There are various ways of attempting to defend an extreme liberal view on abortion, according to which a woman always has the right to control what happens inside her own body. First of all, there is the popular view that appeals to the idea that there is a fundamental, underived right that women have to control what occurs within their own bodies. Secondly, there is a related type of philosophical argument advanced by Judith Jarvis Thomson in her famous (...) and oft-reprinted article “A Defense of Abortion” for the slightly weaker claim that while abortion is not always permissible, since, as she says near the end of her essay, it is impermissible in, and only in, the following circumstances: “There may well be cases where carrying the child to term requires only Minimally Decent Samaritanism of the mother, and this is a standard w must not fall below.” Subsequently, Thomson’s type of argument was then developed and defended at much greater length by David Boonin in his very carefully argued book A Defense of Abortion, though Boonin does not discuss the case of the Minimally Decent Samaritan. I believe that there is a strong objection to the Thomson/Boonin approach to justifying abortion. It was set out in an article by Richard Langer, namely, in ‘Silverstein and the “Responsibility Objection”’, Social Theory and Practice 19/3. 345-58. Langer’s discussion is not, in general, very strong, but in a very important paragraph, on pages 351-2, Langer argues that if the responsibility objection to Thomson is unsound, then it follows that there will also be circumstances in which allowing one’s children to die, simply because one no longer wishes to care for them, will also be morally permissible. David Boonin replies to Langer’s objection in his A Defense of Abortion, but in discussing, on pages 182-3, Langer’s point about a parent’s responsibility to his or her children, Boonin relies upon a tacit consent argument that appears open to decisive objections. It seems to me, then, that the only possibility for a successful defense of an extreme liberal view concerning the justification of abortion will have to involve setting out a plausible account of what it is that gives something a right to life, and I think that the right answer is that neo-Lockean persons, and only neo-Lockean persons, have a right to continued existence. This leaves one with the scientific question of when developing humans become neo-Lockean persons. The answer to that question is perhaps still not firmly settled, although the extensive research that I carried out back in the 1970s seemed to me to support the conclusion that it is not until sometime that humans acquire the capacity for thought, a capacity that is necessary if a developing human is to be a neo-Lockean person. The upshot is that if one defends an extreme liberal view on abortion in the only way that seems to be satisfactory – that is, by setting out an account of what it is that gives something a right to life, and arguing that humans before birth do not have the relevant property, one must also address the question of infanticide, and that to fail to do so is intellectually unacceptable. (shrink)

This is a Swedish translation of the complete text of "In Defense of Abortion and Infanticide" from Moral Issues, edited by Jan Narveson, Oxford University Press, Toronto and New York, 1983, 215-233. -/- There are various ways of attempting to defend an extreme liberal view on abortion, according to which a woman always has the right to control what happens inside her own body. First of all, there is the popular view that appeals to the idea that there is (...) a fundamental, underived right that women have to control what occurs within their own bodies. Secondly, there is a related type of philosophical argument advanced by Judith Jarvis Thomson in her famous and oft-reprinted article “A Defense of Abortion” for the slightly weaker claim that while abortion is not always permissible, since, as she says near the end of her essay, it is impermissible in, and only in, the following circumstances: “There may well be cases where carrying the child to term requires only Minimally Decent Samaritanism of the mother, and this is a standard w must not fall below.” Subsequently, Thomson’s type of argument was then developed and defended at much greater length by David Boonin in his very carefully argued book A Defense of Abortion, though Boonin does not discuss the case of the Minimally Decent Samaritan. I believe that there is a strong objection to the Thomson/Boonin approach to justifying abortion. It was set out in an article by Richard Langer, namely, in ‘Silverstein and the “Responsibility Objection”’, Social Theory and Practice 19/3. 345-58. Langer’s discussion is not, in general, very strong, but in a very important paragraph, on pages 351-2, Langer argues that if the responsibility objection to Thomson is unsound, then it follows that there will also be circumstances in which allowing one’s children to die, simply because one no longer wishes to care for them, will also be morally permissible. David Boonin replies to Langer’s objection in his A Defense of Abortion, but in discussing, on pages 182-3, Langer’s point about a parent’s responsibility to his or her children, Boonin relies upon a tacit consent argument that appears open to decisive objections. It seems to me, then, that the only possibility for a successful defense of an extreme liberal view concerning the justification of abortion will have to involve setting out a plausible account of what it is that gives something a right to life, and I think that the right answer is that neo-Lockean persons, and only neo-Lockean persons, have a right to continued existence. This leaves one with the scientific question of when developing humans become neo-Lockean persons. The answer to that question is perhaps still not firmly settled, although the extensive research that I carried out back in the 1970s seemed to me to support the conclusion that it is not until sometime that humans acquire the capacity for thought, a capacity that is necessary if a developing human is to be a neo-Lockean person. The upshot is that if one defends an extreme liberal view on abortion in the only way that seems to be satisfactory – that is, by setting out an account of what it is that gives something a right to life, and arguing that humans before birth do not have the relevant property, one must also address the question of infanticide, and that to fail to do so is intellectually unacceptable. (shrink)

The questions of whether members of some non-human species of animals are persons, and--if so--which ones, are among the most difficult questions in ethics. The difficulty arises from two sources. First, there is the problem of how the concept of a person should be analyzed, a problem that is connected with the fundamental and challenging ethical question of the properties that give something a right to continued existence. Second, there is the problem of determining what psychological capacities, and (...) what type of mental life, adult members of a given non-human species have. My focus in this essay is upon the first of these issues, and my discussion is organized as follows. In section 1, I shall discuss the concept of a person and the concept of a right to continued existence. Then, in section 2, I shall examine some important arguments aimed at establishing that non-human animals do not have a right to continued existence–in some cases on the grounds that they have no moral rights at all. Finally, in section 3, I shall turn to an examination of arguments in support of the view that non-human animals do have rights, including a right to continued existence. (shrink)

Speciesism is the view that the species to which an individual belongs can be morally significant in itself, either because there are basic moral principles that involve reference to some particular species - such as Homo sapiens - or because there are basic moral principles that involve the general concept of belonging to a species. In this paper I argue that speciesism is false, and that basic moral principles, rather than being formulated in terms of biological categories, should be formulated (...) instead in terms of psychological properties and relations. (shrink)

The question of the moral status of infanticide in the case of normal human infants is very important, both theoretically and practically. Its theoretical importance lies in the fact that intuitions differ very greatly on this moral question, so that one needs to search for arguments in support of fundamental moral principles that can provide the ground for a sound and comprehensive account of the morality of killing. Its practical significance, on the other hand, lies in its connection with the (...) very important, and closely related ethical question of whether it is morally permissible to kill severely defective infants. A variety of arguments have been offered in support of the view that all human infants have a right to life. One familiar argument, for example, claims that all humans have immaterial, rational souls, and that this is what gives something a right to life. A second important argument is that human infants have a future like ours, and that it is this that gives something a right to life. A third argument is that human infants, even though it appears that they have not acquired the capacities for thought and rationality, will come to have those capacities, and it is these potentialities that give them a right to life Philosophers working in ethics, however, have set out objections to these and other arguments, so the focus of this article will be to consider what conclusions seem most plausible in the light of those arguments and objections to them. (shrink)

Edgar Page; XI*—Neonates, Persons and the Right to Life, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 89, Issue 1, 1 June 1989, Pages 165–178, https://doi.or.

ABSTRACT In this article, I reply to criticisms of Dean Stretton of the pro‐life argument from substantial identity. When the criterion for the right to life proposed by most proponents of the pro‐life position is rightly understood – being a person, a distinct substance of a rational nature – this position does not lead to the difficulties Stretton claims it does.

ABSTRACT In this article, I reply to criticisms of Dean Stretton of the pro‐life argument from substantial identity. When the criterion for the right to life proposed by most proponents of the pro‐life position is rightly understood – being a person, a distinct substance of a rational nature – this position does not lead to the difficulties Stretton claims it does.

The author addresses Robert Nozick's claim that: “The particular rights over things fill the space of rights, leaving no room for general rights to be in a certain material condition.” Hence Nozick insists that rights are violated if citizens are compelled to contribute to others' welfare, however urgent their needs may be. The author argues that it is characteristic of libertarian theories that they invoke the moral sanctity of private property against welfarist or egalitarian conceptions of social justice. Nozick's version (...) of the libertarian critique has three conceptual pillars–“right,”“thing” and “space.” On that basis Nozick claims that talk of welfare “rights” can be condemned on the plane of rights. This is true, Nozick maintains, even of “the right to life.” The author contends that this argument fails. It equivocates over the idea of “rights”; and it misconceives crucial features of property. Nozick deploys exclusive “domain rights,” whilst attacking “important‐interest rights.” His historical‐entitlement theory fails as a justification of private property. The author argues that, so far as material objects are concerned, private property institutions depend upon trespassory rules which do not impose morally binding obligations unless basic needs are catered for. Furthermore, private property institutions also comprise monetary resources to which the spatial metaphor of exclusive rights does not apply. Holdings vested in any particular person at any particular time are stamped, morally, with a mix of contestable and mutable property‐specific justice reasons. Hence it is fallacious to suppose that ownership rights together exhaust all normative space over “things.”The major objection to speaking of everyone's having a right to various things such as equality of opportunity, life, and so on, and enforcing this right, is that these “rights” require a substructure of things and materials and actions; and other people may have rights and entitlements over these. [≡] The particular rights over things fill the space of rights, leaving no room for general rights to be in a certain material condition. (Nozick 1974, 238). (shrink)

1. Overview -/- 1.1 Main Divisions When, if ever, is it morally permissible to end the life of a human embryo or fetus, and why? As regards the first of these questions, there are extreme anti-abortion views, according to which abortion is prima facie seriously wrong from conception onwards – or at least shortly thereafter; there are extreme permissibility views, according to which abortion is always permissible in itself; and there are moderate views, according to which abortion is sometimes (...) permissible, and sometimes not. -/- Moderate views appeal to a variety of considerations in support of the view that abortion is sometimes justified, but these fall into four main categories. First, there are cases where the developing human is seriously defective in some way – perhaps such that it will not have a life that is worth living. Secondly, there are cases where continuation of pregnancy would involve serious risks to the life or health of the woman. Thirdly, there are moderate positions according to which the developing human initially does not have serious moral status, or a right to life, but acquires such status at some point before birth. Finally, it is often held that abortion is justified in the case of rape. -/- With the exception of the last consideration, moderate views assume that the moral status of the developing human is crucial with respect to the permissibility of abortion. Moreover, this is a natural assumption that was shared by all sides until the publication in 1971 of Judith Jarvis Thomson’s article “A Defense of Abortion,” in which she argued that abortion is permissible even if one assumes, for the sake of argument, that human embryos and fetuses have a right to life. Thus we have one of the great divides in the philosophical discussion of abortion: Is the moral status of the developing human generally decisive with regard to the moral permissibility of abortion or not? -/- 1.2 The Moral Status of the Developing Human: Thomson and Boonin Thomson’s article evoked many critical responses, along with some defenses, which I have described elsewhere (2013; “Thomson’s Attempt to Defend Abortion in General”). Crucial, however, is David Boonin’s defense (2003), which contains responses to all of the important objections directed against the attempt to show that one can defend abortion while granting that human embryos and fetuses have a right to life fully on a par with that of normal adult human beings. -/- Boonin’s impressive efforts notwithstanding, I do not think that this way of defending an extreme permissibility view is successful. The crucial issue is whether it is morally permissible intentionally to bring into existence an entity with a right to life in a situation where one knows that it will not survive without one’s assistance, and then to refrain from providing that assistance. An especially forceful way of arguing that this is not permissible is found in an article by Richard Langer (1993, 351-2), who argues that if this were permissible, it would follow not only that abortion was justified, but also that it is permissible to allow one’s children to die, some years after birth, simply because one no longer wishes to care for them. -/- 1.3 Moderate Views Moderate positions on abortion raise a number of issues that, for reasons of space, I cannot address here. Some of these depend on the issue of the moral status of the developing human, and defending a moderate view requires showing that both extreme anti-abortion and extreme moral permissibility views concerning the moral status of humans before birth are incorrect. I have argued elsewhere (1983, 285-302, and 2009, 59-63) that the prospects of doing this are not promising. -/- As regards permissibility in the case of rape, everything depends upon whether, as Thomson contends (1971), there is no obligation to be a good Samaritan, rather than merely a minimally decent one, and so no obligation for a woman to remain pregnant to save the life of a being that she was not responsible for bringing into existence. Finally, on the one hand, in cases where the woman will die if an abortion is not performed, virtually all moral philosophers, with the exception of those who embrace the moral view advanced by the Catholic Church in encyclicals by Pope Pius XI (1930) and Pope Paul VI (1968), agree that abortion is morally permissible, while, on the other hand, if the situation is one where there is only some risk that the woman will die if an abortion is not performed, or where the threat is not to the woman’s life, but only to her health, then the situation does seem clear-cut if one assumes that the embryo or fetus has a right to life. -/- 1.4 Extreme Anti-Abortion Views Very different arguments are offered for the view that abortion is in itself never permissible. First of all, in popular discussions, appeal is frequently made to the mere fact of membership in the biologically defined species Homo sapiens, but among those who are philosophically knowledgeable, this line of argument is almost invariably rejected, for reasons that I have set out elsewhere (Tooley, 2009, 21-35). -/- Secondly, appeal is also made to the idea that humans have immaterial minds, or souls – for example, by Stephen Schwartz (1990), J. P. Moreland and Scott B. Rae (2000), Norman Ford (2002), and Francis J. Beckwith, (2005). The postulation of immaterial minds or souls is, however, open to strong objections, since there is excellent evidence that human psychological powers have their categorical bases in neural structures, rather than in an immaterial substance (Tooley, 2009, 15-19). In addition, the postulation of an immaterial soul, conceived of along Thomistic lines, is on a collision course with biology, since such an immaterial soul is held to govern a human’s life processes and biological development. -/- Thirdly, there is the ‘substantial identity’ argument, advanced for example by Patrick Lee (2004), and which claims that an entity possesses a right to life by virtue of the type of substance it is. This view is exposed to a number of strong objections, however, among them the fact that it leads to the unacceptable consequence that a human that has suffered upper brain death still has a right to life (Tooley, 2009, 51-9). -/- The upshot is that most philosophers do not find any of the preceding three lines of argument for an extreme anti-abortion position promising. The focus, accordingly, has been elsewhere – namely, on arguments claiming that human embryos and fetuses have serious moral status, or a right to life, because they have the potentiality for developing those psychological capacities – for thought, self-consciousness, rationality, and so on – that seem clearly relevant to a being’s moral status. -/- In what follows, then, I shall confine my discussion to what seems to me the most crucial issue bearing upon the moral status of abortion, namely, that between, on the one hand, a potentiality account of moral status, and, on the other, the type of approach most commonly appealed to in support of an extreme permissibility position on abortion, namely, a personhood account of the right to life. -/- One of the earliest defenders of the view that potentialities give something a right to life was Jim Stone in his article, “Why Potentiality Matters,” where Stone argues for the conclusion, “we have a prima facie duty not to deprive them of the conscious goods which it is their nature to realize” (1987, 821). Stone’s discussion, however, attracted much less attention than an article published two years later by Don Marquis, entitled “Why Abortion is Immoral.” The latter is one of the most interesting articles on abortion, as well as one of the most discussed––and deservedly so. In what follows, then, I shall focus upon it. -/- My discussion is organized as follows. In section 2, I summarize Marquis’s account of the wrongness of killing. Then, in section 3, I set out an alternative account, one in which the concept of a neo-Lockean person is central. Sections 4, 5, and 6 are then devoted to criticisms of Marquis’s approach, all of which also support the alternative, rights-based, neo-Lockean personhood account. (shrink)

:This essay explores the meaning and normative significance of Locke’s depiction of individuals as proprietors of their own person. I begin by reconsidering the long-standing puzzle concerning Locke’s simultaneous endorsement of divine proprietorship and self-ownership. Befuddlement vanishes, I contend, once we reject concurrent ownership in the same object: while God fully owns our lives, humans are initially sole proprietors of their own person. Locke employs two conceptions of “personhood”: as expressing legal independence vis-à-vis humans and moral accountability vis-à-vis God. Humans (...) own their person in the first sense. As original proprietors of their own person, individuals are entitled to subject themselves to self-chosen authorities, thereby incurring obligations of obedience. But they may not choose just any authority. Divine ownership of human life delimits personal self-ownership by restricting the ways in which humans can dispose of their persons: we cannot possibly consensually subject ourselves to absolute and arbitrary power. Locke’s rights-forfeiture theory for crime makes slavery and despotism nonetheless potentially rightful conditions. I argue that, paradoxically, divine dominium of human life underpins both the impermissibility of voluntary enslavement and the justifiability of penal slavery. My analysis helps explain why modern Lockean theories of self-ownership that reject Locke’s theological premises have adopted an ambiguous stance toward despotic rule. (shrink)

Under the UDHR, all persons have the right to "seek and to enjoy . . . asylum from persecution." From this designation as fundamental followed codification of the right in the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1967 Protocol Relating (collectively 'the Convention'), the "centrepiece" of treaties and customary norms that make up international refugee law. It defines and regulates the status and rights of refugees; its purpose is to safeguard the basic rights (...) of persons "outside their country of origin," who have fled due to a legitimate fear of persecution. Fundamentally, it guarantees that asylees and refugees enjoy rights without discrimination; without penalization for illegal territorial entry; and, without expulsion or return to "territories where . . . life or freedom would be threatened on account of . . . race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion," —or 'non-refoulement'. What follows is background on development of the principle of non-refoulement, evasive US Asylum Cooperative Agreements ('ACAs') and implementing legislation, and the resulting erosion to the right to asylum. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Contradiction and Legislation Regarding the Right to LifeKevin L. Flannery, S.J.Unborn Human Life and Fundamental Rights: Leading Constitutional Cases under Scrutiny. Edited by Pilar Zambrano and William Saunders, with concluding reflections by John Finnis. Berlin: Peter Lang, 2019.The most fundamental principle of law is the principle of non-contradiction. This is Thomas Aquinas's position in the seminal article on the natural law, Summa theologiae I-II, question 94, article (...) 2, where, citing Aristotle, he formulates the principle as, "One should not simultaneously affirm and negate." Lafter in the same article, Thomas offers a practical formulation of the same principle, "Good is to be done and pursued and evil avoided"; but in law, since it is contained in propositions (airmations and negations) as distinct from ideas regarding the pursuit of goods, the prior formulation is the more immediately relevant of the two.The book under review is important in that, by going through the legal history regarding abortion and related issues in a number of different countries—the United States, Canada, Italy, Spain, Poland, Ireland (Eire), Costa Rica, Argentina, Chile, Mexico, and Peru—it causes to emerge any number of times the realization that legislation and judicial decisions in favor of abortion "rights" invariably infect a legal system with contradictions and inconsistencies of various sorts. The present essay is, therefore, not your typical book review. Its objective is simply to list some of the legal contradictions and inconsistencies identified by the book's various authors as they describe the legal status of the unborn in their respective nations. [End Page 1323]William Saunders's very clear and comprehensive first chapter is entitled, "Judicial Interference in the Protection of Human Life in the United States: Actions and Consequences." In it, he describes, among other things, the Human Cloning Prohibition Act passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in 2003, which prohibited "any person or entity, public or private" from performing human cloning (23). He speaks also of a bill proposed in the U.S. Senate once the Human Cloning Prohibition Act had passed in the House of Representatives. This Senate bill (which was entitle, "The Human Cloning Ban and Stem Cell Research Protection Act") would have prohibited "any person or other legal entity" from conducting human cloning, even while allowing nuclear transplantation, which it defines as "transferring the nucleus of a human somatic cell into an oocyte from which the nucleus... ha[s] been... removed or rendered inert." The problem here, as Saunders explains, is that this latter definition "is the very definition of cloning" (25). In other words, in the same year, two pieces of legislation were considered in the Congress of the United States, both purporting to ban human cloning, one of which would have permitted what the other described (correctly) as human cloning and so prohibited.In the second chapter, "Whither United States Abortion Law?" by Gerard V. Bradley, discussed, among other things, is the inconsistency between the United States Supreme Court's pro-abortion decision Roe v. Wade and various laws, both state and federal, prohibiting feticide. Bradley says of the 2004 federal Unborn Victims of Violence Act that, "in pertinent part it says that 'whoever' 'causes the death of or bodily injury to,' a 'child who is in utero' is guilty of an offense apart from any accompanying offense against the woman carrying the child." The penalty for such an act is the same as would be imposed if the act were inflicted upon the unborn child's mother: if, for instance, the mother was killed. "A child in utero," reports Bradley, "is defined as a member of the species homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb'" (37).The problem here is that prosecutable under this law are acts identical with those performed legally by abortionists. Bradley mentions two cases in which a woman's male partner—in one case the woman's husband—effected by stealth the abortion of her child. In one case, the male purchased abortion pills and affixed to their container a pharmacy label indicating that it contained a common antibiotic; in the other, the husband obtained the same type of... (shrink)

This article continues the rejection of certain myths about the right to life at the end of life commenced in an article in the previous issue of the journal Clinical Ethics. It focuses upon ethical arguments that seek to exclude two categories of human beings from the usual protection of human life: those described as ‘non-persons’ and those ‘designated for death’. The article argues that, while the protection offered to life by means of the (...) right to life is far from absolute, the right remains applicable to all human beings, irrespective of their life expectancy or mental capacity. (shrink)

Major considerations of disability studies—such as provision of care, accommodation for disabled people, and issues surrounding institutionalization—have been consistently marginalized in American bioethical discourse. The right to die, however, stands out as a paradigmatic bioethical debate. Why do advocates for expanding the volition and self-direction of disabled people emerge from the periphery only to help those disabled people who choose death? And why do the majority of people assume an unrealistically low quality of life for those with disabilities? (...) This paper will argue that the dominance of the Western liberal tradition in American culture motivates both these phenomena: by emphasizing individual rights over duties and responsibilities, assuming the isolated and independent rights-bearer as the prototypical person, and evoking an unrealistically atomistic view of human interaction. As an alternative, I offer a framework rooted in feminist ethics that emphasizes context, gives moral weight to human relationships, abandons the problematic ideal of a lone rights-bearer, and emphasizes the mutual vulnerability of embodied individuals. (shrink)

I present two problems: the logical problem of the Trinity and the metaphysical problem of Incarnation. I propose a solution to both problems: a Neo-Lockean theory of the Trinity and Incarnation, which applies a Neo-Lockean theory of personal identity to the doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation.

In their article, ‘The Two Front War on Reproductive Rights,’ Minkoff, Vullikanti, and Marshall (2024) highlight the challenges faced by pregnant persons following the overturn of Roe v. Wade (Dobb...

This paper examines two models of thinking relating to the issue of the right to die in dignity: one takes into consideration the rights and interests of the individual; the other supposes that human life is inherently valuable. I contend that preference should be given to the first model, and further assert that the second model may be justified in moral terms only as long as it does not resort to paternalism. The view that holds that certain patients (...) are not able to comprehend their own interests in a fully rational manner, and therefore ‘we’ know what is good for these patients better than ‘they’ do, is morally unjustifiable. I proceed by refuting the ‘quality of life’ argument, asserting that each person is entitled to decide for herself when it is worth living and when it is not. In this connection, a caveat will be made regarding the role of the family. (shrink)

Within the last decade or so several philosophers have argued against handgun prohibition on the ground that it violates the right to self-defense. However, even these philosophers grant that the right to own handguns is not absolute and could be overridden if doing so would bring about an enormous social good. Analysis of intra-United States empirical data cited by gun rights advocates indicates that guns do not make us safer, while international data lends powerful support to the thesis (...) that guns do indeed increase homicide. If handguns do not make us safer, then appealing to the right to self-defense as an objection to prohibition is moot. Prohibition neither violates the right to self-defense nor sacrifices anyone’s interests for the common good, since it makes each person less likely to be murderedthan the current permissive handgun laws. Moreover, we also must take into account the right to life of victims of handgun crimes made possible by liberal handgun laws. Consequently, invoking the right to self-defense does not provide any sound reason against handgun prohibition over and above familiar utilitarian objections, which are themselves refuted by the empirical evidence. (shrink)

Personal pronoun revisionism (so-called by Olson, E. 2007. What are We? A Study in Personal Ontology. Oxford: Oxford University Press) is a response to the problem of the thinking animal on behalf of the neo-Lockean theorist. Many worry about this response. The worry rests on asking the wrong question, namely: how can two thinkers that are so alike differ in this way in their cognitive capacities? This is the wrong question because they don't. The right question is: how (...) can they fail to be the same? From the materialist viewpoint shared by the animalist and neo-Lockean they can't. Personal pronoun revisionism is a consequence of their cognitive identity. (shrink)

A widely adopted approach to end-of-life ethical questions fails to make explicit certain crucial metaphysical ideas entailed by it and when those ideas are clarified, then it can be shown to be inadequate. These metaphysical themes cluster around the notions of personal identity, personhood and humanness, and the metaphysics of substance. In order to clarify and critique the approach just mentioned, I focus on the writings of Robert N. Wennberg as a paradigm case by, first, stating his views of (...) personal identity, humanness, personhood, and the relations among them; second, offering a comparison of a view of humans as substances (understood in the classic interpretation of Aristotle and Aquinas) vs. a view of humans as property-things; third, applying the metaphysical distinctions surfaced in the second section towards a critique of Wennberg. (shrink)

On 26 February 2020, the German Constitutional Court rejected a law from 2015 that prohibited any form of ‘business-like’ assisted suicide as unconstitutional. The landmark ruling of the highest federal court emphasised the high priority given to the rights of autonomy and free personal development, both of which constitute the principle of human dignity, the first principle of the German constitution. The ruling echoes particularities of post-war Germany’s end-of-life debate focusing on patient self-determination while rejecting any discussion of active (...) assistance to die through a lethal injection administered by a doctor. This brief report discusses the ruling in the light of the broader sociopolitical and historical context of the German end-of-life debate. (shrink)

This is a Portuguese translation of "Abortion and Infanticide," Philosophy & Public Affairs, 2/11972, 37–65. -/- This essay deals with the question of the morality of abortion and infanticide. The fundamental ethical objection traditionally advanced against these practices rests on the contention that human fetuses and infants have a right to life, and it is this claim that is the primary focus of attention here. Consequently, the basic question to be discussed is what properties a thing must possess (...) in order to have a serious right to life. The approach involves defending, then, a basic principle specifying a condition living things must satisfy to have a serious right to life, and the answer given makes it unlikely that this condition is satisfied by human fetuses and infants, though this tentative conclusion could be altered by future scientific studies of the development of the human brain. As things stand at the moment, however, it seems unlikely that developing humans acquire the physical basis of the psychological capacities on which the right to continued existence rests, and therefore unless there are other substantial objections to abortion and infanticide that undercut the above line of thought, the conclusion is that such practices are not intrinsically wrong. (shrink)

This paper examines two models of thinking relating to the issue of the right to die in dignity: one takes into consideration the rights and interests of the individual; the other supposes that human life is inherently valuable. I contend that preference should be given to the first model, and further assert that the second model may be justified in moral terms only as long as it does not resort to paternalism. The view that holds that certain patients (...) are not able to comprehend their own interests in a fully rational manner, and therefore ‘we’ know what is good for these patients better than ‘they’ do, is morally unjustifiable. I proceed by refuting the ‘quality of life’ argument, asserting that each person is entitled to decide for herself when it is worth living and when it is not. In this connection, a caveat will be made regarding the role of the family. (shrink)

The heavily discussed (neo-)Lucretian symmetry argument holds that as we are indifferent to nonexistence before birth, we should also be indifferent to nonexistence after death. An important response to this argument insists that prenatal nonexistence differs from posthumous nonexistence because we could not have been born earlier and been the same ‘thick’ psychological self. As a consequence, we can’t properly ask whether it would be better for us to have had radically different lives either. Against this, it’s been claimed we (...) can form preferences as to which ‘thick’ (psychological) self our ‘thin’ (metaphysical) self would be better off ‘associated’ with. I argue that these discussions draw the right distinction, but do so in the wrong place: understanding the ‘thin’ self phenomenally instead of metaphysically allows us to understand how we can rationally form preferences to have been somebody else. (shrink)

As the single most important experience in the lives of all people, the process and event of death must be handled carefully by the medical community. Twentieth-century advances in life-sustaining technology impose new areas of concern on those who are responsible for dying persons. Physicians and surrogates alike must be ready and willing to decide not to intervene in the dying process, indeed to hasten it, when they see the autonomy and dignity of patients threatened. In addition, the (...) very ways we talk about death and dying need to come under scrutiny, and it is likely that our technical advances should be parallelled by equally arduous advances in the semantic and rhetorical approaches we take to death. (shrink)

It is my contention here that Quentin Skinner’s conception of neo-roman liberty as it is articulated in Liberty Before Liberalism serves to establish two normative premises for human rights philosophy. Those premises are, first, that human rights should offer the strongest protection for those persons who are most vulnerable and liable to social and political discrimination and marginalisation. Second, the objects of human rights should be conceptualised in terms of open-ended goals of justice, predicated on a commitment to structural (...) equality. I will have reason to refer to a reflection that Skinner makes on utopianism and how the “classic liberal case” of liberty can be associated with a critique of utopianism in political theory. By utopianism Skinner means – with reference to William Paley – a political theory that incorporates into its concepts demands that cannot be met without a fundamental change of practice and which moves beyond what it is at present reasonable for most people to expect of life. On this understanding, Skinner points out, John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice is a utopian treatise: it does not adapt to whatever is politically feasible but sets a challenging standard of justice for political institutions. I would qualify this by saying that the challenging nature of Rawls’s theory of justice is connected to the fact that it is systemic rather than utopian. A fear of the charge of utopianism is one of the recurrent features of human rights philosophy as we know it today. This is manifest in an incongruous tendency to join a moral philosophy of the good life with a political theory of basic provisions and life at the subsistence level. I hope to show that there is a consistent neo-roman case to be made for a more politically challenging human rights philosophy. (shrink)

Nowadays, the concepts of soldier and war have changed due to terrorism and the war on terrorism. According to the literature, to prevent terrorism, it is possible to use more violence, but how can we grant the safety of many versus the dignity of a few? In Israel, in order to protect civilians against possible terrorist attacks, Palestinian ambulances that would reach the Israeli hospitals must be quickly controlled. However, many times, at the checkpoint, patients have to wait for an (...) Israeli vehicle that will take them to Israel. This procedure causes many delays in medical emergency. How to avoid that terrorists may receive better care than Palestinian civilians may just because they are already on the Israeli side of the Separation Wall? How is it possible to ensure the life and safety of many, without denying the right to healthcare to somebody? How to decide when the State requirements conflict with traditional medical duties? Is it acceptable to provide health care to a terrorist? What should be done when it is uncertain whether the ambulance transports weapons besides patients? These questions call upon the core role of the doctor and of the medical profession: taking care of all sick persons. The care is the starting point of ethics. If we do not care about other human beings we do not have a real moral comprehension of any human ideal or action. For this reason we can say that the care is the premise of morality. The rights of all citizens, including the claim to public security, grounds on the care for each individual who needs help. (shrink)

Assuming that both humans and nonhuman organisms have intrinsic value, the concept of a “death with dignity” should extend to the natural world. Recently, an effort has been undertaken to save the razorback sucker, an endangered species of fish in the Colorado River. Razorback are bred and raised in captivity and transferred to the river only when large enough to survive predation by nonnative fish. While this effort is well-intentioned, there is little chance that the razorback will again live unassisted (...) in the Colorado River. There may be human-centered reasons for saving the razorback. However, just as respecting a person sometimes requires limiting his or her life-sustaining medical treatment, so too respecting the razorback may require removing human assistance with its reproductive cycle. (shrink)

Most democratic countries either limit or deny altogether voting rights for people with cognitive impairments or mental health conditions. Against this weight of legal and practical exclusion, disability advocacy and developments in international human rights law increasingly push in the direction of full voting rights for people with cognitive impairments. Particularly influential has been the adoption by the UN of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2007. Article 29 declares that states must ‘ensure that (...) class='Hi'>persons with disabilities can effectively and fully participate in political and public life on an equal basis with others, directly or through freely chosen representatives, including the right and opportunity for persons with disabilities to vote and be elected’. This article also argues for the right of all people to vote, including people with cognitive impairments, by adopting a uniquely strategic approach. Firstly, some of the strategic limitations of existing arguments in favour of extending the franchise are highlighted. Most such arguments are flawed because they run the risk of inviting disparaging philosophical commentary which compares disabled people to animals, or because they are based on implausible empirical claims, or because they inadvertently tie the case for voting rights for the disabled to other cases unlikely to ever enjoy widespread acceptance. This article, instead, justifies extending voting rights to all people with cognitive impairments based on a simple cost-benefit analysis that avoids all of these problems. (shrink)

Background. South African surrogacy law includes a provision, known as the genetic link requirement, that commissioning parents must use their own gametes for the conception of a surrogate child. As a result, infertile persons who cannot contribute gametes for the conception of a child are prohibited from accessing surrogacy as a way to establish families. The genetic link requirement was previously the subject of a constitutional challenge, but the challenge was rejected by a divided Constitutional Court bench with a (...) seven-to-four majority. The genetic link requirement is again being challenged in a new lawsuit.Objective. In light of the history of the issue, this article investigates the viability of relying on infertile persons’ right to family life in the new lawsuit. Method. The investigation takes the form of a human rights analysis.Results. The right to family life was not considered in the previous case. As such, the right to family life constitutes a new legal issue that falls outside the scope of the precedent set by the Constitutional Court, and can therefore be relied upon. The genetic link requirement is a clear violation of infertile persons’ right to family life, which includes the right to establish a family. Potential justifications for such violation are considered, but found wanting. Accordingly, the genetic link requirement is unconstitutional and should be struck out.Conclusion. The outcome of the previous lawsuit was an injustice towards infertile persons. The new lawsuit presents an opportunity for this injustice to be rectified by vindicating infertile persons’ right to family life. (shrink)

For the purposes of this article, the right to confidentiality of communications between a lawyer and a client (legal professional privilege) is analysed and understood as a rule under which, in judicial or administrative proceedings, the content of communications between a lawyer and his client shall not be disclosed; if this rule is breached, the content of the communications in question is not treated as evidence in the process. Legal professional privilege is related to several articles of the Convention (...) for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. The European Court of Human Rights has found that the violation of the right of an accused to communicate with a lawyer without a third party departs from Article 6(3)(c) of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms which entitles to defend oneself in person or through a legal assistant. This kind of communication also relates to the Article 8 of the Convention, which provides a right to respect for private and family life, home and correspondence. In the opinion of the European Court of Human Rights, according to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms there is no difference if a lawyer representing a client is a practitioner or not. However, when dealing with the violations of EU competition law, the Court of Justice of the European Union acknowledges the protection of legal professional privilege only with regard to the communications between an accused companies and an independent lawyer (who does not work for his client on an employment contract basis). When the protection of legal professional privilege is not granted for communications of the accused company with its own legal personnel, a question may arise whether it is considered that sufficient level of confidentiality is ensured for these companies. (shrink)

"Is higher education a right, or a privilege? This author argues that all citizens in a free and open society should have an unconditional right to higher education. Such an education should be costless for the individual and open to everyone regardless of talent. A readiness and willingness to learn should be the only qualification. It should offer opportunities that benefit citizens with different interests and goals in life. And it should aim, as its foundational moral purpose, (...) to help citizens from all walks of life live better, freer lives. Using concepts and ideas from liberal political philosophy the author argues that access to educational goods and services is something to which all citizens have a right over a full life. Such goods, it is argued, play a key role in helping citizens realize self-determined goals. Higher education should therefore be understood a basic social institution responsible for ensuring that all citizens can access such 'autonomy-supporting' goods. The book examines the implication of this justification of the right to higher education for questions of educational justice, political authority, distributive justice, civic education, and personal autonomy"--. (shrink)

The right to die has for decades been recognised for persons in a vegetative state, but there remains controversy about ending life-sustaining medical treatment for persons in the minimally conscious state. The controversy is rooted in assumptions about the moral significance of consciousness, and the value of life for patients who are conscious and not terminally ill. This paper evaluates these assumptions in light of evidence that generates concerns about quality of life in the (...) MCS. It is argued that surrogates should be permitted to make decisions to withdraw life-sustaining medical treatment from patients in the MCS. (shrink)

This chapter sides with those who believe that a right to stay should be counted among fundamental human rights. However, it also acknowledges that there are good reasons for objecting to the most popular justifications of the right to stay, which are based on the assumption that people have valuable ties to their community of residence and that people’s life plans are located where they live. In response to these qualms, this chapter argues that the best way (...) to make sense of the right to stay is to conceive it as belonging to the category of “control rights”; these are the rights that protect people’s control over their own bodies and personal space, which is an essential condition for personhood and human dignity. This account of the right to stay can overcome the most pressing objections to its recognition as a fundamental human right. (shrink)

Arguments in favor of legalized assisted suicide often center on issues of personal privacy and freedom of choice over one's body. Many disability advocates assert, however, that autonomy arguments neglect the complex sociopolitical determinants of despair for people with disabilities. Specifically, they argue that social approval of suicide for individuals with irreversible conditions is discriminatory and that relaxing restrictions on assisted suicide would jeopardize, not advance, the freedom of persons with disabilities to direct the lives they choose. This paper (...) examines the idea promoted by some proponents of assisted suicide that it is reasonable to be depressed about one's diminished quality of life in cases of irreversible illness or disability and, therefore, such depression should not call into question the individual's competence to request assistance in dying. The concept of rational depression is defined and examined in the context of: four real-life cases involving individuals with disabilities who requested assistance in dying; a set of criteria commonly applied to decision-making to determine rationality; and research bearing on the emotional status of people with disabilities. It is concluded that although disability is associated with particular socially mediated stressors, there is no theoretical or empirical evidence to indicate that depression and its role in the right to die is dynamically different, more natural, or more reasonable for disabled people than for non-disabled people. (shrink)

This book has two main concerns. The first is to isolate the fundamental issues that must be resolved if one is to be able to formulate a defensible position on the question of the moral status of abortion. The second is to determine the most plausible answer to that question. With respect to the first question, the author argues that the following issue–most of which are ignored in public debate on the question of abortion–need to be considered. First, can the (...) abortion question be decided without resolving the issue of the moral status of the fetus? Second, is the fact that the fetus belongs to the biologically defined species Homo Sapiens morally significant in itself? Third, what non-potential properties and necessary and/or sufficient to endow something with a right to life? Fourth, do the corresponding potentialities also make it wrong to destroy something? Fifth, does any property that suffices to give something a right to life admit of degrees, and if so, is it morally significant regardless of the extent to which it is present? Sixth, is it morally permissible to refrain from producing additional people who would lead satisfactory lives? And finally, at what point do developing human beings acquire those properties that give something a right to life – at conception, or at some later point? Alternative answers to these central questions are set out and discussed in a detailed way. Some of the issues are difficult, but it is argued that plausible answers can be advanced, and that they support a liberal position on the morality of abortion. (shrink)

Are there moral rights to do moral wrong? A right to do wrong is a right that others not interfere with the right-holder’s wrongdoing. It is a right against enforcement of duty, that is a right that others not interfere with one’s violation of one’s own obligations. The strongest reason for moral rights to do moral wrong is grounded in the value of personal autonomy. Having a measure of protected choice (that is a right) (...) to do wrong is a condition for an autonomous life and for autonomous moral self-constitution. This view has its critics. Responding to these objections reveals that none refute the coherence of the concept of a ‘moral right to do moral wrong’. At most, some objections successfully challenge the weight and frequency of the personal autonomy reasons for such rights. Autonomy-based moral rights to do moral wrong are therefore conceptually possible as well as, at least on occasion, actual. (shrink)

Article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities guarantees persons with disabilities?the right to legal capacity on an equal basis with others in all aspects of life.? In its General Comment on Article 12, the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities claims that this guarantee necessitates the abolition of the world?s dominant approach to mental capacity law. According to this approach, when a person lacks the mental capacity to (...) make a particular legal decision at the material time, the state authorizes a third-party to make it on her behalf. The Committee declares such substituted decision-making a violation of the Convention?s guarantee of legal capacity on an equal basis, and therefore demands it be replaced by an allegedly non-discriminatory alternative called supported decision-making. This paper argues that we should reject the Committee?s demand in its current form, because the most influential version of the new approach to supported decision-making suffers from serious conceptual flaws that make it inferior to the mental capacity approach. However, I then argue that the Committee?s demand stems from a legitimate ethical concern with respect and equality that ought to inform the CRPD's implementation process. (shrink)

Court D. Lewis, author of Repentance and the Right to Forgiveness, presents a rights-based theory of ethics grounded in eirenéism, a needs-based theory of rights (inspired by Nicholas Wolterstorff) that seeks peaceful flourishing for all moral agents. This approach creates a moral relationship between victims and wrongdoers such that wrongdoers owe victims compensatory obligations. However, one further result is that wrongdoers may be owed forgiveness by victims. This leads to the “repugnant implication” that victims may be wrongdoers who do (...) not forgive. Author Lewis addresses the “repugnant implication” by showing that victims are obligated to work toward forgiveness, if not forgiveness itself. Critic Gregory L. Bock argues that victims are not the only ones who can forgive, that the personal dimensions of forgiveness are overlooked, and that the force of the “repugnancy implication” may be questioned. Instead of rights-based eirenéism, Bock supports a virtue ethics framework. Instead of rights-based eirenéism, Bock encourages virtue ethics. Critic David Boersema raises questions about the binding nature of relationships, the dependency of flourishing upon forgiveness, and the nature of needs or rights. Boersema also questions the wisdom of a rights-based approach to forgiveness. Critic Jennifer Kling asks whether a rights-based approach is necessary to ground obligations to meet the needs of others: why not an ethics of care? If a rights-based approach is taken, perhaps a wrongdoer is obligated to not make forgiveness a life good. By disengaging this obligation, we avoid constraining a victim’s work toward forgiveness, especially when the wrongdoing is oppressive. Author Lewis responds to these objections. (shrink)

Article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities guarantees persons with disabilities ‘the right to legal capacity on an equal basis with others in all aspects of life.’ In its General Comment on Article 12, the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities claims that this guarantee necessitates the abolition of the world's dominant approach to mental capacity law. According to this approach, when a person lacks the mental capacity (...) to make a particular legal decision at the material time, the state authorises a third-party to make it on her behalf. The Committee declares such substituted decision-making a violation of the Convention's guarantee of legal capacity on an equal basis, and therefore demands it be replaced by an allegedly non-discriminatory alternative called supported decision-making. This article argues that we should reject the Committee's demand in its current form, because the most influential version of the new approach to supported decision-making suffers from serious conceptual flaws that make it inferior to the mental capacity approach. However, I then argue that the Committee's demand stems from a legitimate ethical concern with respect and equality that ought to inform the CRPD's implementation process. (shrink)

The neo-Lockean justification of the highly unequal distribution of income in capitalist societies is based upon two key premises: that people are the rightful owners of their labor and talents, and that the external world was, in the state of nature, unowned, and therefore up for grabs by people, who could rightfully appropriate parts of it subject to a ‘Lockean proviso.’ The argument is presented by Nozick. Counter-proposals to Nozick’s, for the most part, have either denied the premise (...) that people should morally be viewed as the owners of their talents, or have challenged Nozick’s Lockean proviso.Rawls, and to a more limited extent Ronald Dworkin, deny self-ownership. As Rawls writes: ‘…the difference principle represents, in effect, an agreement to regard the distribution of natural talents as a common asset … The naturally advantaged are not to gain merely because they are more gifted, but only to cover the costs of training and education and for using their endowments in ways that help the less fortunate as well. No one deserves his greater natural capacity nor merits a more favorable starting place in society.’ Behind the Rawlsian veil of ignorance, those who deliberate about justice are deprived of knowledge about characteristics whose distribution is morally arbitrary. In Dworkin’s proposal for resource egalitarianism, agents calculate the insurance policy they would hypothetically ask for, were they denied knowledge of what talents they will draw in the birth lottery. Compensation for unequal talents is, according to Dworkin, properly made by taxing and transferring income according to the way it would have been distributed as a consequence of such insurance. Dworkin’s veil of ignorance is thin, because agents in the appropriate posture for deliberating about income distribution know their preferences and attitudes toward risk, but not their talents. For both Rawls and Dworkin, the self-ownership premise is challenged by constructing a veil of ignorance in which people are deprived of knowledge of certain personal characteristics, knowledge of which would bias their opinions, from a moral viewpoint. (shrink)

Assuming that both humans and nonhuman organisms have intrinsic value, the concept of a “death with dignity” should extend to the natural world. Recently, an effort has been undertaken to save the razorback sucker, an endangered species of fish in the Colorado River. Razorback are bred and raised in captivity and transferred to the river only when large enough to survive predation by nonnative fish. While this effort is well-intentioned, there is little chance that the razorback will again live unassisted (...) in the Colorado River. There may be human-centered reasons for saving the razorback. However, just as respecting a person sometimes requires limiting his or her life-sustaining medical treatment, so too respecting the razorback may require removing human assistance with its reproductive cycle. (shrink)

In this discussion note on Michal Pruski and Richard C. Playford’s “Artificial Wombs, Thomson and Abortion – What Might Change?,” I consider whether the prospect of ectogenesis technology would make abortion impermissible. I argue that a Thomson-style defense may not become inapplicable due to the right to life being conceived as a negative right. Further, if Thomson-style defenses do become inapplicable, those who claim that ectogenesis would be an obligatory alternative to abortion cannot do so without first (...) showing that fetuses have a right to life, something that Thomson assumed rather than argued for. I also include a discussion on ethical problems concerning what to do about children born from artificial wombs put there by those who looked to terminate their pregnancies because they sought to avoid parenthood. (shrink)

The neo-Lockean justification of the highly unequal distribution of income in capitalist societies is based upon two key premises: that people are the rightful owners of their labor and talents, and that the external world was, in the state of nature, unowned, and therefore up for grabs by people, who could rightfully appropriate parts of it subject to a ‘Lockean proviso.’ The argument is presented by Nozick. Counter-proposals to Nozick’s, for the most part, have either denied the premise (...) that people should morally be viewed as the owners of their talents, or have challenged Nozick’s Lockean proviso.Rawls, and to a more limited extent Ronald Dworkin, deny self-ownership. As Rawls writes: ‘…the difference principle represents, in effect, an agreement to regard the distribution of natural talents as a common asset … The naturally advantaged are not to gain merely because they are more gifted, but only to cover the costs of training and education and for using their endowments in ways that help the less fortunate as well. No one deserves his greater natural capacity nor merits a more favorable starting place in society.’ Behind the Rawlsian veil of ignorance, those who deliberate about justice are deprived of knowledge about characteristics whose distribution is morally arbitrary. In Dworkin’s proposal for resource egalitarianism, agents calculate the insurance policy they would hypothetically ask for, were they denied knowledge of what talents they will draw in the birth lottery. Compensation for unequal talents is, according to Dworkin, properly made by taxing and transferring income according to the way it would have been distributed as a consequence of such insurance. Dworkin’s veil of ignorance is thin, because agents in the appropriate posture for deliberating about income distribution know their preferences and attitudes toward risk, but not their talents. For both Rawls and Dworkin, the self-ownership premise is challenged by constructing a veil of ignorance in which people are deprived of knowledge of certain personal characteristics, knowledge of which would bias their opinions, from a moral viewpoint. (shrink)

Lam, Joseph Peter Fitzsimons is a competent journalist who does not shy away from expressing his personal opinion on controversial social and ethical issues. In a Sydney Morning Herald online comment published on 11 December 2016, he not only praised the courage of the premier of Victoria, Daniel Andrews, but also appealed to members of the New South Wales parliament to follow Andrews' lead to legalise euthanasia. Anticipating the eventual collapse of his own health in the future, Fitzsimons insisted that (...) lawmakers should respect his autonomy and his choice of a peaceful and dignified death. As far as I can see, however, respect for a person's autonomy is not the main problem here. Rather, the key difficulty rests with Fitzsimons's reasoning. He argued: Let's say that at the age of 80 or so, I decide that my meaningful life is over, and all that awaits me is-I know, I know, too much detail- incontinent pain for the next five years. And let's say that I don't want that, and would rather pass away peacefully, and with dignity, in a medically supervised manner. My question to the opponents of euthanasia: if I choose to do that, what business is it of yours? (shrink)

This is a Portuguese translation of "Abortion and Infanticide," Philosophy & Public Affairs, 2/1, 1972, 37-65.

Michael Tooley defends infanticide by analysing ‘A has a right to X’ as roughly synonymous with ‘If A desires X, then others are under a prima facie obligation to refrain from actions that would deprive him [or her] of it.’ An infant who cannot conceive of himself or herself as a continuing subject of experiences cannot desire to continue existing. Hence, on Tooley’s analysis, killing the infant is not impermissible, for it does not go against any of the infant’s (...) desires. However, Tooley’s argument in support of his analysis seems to justify, instead, a slightly more subtle analysis—namely, ‘A has a right to X’ is roughly extensionally equivalent with ‘Unless A expresses his or her desire that not‐X, then others are under a prima facie obligation to refrain from actions that would deprive him or her of X.’ But given this analysis, the infant’s purported lack of any capacity to conceive of himself or herself as a continuing subject of experiences implies that we cannot be released from any duty that we might have not to harm him or her. In short, Tooley’s argument in support of his analysis actually implies that infanticide may well be impermissible. (shrink)