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In 1987, a young woman named Angela Carder, pregnant and dying from cancer, was ordered by a court of law to undergo a cesarean delivery against her and her family’s wishes. She and her baby both died. Three years later, an appeals court took an extraordinary stand: it vacated the order that ended their lives and upheld pregnant women’s rights to informed consent and bodily integrity. The “unkindest cut of all,”1 it seemed, had been condemned by the courts.2 Yet shortly (...) before the twenty-year anniversary of this landmark case, the same rights were stripped from another young pregnant woman. In January of this year, oral arguments were heard in the case of Samantha Burton. She had been twenty-five weeks .. (shrink)
In 1948 E. C. Mossner published a set of Hume's manuscript papers, preserved in the Royal Society of Edinburgh, in the essay "Hume's Early Memoranda: A Complete Text."1 As the subtitle indicates, Mossner intended to publish the complete manuscript with his own historical introduction. John Hill Burton had made the first attempt to carry out a similar project in the past. However, while Burton argued simply that the manuscript might have been related to Hume's various works, ranging over (...) the Essays, Moral and Political (1741-1742), Political Discourses (1752) and even the Natural History of Religion (1757),2 Mossner tried, instead, to establish the thesis that the memoranda as a whole ought to be regarded as Hume's .. (shrink)
