Disputes in Bioethics

Abortion, Euthanasia, and Other Controversies

Christopher Kaczor

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780268033262, 9780268108090
• eBook ISBN: 9780268108113
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Ethics in Medicine

Disputes in Bioethics tackles some of the most debated questions in contemporary scholarship about the beginning and end of life. This collection of essays takes up questions about the dawn of human life, including: Should we make children with three (or more) parents? Is it better never to have been born? and Why should the baby live? This volume also asks about the dusk of human life: Is "death with dignity" a dangerous euphemism? Should euthanasia be permitted for children? Does assisted suicide harm those who do not choose to die? Still other questions are asked concerning recent views that health care professionals should not have a right to conscientiously object to legal and accepted medical practices. Finally, the book addresses questions about separating conjoined twins as well as the issue of whether the species of an individual makes a difference for the individual's moral status.

Christopher Kaczor critiques some of the most recent and influential positions in bioethics, while eschewing both consequentialism and principalism. Rooted in the Catholic principle that faith and reason are harmonious, this book shows how Catholic bioethical teaching is rationally defensible in terms that people of good will, secular or religious, can accept. Proceeding from a natural law perspective, Kaczor defends the inherent dignity of all human beings and argues that they merit the protection of their basic human goods because of that inherent dignity. Philosophers interested in applied ethics, as well as students and professors of law, will profit from reading Disputes in Bioethics. The book aims to be both philosophically sophisticated and accessible for students and experienced researchers alike.

Notes

Chapter 1. Is Speciesism a Form of Prejudice?

1. Singer’s words as cited by Shelly Kagan, “What’s Wrong with Speciesism?,” Society of Applied Philosophy Annual Lecture 2015, Journal of Applied Philosophy 33.1 (February 2016): 1, doi: 10.1111/japp.12164.

2. Ibid., 3.

3. Ibid., 8.

4. Ibid., 9.

5. Ibid., 10.

6. Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles 3.112.1, ed. and trans. Vernon J. Bourke (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975). See, too, his Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard 44.1.3 ad 1.

7. Immanuel Kant, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals 2.429, trans. James E. Ellington (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1993).

8. Sherif Girgis, “Equality and Moral Worth in Natural Law Ethics and Beyond,” American Journal of Jurisprudence 59.2 (2014): 143–62.

9. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae II-II, 26, 6, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (Notre Dame, IN: Christian Classics, 1947).

10. Thomas Aquinas, Sententia libri Politicorum 1.1.32, trans. Ernest L. Fortin and Peter D. O’Neill as Commentary on Aristotle’s “Politics” (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1963), https://dhspriory.org/thomas/Politics.htm.

11. Kant, Grounding 2.429 (trans. Ellington).

12. David DeGrazia, “Modal Personhood and Moral Status: A Reply to Kagan’s Proposal,” Journal of Applied Philosophy 33.1 (February 2016): 22–25, esp. 24.

13. Ibid., 24–25.

14. Peter Singer, “Why Speciesism Is Wrong: A Response to Kagan,” Journal of Applied Philosophy 33.1 (February 2016): 32, doi: 10.1111/japp.12165.

15. Ibid.

Chapter 2. What Is Dignity?

1. Glenn Hughes, “The Concept of Dignity in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” Journal of Religious Ethics 39.1 (March 2011): 8.

2. Bharat Ranganathan, “Should Inherent Human Dignity Be Considered Intrinsically Heuristic?,” Journal of Religious Ethics 42.4 (2014): 770–75.

3. Daniel Sulmasy, “The Varieties of Human Dignity: A Logical and Conceptual Analysis,” Medicine, Health Care, and Philosophy 16.4 (2013): 937–44.

4. Ibid., 943.

5. Sherif Girgis, “Equality and Moral Worth in Natural Law Ethics and Beyond,” American Journal of Jurisprudence 59.2 (2014): 143–62.

6. Carlo Leget, “Analyzing Dignity: A Perspective from the Ethics of Care,” Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 16.4 (November 2013): 945–52.

7. Ibid., 947.

8. Ibid., 949.

9. Ibid.

10. Colin Bird, “Dignity as a Moral Concept,” Social Philosophy and Policy 30.1–2 (January 2013): 150–76.

11. Alan Gewirth, Self-Fulfillment (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), 168–69.

12. Ibid., 169.

13. Leget, “Analyzing Dignity,” 949.

Chapter 3. Should We Make Children with Three (or More) Parents?

1. Daniela Cutas et al., “Artificial Gametes: Perspectives of Geneticists, Ethicists, and Representatives of Potential Users,” Medicine, Health Care, and Philosophy 17.3 (August 2014): 343.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid., 341.

4. César Palacios-González, John Harris, and Giuseppe Testa, “Multiplex Parenting: IVG and the Generations to Come,” Journal of Medical Ethics 40.11 (2014): 754.

5. In his book Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), Derek Parfit began the discussion of the cases in which one must choose whether to create a person who either exists in a handicapped state or does not exist at all, which gave rise to a vast literature about the nonidentity problem.

6. Ronald M. Green, The Human Embryo Research Debates: Bioethics in the Vortex of Controversy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 126–27.

7. Anna Smajdor and Daniela Cutas, “Artificial Gametes and the Ethics of Unwitting Parenthood,” Journal of Medical Ethics 40.11 (November 2014): 748–51.

8. Ibid., 749.

9. Smajdor and Cutas, “Artificial Gametes,” 750.

10. Judith Jarvis Thomson, “A Defense of Abortion,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 1 (1971): 47–66.

11. Palacios-González, Harris, and Testa, “Multiplex Parenting,” 756.

12. Ibid.

Chapter 4. Is Roe v. Wade Unquestionably Correct?

1. Michelle Ye Hee Lee, “Is the United States One of Seven Countries That ‘Allow Elective Abortions after 20 Weeks of Pregnancy’?,” Washington Post, October 9, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/10/09/is-the-united-states-one-of-seven-countries-that-allow-elective-abortions-after-20-weeks-of-pregnancy/?utm_term=.be069c8d50bd\.

2. Erwin Chemerinsky and Michele Goodwin, “Abortion: A Woman’s Private Choice,” Texas Law Review 95 (2017): 1189–1247.

3. Ibid., 1238.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid., 1201.

6. Ibid., 1228 (internal citations omitted).

7. Patrick Lee and Melissa Moschella, “Embryology and Science Denial,” Public Discourse, November 8, 2017, www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2017/11/20449/.

8. Sarah Knapton, “Human Embryos Kept Alive in Lab for Unprecedented 13 Days So Scientists Can Watch Development,” Telegraph, May 4, 2016, www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/05/04/human-embryos-kept-alive-in-lab-for-unprecedented-13-days-so-sci/.

9. Kate Greasley and Christopher Kaczor, Abortion Rights: For and Against (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 6.

10. Chemerinsky and Goodwin, “Abortion,” 1229.

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid.

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Prologue
• One Is Speciesism a Form of Prejudice?
• Two What Is Dignity?
• Three Should We Make Children with Three (or More) Parents?
• Four Is Roe v. Wade Unquestionably Correct?
• Five What Are Reproductive Rights?
• Six Is It Better Never to Have Been Born?
• Seven Is There a Right to the Death of the Fetus?
• Eight Why Should the Baby Live?
• Nine Do Children Have a Right to Be Loved?
• Ten Do Children Contribute to the Flourishing of Their Parents?
• Eleven Is “Death with Dignity” a Dangerous Euphemism?
• Twelve Should Euthanasia Be Permitted for Children?
• Thirteen Does Assisted Suicide Harm Those Who Do Not Choose to Die?
• Fourteen Is Conscientious Objection to Abortion Like Conscientious Objection to Antibiotics?
• Fifteen Do Medical Conscientious Objectors Differ from Military Conscientious Objectors?
• Sixteen Should Conscientiously Objecting Institutions Cover Elective Abortion in Their Insurance Plans?
• Seventeen Is It Ethically Permissible to Separate Conjoined Twins?
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index