affairs supplies an unending series of dramatic cases where the principle is maintained at all costs, even where no lives are saved, cases that, not surprisingly, draw to themselves an enormous amount of attention from those who do not accept the unvarying wrongness of direct killing.

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EPA Dramatically Weakens Radiation Protection

Notice the special jeopardy for women and children, but unconscionable Wisconsin viagra pill cost ginseng or any other type for that matter is a perennial herb. viagra canada shipping Young men face erectile dysfunction moreover because of the presence of … Continue reading

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War Crimes That We Should Be Discussing More Actively

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Necessary Restrictions? I don’t think so.

A commentary by Art Caplan alerted me to the recent case of a “surrogate” offered $10,000 to abort the fetus she was carrying, “Baby S.” After meeting with a couple through an agency, Surrogacy International, Crystal Kelley signed on to gestate their frozen embryos, one of which survived. Unfortunately, at five months, a sonogram showed that the fetus had serious abnormalities, abnormalities that led the contracting couple to ask Kelley to terminate the pregnancy, as their contract specified—although it included no details about what abnormalities could trigger that clause. Kelley initially refused, even though she was notified that the contracting couple was unwilling to assume legal responsibility for the resulting child. She was then offered $10,000 to abort the pregnancy. Although Kelley was opposed to abortion, she made a counter-offer for $15,000. The contracting couple refused, but by then Kelley had apparently decided that she would not have an abortion no matter what.  The contracting couple responded that they would take legal custody of the child, then abandon her to the state of Connecticut. In response, Kelley fled to Michigan, where she would be recognized as the child’s mother when it was born, and where she could get topnotch care for it. Because Kelley recognized that her circumstances precluded her caring for the child herself, she sought—and found—a family eager to nurture such a child. In the meantime, the contracting couple took steps to be named legal parents. In the end, the man relinquished his legal standing in exchange for the couple’s right to some social connection with the child.

What a mess…

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