Should nonprejudiced reproducers genetically select embryos for light skin under background conditions of racism and colourism, given that darker skin will be disadvantageous for their child? Many intuit that there are strong moral reasons not to select light skin in these contexts. I argue that existing procreative principles cannot adequately account for this judgement. Instead, I argue that a more compelling rationale for this intuition is that such selection completes an instance of race or colour injustice. Given this, I propose (...) a new, complementary principle—Procreative Justice—which holds that reproducers have strong pro tanto moral reasons to avoid completing race and colour injustices via their selection choices. While these reasons may be overridden by competing considerations, they nonetheless continue to exert normative force. (shrink)

:The end of the last century was a particularly vibrant period for feminist bioethics. Almost two decades on, we reflect on the legacy of the feminist critique of bioethics and investigate the extent to which it has been successful and what requires more attention yet. We do this by examining the past, present, and future: we draw out three feminist concerns that emerged in this period—abstraction, individualism, and power—and consider three feminist responses—relationality, particularity, and justice—and we finish with some thoughts (...) about the future. (shrink)

Fair skin is often regarded as a beauty ideal in many parts of the world. Genetic selection for non-disease traits may allow reproducers to select fair skin for the purposes of beauty, and may be justified under various procreative principles. In this paper I assess the ethics of genetic selection for fair skin as a beauty feature. In particular, I explore the discriminatory aspects and demands of such selection. Using race and colour hierarchies that many would find objectionable, I argue (...) that selection for beauty that is underpinned by such hierarchies is not a trivial selection. Given this, I claim that we should not make such selections. (shrink)

This paper explores a global public goods approach to the health of migrants. It suggests that this approach establishes that there are a number of health goods which must be provided to migrants not because these are theirs by right, but because these goods are primary goods which fit the threefold criteria of global public goods. There are two key advantages to this approach: first, it is non-confrontational and non-oppositional, and second, it provides self-interested arguments to provide at least some (...) health goods to migrants and thus appeals to those little moved by rights-based arguments. (shrink)

Commodification is a broad and crosscutting issue that spans debates in ethics (from prostitution to global market practices) and bioethics (from the sale of body parts to genetic enhancement). There has been disagreement, however, over what constitutes commodification, whether it is happening, and whether it is of ethical import. This chapter focuses on one area of the discussion in bioethics – the commodification of human tissue – and addresses these questions – about the characteristics of commodification, its pervasiveness, and ethical (...) significance – in order to clarify and map the commodificatory debate. The chapter does this in three parts. First, it defines commodification as the shift from “persons” to “things” and from “relationships” to services for “contract.” Second, using examples of kidney and gamete sale and commercial surrogacy, it argues that commodification is rife in bioethics. Third, it contends that commodification is an ethical problem for three key reasons: First, because it leads to exploitation; second, because some things should not be for sale; and third, because it damages social goods. The chapter concludes that commodification and commodificatory practices should be resisted. (shrink)

When women become perpetrators of suicide bombing, their agency – their ability to act upon and affect the world – is often denied. There are a number of reasons for this and one this thesis considers is that – as females – they are not expected to be violent. Accordingly, such women are judged to be coerced or incompetent, and so unable to rule themselves sufficiently as agents. Models of autonomy propose various frameworks for assessing whether acts or persons are (...) self-governing, and the relational approach in particular has garnered much support recently. However, some aspects of the relational account remain under-theorised, including how autonomy might be measured. In this thesis, I aim to bring these two elements together by examining whether an extension of the relational model may offer a way in which to estimate the autonomy of the bombers in a more nuanced fashion. I make two claims. First, that the relational conception of the agent and autonomy ‘fits’ the bombers. Second, that my spectrum view, which is rooted in the relational approach, maps the bomber’s autonomy approximately but in detail. As such, my spectrum view is a befitting notion of autonomy and allows a graded and comparative representation of the bomber’s autonomy. (shrink)

When the terms ?women? and ?violence? are used, it is usually in the context of women as victims and rarely as perpetrators of violence, and yet women do behave aggressively ? for instance, as female suicide bombers. An ethical analysis of this role, however, has tended to be somewhat overlooked, partly because of the gender stereotypes at play, with little (or spurious) focus on the agency and autonomy of the women. This has resulted in an incomplete understanding of the unique (...) ways in which societies treat female political aggressions, and the consequences of this for their agency. This paper seeks to redress these issues by evaluating two different societal portrayals of female suicide bombers; that of the ?scandalous subwoman? and the ?sublime superwoman?. It argues that violent women's agency is often distorted to extremes beyond that of their male counterparts, and that it is imperative to avoid misrepresenting them either as agentless victims (?subwomen?) or wholly agentic (?superwomen?) since, even in times of political instability, they can rarely be dichotomised in this binary way. (shrink)

This edited collection explores the agency of women who do violence and have violence done to them. Topics covered include rape, pornography, prostitution, suicide bombing and domestic violence. The volume addresses such debates as the extent of women's agency in frameworks of the victim, survivor, or perpetrator; the power of gendered norms, constructs and stereotypes about female violence; and practical concerns about how feminists can escape polarisations in understandings of agency in order to deal with violence done to and by (...) women. The volume contributes to the theoretical debate and is philosophical in its focus, whilst also seeking to draw on the insights of other disciplines. It also engages with practical questions, and offers some social and political responses to the issues examined. (shrink)

Herjeet Kaur Marway recently proposed the Principle of Procreative Justice, which says that reproducers have a strong moral obligation to avoid completing race and colour injustices through their selection choices. In this article, we analyze this principle and argue, appealing to a series of counterexamples, that some of the implications of Marway's Principle of Procreative Justice are difficult to accept. This casts doubt on whether the principle should be adopted. Also, we show that there are some more (...) principled worries regarding Marway's idea of a strong pro tanto duty not to complete injustices through one's procreative choices. Nonetheless, we believe Marway's arguments point in the right general direction regarding duties and structural injustice. Thus, in the final part, we suggest a positive proposal on how it would be possible to respond to the cases we raise. More specifically, we explore the suggestion that agents have a pro tanto duty to participate in eliminating structural injustice. Importantly, this duty can be satisfied, not only in procreation choices but in multiple ways. (shrink)