Can appealing to children’s rights help to solve the non-identity problem in cases of procreation? A number of philosophers have answered affirmatively, arguing that even if children cannot be harmed by being born into disadvantaged conditions, they may nevertheless be wronged if those conditions fail to meet a minimal standard of decency to which all children are putatively entitled. This paper defends the tenability of this view by outlining and responding to five prominent objections that have been raised against it (...) in the contemporary literature: the identifiability objection; the non-existence objection; the waiving of rights objection, the lack of legitimate complaint objection; and the unfairness objection. (shrink)

In 2016, France passed a major law that is unique in giving terminally ill and suffering patients the right to the controversial procedure of continuous deep sedation until death (CDS). In so doing, the law identifies CDS as a sui generis clinical practice, distinct from other forms of palliative sedation therapy, as well as from euthanasia. As such, it reconfigures the ethical debate over CDS in interesting ways. This paper addresses one aspect of this reconfiguration and its implications for the (...) intentions at work in this complex time at the end of life. The concept of intention is often considered central to the ethics of end-of-life care, but its role is recognized to be problematic, with charges of elusiveness and ambiguity. I aim to show that consideration of the French law affords a new understanding of the intentionality of CDS, and that in addition to the obvious importance of this for clarifying the ethics of the practice, it may suggest new ways of addressing the wider problem of ambiguous clinical intentions at end of life. (shrink)

This article addresses the bioethical challenges raised by end-of-life care (EoLC) from the perspective of Islamic normativity. Rejecting positivist positions, it argues for the use of a flexible approach midway between a deontological conception of human life as having a sacred value that cannot be bargained over, as represented by the teachings of Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī's, and one that introduces considerations of pain (alam) and pleasure (ladhdah) into ethical evaluations, as expounded by the jurist Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī. Under this approach, (...) described as “Islamic evaluator relativity,” moral agents formulate a normative position tailored to their beliefs and the circumstances of the case, in which the right course of action is expressed as a value judgement (amr ijtihādi) and the evaluator (mujtahid) is rewarded regardless of the choices they make. Keywords: Islamic bioethics, End-of-life-care, bioethics, normative ethics. (shrink)