Skip to content

Who wants to be an abortionist?

Who wants to be an abortionist?

By Lachlan de Crespigny

Dr. Evan James never wavered in his determination to become an abortion provider. But he is unusual – few trainee doctors have a driving ambition to become abortionists. The U.S. has seen a 40 per cent drop in the number of doctors who perform abortions since the early 1980s. Those in the field say there's likely a similar trend in Canada. Few Canadian hospitals provide abortions and numbers are dropping. Other countries, including Australia, have similar service provision problems.

Abortion is lawful in at least some circumstances in almost all western countries. Yet most have too few providers and current providers are aging with few replacements coming through.

Read More »Who wants to be an abortionist?

Opt-Out Day and Consequences

Part 2 of 2 of a series on TSA searches and Opt-Out Day

The first post in this series argued that the TSA search policy violates a fundamental liberal right to sexual privacy.  However, the fact that people have a reasonable claim that their rights are being violated does not ipso facto make Opt-Out day a justifiable response.  The mere fact that citizens have a rights claim against a particular policy does not justify the citizens employing any available response to enforce that right.  Murdering TSA agents, for example, is morally out of the question.

Read More »Opt-Out Day and Consequences

Opt-Out Day and Rights

Part 1 of 2 on the TSA and Opt Out Day

 

To say that the American Transportation Security Agency's new airport security policy requiring all passengers to either be scanned by a machine that sees through one's clothes or submit to an invasive pat-down by TSA agents has generated a great deal of controversy would be putting it mildly.  Fuelled by horror stories of TSA agents destroying a bladder cancer patient's urostomy bag and traumatizing rape survivors, a trickle of anti-search sentiment among security analysts has grown into a flood of public outrage.  

Read More »Opt-Out Day and Rights

Data or life? Ethical obligations to present and future patients.

By Jahel Queralt-Lange

Each year 10.9 million new cases of cancer are diagnosed worldwide, and 6.7 million people die. The good news is that better drugs are developing faster. We all want to hear about “wonder drugs” and the scientific and medical communities feel the urge (and sometimes the pressure) to provide them. However, some ethical problems might appear in our way to this breakthrough. Before being released into the market, any drug has to undergo a trial in which its benefits are tested and weighed up against its adverse effects. Of course, the desirability of increasing our knowledge in order to improve our health is beyond question. What poses problems is that those individuals who participate in the trials are the means by which we achieve that knowledge. Past experiences, like the Tuskegee Syphilis experiment that took place in the US showed that it’s morally outrageous to trade the life of some individuals for the sake of benefiting society. Nowadays the issue is regulated but moral dilemmas persist.

Read More »Data or life? Ethical obligations to present and future patients.

Arik Sharon Back in the Sycamore Ranch

On the 4th of January 2006, the Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (better known to his countrymen as ‘Arik’) suffered a massive stroke at his vast Sycamore Ranch. He was placed under induced coma from which he never recovered consciousness. The hero of the Yom Kippur war, the villain of the massacres in Qibya and Sabra and Shatila, has since been occupying a bed in the Tel Hashomer hospital, in a permanent vegetative state. A doctor has said that his brain is ‘the size of a grapefruit’—only the brain stem remains, maintaining vegetative functions. Beyond that, ‘there is nothing, just fluid’. Earlier this month, Sharon was driven back to the Sycamore ranch, for the first time since the stroke. He was later taken back to the hospital, but the idea seems to be that in time he will be moved there permanently. It is said that keeping Sharon alive in this way costs the Israeli taxpayer something around $400,000 a year.

It would take a miracle for Sharon to recover – which is just to say that he will never regain consciousness. One day, perhaps soon, perhaps in many years, his heart will finally stop beating, and he will be interned in a grave in some state ceremony. In one sense, this will be the second time that Sharon has died. But in another sense, Sharon will never really die.

Read More »Arik Sharon Back in the Sycamore Ranch

X Factor Abortion: Is it Wrong?

by Julian Savulescu

Paije Richardson's dreams of a new life were crushed tonight as the public voted him from the X Factor final rounds. On Dec 9, the fate of another young hopeful will be decided by the people’s choice. But this time it will be a life and death choice. A couple have allegedly given the life of their baby over to popular vote; they are considering having an abortion and have created a public poll which will decide whether they have an abortion or not (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1330860/Should-abortion–decide-U-S-couple-set-website-unborn-child.html) 

The abortion vote has been described as “spine-chilling.” The baby is 17 weeks gestation and a healthy boy called “Wiggles.” One pro-lifer was outraged:

'This is shocking.The first thing that came to my mind when I heard of this was the Roman Colosseum, when the mob picked who lived and who died. They are talking about a baby that is 17 weeks old, it has a beating heart, its brain is working and nerve endings throughout its body' 

Deciding human life by vote is shocking, but is it wrong?

Read More »X Factor Abortion: Is it Wrong?

Unintentional contraception

by Anders Sandberg

The pope approves of the use of condoms to fight AIDS: according to an upcoming book he says it is acceptable when the intention is to reduce the risk of infection. While he still views abstinence as the proper way of fighting the disease, "In certain cases, where the intention is to reduce the risk of infection, it can nevertheless be a first step on the way to another, more humane sexuality." Now, how does this fit with the doctrine of double effect? According to this doctrine, it is sometimes permissible when acting towards a good result to bring about a foreseen side effect that on its own would be impermissible. Is contraception hence a permissible side effect of trying to reduce infection risk?

Read More »Unintentional contraception

Reframing Sacred Values and Making Political Compromises

Steve Clarke 

Scott Atran’s Talking to The Enemy (HarperCollins: New York, 2010) has recently been published. This is a big, sprawling and very readable book which has much that is important to say about religious behaviour and the role of religion in inspiring, and also in preventing, terrorism and conflict in general. I recommend it to anyone who wants to know more about religious conflict ‘on the ground’. One of the many intriguing issues that is discussed in the book is the issue of compromising over sacred values. When a religious group asserts that a particular city, or geographical feature which they control is sacred or holy, they are typically also asserting that they are not prepared to give up control of that site, regardless of the costs to them. And if they do not control it then they are prepared to do whatever is necessary to regain control of it, regardless of costs. The same can be said for possession of sacred artifacts and the right to practice sacred rituals.

 

Read More »Reframing Sacred Values and Making Political Compromises

Against Open Mindedness

Lots of people believe in psychic powers, but there has never been any convincing evidence for their existence.  Though there are many anecdotes attesting to their existence (below I will say something about why we ought not to be impressed by these stories), there has never been any genuine evidence in their favour. That is, until now. The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the most influential journal in social psychology, is about to publish a study that presents evidence for the existence of psychic phenomena.

Read More »Against Open Mindedness