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Anthony Skelton

Visiting Scholar, Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics; Associate Professor, University of Western Ontario, London, Canada

Sex, Sex Surrogates, and Disability

Recently a debate erupted in France over a proposal to use state funds to pay for sex surrogates for the disabled. News reports can be found here and here. Some advocates for the disabled applauded the move, including the French Association of the Paralyzed. However, the proposal was eventually altered and the call for the funding of sex surrogates was dropped before a vote on the proposal was held. This is a shame, for respect for the autonomy and the wellbeing of the disabled provides us with good reason to support such a proposal.

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Kyle Edwards: Methods of Legitimation: How Ethics Committees Decide Which Reasons Count (Podcast)

The most recent St. Cross Ethics Seminar took place on February 28th, 2013. Kyle Edwards, who is currently a DPhil Candidate at Oxford, led it. Her informative and compelling presentation was entitled “Methods of Legitimation: How Ethics Committees Decide Which Reasons Count.”

(A podcast of the seminar is located here: http://media.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/uehiro/HT13STX_KE.mp3)

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Abortion and the Senseless Death of Savita Halappanavar

On Wednesday morning, several media outlets, including the Irish Times, the BBC, and the CBC, reported that Savita Halappanavar, a Hindu woman living in Ireland, had died from blood poisoning after doctors in a Galway hospital refused her request to abort the fetus that she was told she was miscarrying.

We do not yet know all of the facts of the case. Several inquires are being conducted. We do, however, learn this much from media reports. Ms. Halappanavar was 17 weeks pregnant. On October 21, she presented at a hospital in Galway complaining of back pain. Upon examination, she was told that she was having a miscarriage, and that it would soon be over. This did not happen. Instead, her ordeal continued for several more days. After a full day of “severe” pain carrying a child that was certain to die, Ms. Halappanavar asked that her pregnancy be terminated. Physicians were reported to have said that since they were in Ireland and the fetus had a heart beat they could not terminate the pregnancy. (In Ireland, the unborn have a constitutional right to life.) Ms. Halappanavar continued to suffer for a further two and a half more days before her fetus died and was removed from her body. By this time she was quite ill. She was then transferred to an Intensive Care Unit but she did not recover, dying some days later on October 28of complications due to septicaemia (blood poisoning.)Read More »Abortion and the Senseless Death of Savita Halappanavar