A new piece in Nature raises important points for scientists working in fetal epigenetics to consider when writing up and communicating their work. The authors urge consideration of how the results will be used to target the behavior of pregnant … Continue reading
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M was born with genitals that were not clearly male or female. Also known as disorders of sex development (DSDs), the best guess by researchers is that intersex conditions affect one in 2,000 children. The response by doctors is often … Continue reading
In 1985, Spain passed laws restricting a woman’s right to abortion, the so-called “Organic Law” governing reproductive health and abortion. Under this law, abortion was legal in only three cases: serious risk to physical or mental health of the … Continue reading
U.S. states have long had the power to override a pregnant woman’s medical autonomy in specific kinds of instances in order to prevent harm to her fetus. Means for doing so have included court orders to compel C-section or to … Continue reading
Over at Feministing, Katie has a pretty solid analysis of the recent case of a woman in an independent living facility who was unambiguously raped by a male employee. After reporting the rape, to which the perpetrator confessed, the survivor … Continue reading
In the New York Times on Friday, January 24, 2014, three stories appeared that demonstrate the degree to which women’s bodies are still battlegrounds for men. The first was good news: the Moroccan law that allowed rapists to escape punishment … Continue reading
The rhetoric surrounding late abortions and so-called “fourth trimester abortions” (in which the fetus is alive after an attempted abortion) touches perilously on the ethical issues surrounding care for very premature infants. The author of this blog entry at a … Continue reading
Numerous strategies by anti-abortion groups to curb women’s constitutional right to an abortion are frequently reported in the news, and come as no surprise. However, a recent development illustrates novel circumstances in which legal maneuvers conspire to restrict medical decisions … Continue reading
Marlise Munoz collapsed last November as a result of a blood clot in her lungs, which left her on life support. Her husband and parents were told that, despite the fact that she had not hope of recovery, and had … Continue reading
This is a guest post by Nathan Emmerich. Nathan Emmerich is a Visiting Research Fellow at Queen’s University Belfast where he has been working on Bioethical Expertise. He took his PhD from Queen’s and this was recently published as a book entitled ‘Medical Ethics Education.’
On Thursday the 21st of November the Court of Appeal in Northern Ireland (NI) gave its judgement in a case between the Attorney General for NI, John Larkin, and the Senior Coroner for Northern Ireland. The case concerned whether the Attourney General could compel the coroner to convene an inquest into a still-birth. The coroner had declined to do so, arguing that it did not fall within the remit of his office. Briefly, as the role of the coroner is to investigate deaths there had to be an individual who was, legally speaking, alive and had subsequently died. Thus coroners in NI and, for that matter, the UK have not historically held inquests into still-births. A lower court had previously upheld the position of the coroner and that judgement alluded to some of the concerns I raise here.
The question of when life and, in particular, human life begins and ends has been persistent and contentious in biology, philosophy, theology and law. In bioethical thought there are a number of different accounts where it is common to distinguish between the start of life and the point at which a human organism attracts moral importance. Furthermore we might think that the human organism has different moral weights depending on the state of its development or, for that matter, demise. Such consdierations lead in a variety of directions, not least to the provocative argument that neonates might not meet the requirements for ‘personhood’ and therefore should not be considered (full) members of the moral community. It is not easy to resolve these ethical conundra and they will continue to trouble bioethical scholarship for the foreseeable future. However, the law cannot afford the luxury of uncertainty. Whilst we might recognise some degree of complexity and attempt to mediate between competing demands, ultimately the law has to adopt a position on when the ‘human organism’ becomes an individual, recognised by law and, therefore, a (legal) person.
Continue reading“Penn State Administrators Target Women Employees” From the Centre Daily Times: “Under Penn State’s new employee wellness program, a health risk assessment questionnaire asks female employees if they plan to get pregnant in the next year. If the employee doesn’t want … Continue reading
This commentary was initially posted on July 11, 2013 on the Impact Ethics blog and is reposted here with permission of the author. Visit impactethics.ca Claire Burns, Raquel Cool and Sierra Falter co-founded We Are Egg Donors, the world’s first self-advocacy … Continue reading