We were honoured to welcome Professor Elizabeth Harman, Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Philosophy and Human Values at Princeton University, to Oxford to deliver the 2024 Annual Uehiro Lectures in Practical Ethics. The three-part lecture series, entitled “Love and Abortion”, took place in the H B Allen Centre, Keble College, on 25 April, 2 and 9… Read More »2024 Annual Uehiro Lectures: Professor Elizabeth Harman
Written by: Prof Dominic Wilkinson, University of Oxford
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
In response to this, the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecologists (RCOG) has issued guidance that seeks to clarify the legal obligations of healthcare professionals. The full guideline has not yet been released, but the RCOG insists that professionals “are under no legal obligation to contact the police following an abortion, pregnancy loss or unattended delivery”.Read More »Cross Post: Should A Health Professional Be Disciplined For Reporting An Illegal Abortion?
Alberto Giubilini, University of Oxford
Udo Schuklenk, Queen’s University
Francesca Minerva, University of Milan
Julian Savulescu, National University of Singapore and University of Oxford
(reposted from the Journal of Medical Ethics Blog )
The reversal of the 1973 Roe v Wade ruling by the US Supreme Court in the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization removed the Constitutional protection of women’s right to access abortion services in the US. This decision has resulted in renewed interest in the morality of conscientious commitment by health care professionals to provide abortion care.
Typically, ethical debates on conscience in health care revolve around the morality of doctors refusing to provide professional services on idiosyncratic personal conscience claims. Here the issue is different in that conscientious doctors, motivated by a commitment to professional values, might want to provide services that are arguably in their patients’ best interest, but that are illegal.
by Alberto Giubilini
(crosspost: this article appeared with a different title in iaiNews)
The leaked draft opinion by Supreme Court Justice’ Samuel Alito foreshadows the overturn of the 1973 Roe vs Wade ruling. Roe vs Wade grounded women’s (limited) right to abortion in the US in the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution and its implied right to privacy. Acknowledging the pervasive disagreement over the morality of abortion, the Supreme Court has now decided to “return the power to weigh those arguments to the people and their elected representatives”.
In this way, the Supreme Court is in fact democratizing the legal availability abortion. Which raises the ethical question about whether the legal availability of abortion should be a matter of democratic procedure, as opposed to a constitutional matter around fundamental rights. I side with the latter view. I do not think a decision over women’s right to abortion should be a matter of democratic procedure such as a State election or a referendum. And I am going to provide reasons for why I think people on either side of the abortion debate can share my view, assuming they accept some fundamental tenets of liberal democracy.
Read More »Abortion, Democracy, and Erring on the Side of Freedom
Written by Elizabeth Crisp and Roger Crisp
When a woman aborts a single fetus, that abortion can be a morally troubling experience for her. What about a situation in which a woman is pregnant with more than one fetus, perhaps identical twins, and wishes to abort just one of them – that is, engage in what is sometimes called ‘fetal reduction’ in a ‘multiple pregnancy’?Read More »Fetal Reduction in a Multiple Pregnancy: the Case of Identical Twins
Written by: Rajiv Shah, PhD Candidate, Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge
Donald Trump suggested that women who have abortions should face punishment. For that he was criticised by both the pro-choice side and the pro-life side. The latter claimed that their view is that women should not face punishment for having abortions but that only providers should. This raises the interesting question of whether the pro-life position is coherent. It would seem that it is not. If the foetus has the right to life then having an abortion is like murder and so those who abort should be treated as such. This post argues that the pro-lifer can coherently reject this implication whilst still holding that the foetus has the right to life. Since it considers the responses a pro-lifer could make this post will assume for the sake of argument that the foetus does have a right to life.Read More »Guest Post: Abortion, punishment and moral consistency
Written by Simon Beard
Research Fellow in Philosophy, Future of Humanity Institute, University of Oxford
This is a cross post of an article which originally appeared in The Conversation.
In a recent article, Oxford University’s director of medical ethics, Dominic Wilkinson, argued that birth control was a key way of tackling the Zika virus’s apparently devastating effects on unborn children – a strategy that comes with the extra benefit of meeting the need for reproductive health across much of the affected areas.
However, although this approach might be one solution to a medical issue, it doesn’t consider the demographic implications of delaying pregnancy on such an unprecedented scale – some of which could have a significant impact on people and societies.Read More »Using birth control to combat Zika virus could affect future generations
The latest issue of the Journal of Medical Ethics is out, and in it, Professor Nigel Biggar—an Oxford theologian—argues that “religion” should have a place in secular medicine (click here for a link to the article).
Some people will feel a shiver go down their spines—and not only the non-religious. After all, different religions require different things, and sometimes they come to opposite conclusions. So whose religion, exactly, does Professor Biggar have in mind, and what kind of “place” is he trying to make a case for?
Read More »Does religion deserve a place in secular medicine?
Follow Rebecca on Twitter
Abortion is often in the news. Yesterday, The Atlantic Wire reported a poll of Americans’ moral views, which found just under half of Americans believe abortion is morally wrong. Today, The Sun is running an article on the devastating effects on women of having abortions. And, a couple of weeks ago, the law in Ireland was changed to allow abortion under certain circumstances.
Whether (and under what circumstances) abortion is ethical, and whether (and under what circumstances) it should be permitted by law, are two of the most well known and fiercely debated issues of our age. I do not wish to engage with them here. Instead, I will argue as follows:
I then propose such a measure, and defend it against some possible objections.
Whatever your view of abortion, there are too many abortions, and too many of them are too late. Even abortion’s fiercest advocates don’t pretend that it’s a Good Thing – just the lesser of two evils.
In 2010 there were 189,574 abortions in England and Wales – an 8% increase in a decade. The tightly policed regime envisaged in 1967, when the Act became law, hasn’t existed for ages, if indeed it ever did. There is abortion on demand, whatever the statute book says.
1967 was a long time ago. There have been many medical advances and societal changes since then. It’s time to take stock of the Act.
That’s what a recently announced cross-party commission, to be chaired by Fiona Bruce MP, will do.
It will focus, rightly, on two issues: medical advances and attitudes to discrimination.Read More »Too long in gestating: an overdue inquiry into the Abortion Act
