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)

In the May, 1960, issue of the American Bar Association Journal (vol. 499), Morton Birnbaum, a lawyer and physician, argued for a legal right to psychiatric treatment of the involuntarily committed mentally ill person. In the 18 years since his article appeared,, there have been several key court cases in which this concept of a right to psychiatric treatment has figured prominently and decisively. It is important to note that the language of the decisions have had at least (...) an indirect effect in the recently enacted mental Hygiene Law of the State of New York. While I shall not seek to establish the historical thesis that Birnbaum’s article has been efficacious in bringing about both these court decisions and changes in statutory laws, I do want to examine Birnbaum’s article and some of the opinions for three cases: Wyatt v. Stickney (1972), Wyatt v. Aderholt (1974), and O’Connor v. Donaldson (422 US 563, 1975), in an effort to understand both the significance of these changes in our laws and the underlying philosophical and ethical notions of which they are an expression. Birnbaum observed that the notable feature of the legal situation at the time was that there had not been recognized a constitutional requirement that one who had been institutionalized for mental illness according to due process must receive treatment. Birnbaum argued that the effects of an omission of such a requirement to treat were that mental institutions typically offered only custodial care, that patients who were held only under custodial care typically did not improve, and that the result was that involuntary incarceration in a mental institution was, at least from the point of view of the patient, functionally no different than would be imprisonment for an unspecified period of time. Birnbaum argued for a recognition and enforcement in the courts of the right to treatment “...as a necessary and overdue development of our present concept of due process of law,” i.e., as required by the 14th Amendment to the U.S.. (shrink)

We are very grateful to Richard Ashcroft1 and Andrew McGee2 for their thoughtful and articulate criticisms of our views.3 Ashcroft has disappointingly low aspirations for the law. Of course he is right to say that the law is not a ‘self-sufficient, integrated and self-interpreting system of doctrine’. The law is often philosophically incoherent and internally contradictory. But it does not follow from this that all areas of the law are philosophically unsatisfactory. And if that were true, the response should (...) not be Ashcroft’s contemptuous despair, but a determination to make it better. Ashcroft would say that such idealism is unrealistic in the light of the very nature of ‘the Law’: ‘…a complex assemblage of institutions, rules, accredited persons, practices and systems’. That isa radically ‘legal realist’ position and is plainly unsustainable. We can demonstrate its unsustainability while demonstrating both that he is wrong to tar all areas of the law with the same brush and wrong to deny that medical ethics are ‘intellectually and metaphysically prior to medical law’. Take the law of murder which, of course, is part of ‘medical law’. It is surely trite to observe that humans thought that killing people was wrong before they started penalising murder. Ethics generated the law. There is nothing elusive or incoherent about the philosophical foundations of the law of murder. Human life is thought to matter. To kill is both to cause a harm and to commit a wrong. There is more than something of the straw man in Ashcroft’s elaboration of his argument. For he chooses, of all things, autonomy and, in particular, its invocation in the law of consent. Lawyers’ eyebrows will rise at his assertion that ‘while the concept of “autonomy” has an explanatory role in discussions of the …. (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)

This article considers the various emergence of an explicitly recognized right to life in papal teaching and the canon law of the last century and a quarter. The Church's opposition to abortion is deeply embedded within the tradition and law of the Church. It was, however, only in recent times, since the middle twentieth century, really, that the Church began to speak explicitly of a right to life. This paper explores the consequences for papal thought of (...) this explicit recognition of rights. By speaking of a right to life, the Church has moved beyond the abortion debate to embrace a variety of other concerns. This is not to say that abortion does not remain important. Direct participation in abortion is a crime at canon law that results in automatic excommunication. But the language of rights has allowed the Church to address such matters as the protection of refugees; the moral requirement of adequate health care; the odious use of child-soldiers; and the use of economic embargoes that have the effect of destroying the civilian infrastructure (and public health systems) of entire societies. (shrink)

The view that the fetus' potential for human consciousness confers upon it the right to life has been widely criticised on the basis that the notion of potentiality is so vague as to be meaningless, and on the basis that actual rights cannot be deduced from the mere potential for personhood. It has also been criticised, although less commonly, on the basis that it is not the potential to assume consciousness, but rather the potential to resume consciousness (...) which is morally significant, and on the basis that the fetus does not really possess the potential for consciousness. In response, I argue that these criticisms are mistaken and that the potential for human consciousness is a sufficient condition not simply of potential, but actual, personhood. Since it possesses this potential from the moment of conception, the fetus should be considered an actual person from the moment of its conception. (shrink)

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)

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)

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)

In England and Wales, there is significant controversy on the law related to abortion. Recent discussions have focussed predominantly on the health professional's right to conscientious objection. This article argues for a comprehensive overhaul of the law from the perspective of an author who adopts the view that all unborn human beings should be granted the prima facie right to life. It is argued that, should the law be modified in accordance with this stance, it need not (...) imply that health professionals should enjoy an unqualified right to object to participating in the provision of abortion. Indeed, it is proposed that – in some situations – women should be granted a positive right to abortion. While the focus of this article is on changing the law in England and Wales, it is hoped that the position developed here will also inspire legal debate and reform elsewhere. (shrink)

This article focuses on the interrelationship of law and life in human rights. It does this in order to theorize the normative status of contemporary biopower. To do this, the case law of Article 2 on the right to life of the European Convention on Human Rights is analysed. It argues that the juridical interpretation and application of the right to life produces a differentiated governmental management of life. It is established that: 1) Article (...) 2 orients governmental techniques to lives in order to ensure that both deprivation and protection of lives is lawful; 2) A proper application of Article 2 grounds itself on a proper discrimination of lives which causes Article 2 to be applied universally but not uniformly to all juridical subjects; 3) The jurisprudence of Article 2 is theoretically appreciable only in a ‘politics of life’. Finally, the article ends with a plea to analyse other fundamental human rights in the context of ‘biopolitical governmentality’. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In ‘The Pro‐Life Argument from Substantial Identity: A Defence’, Patrick Lee argues that the right to life is an essential property of those that possess it. On his view, the right arises from one's ‘basic’ or ‘natural’ capacity for higher mental functions: since human organisms have this capacity essentially, they have a right to life essentially. Lee criticises an alternative view, on which the right to life arises from one's ‘developed’ capacity (...) for higher mental functions (or development of some other accidental property). I argue that his criticisms of this alternative view are misguided or self‐defeating, and that there are good reasons to hold we have a right to life accidentally rather than essentially. (shrink)

Within the Western bioethical framework, we make adistinction between two dominant interpretations of the meaning of moral personhood: thenaturalist and the humanist one. While both interpretations of moral personhood claim topromote individual autonomy and rights, they end up with very different normativeviews on the practical and legal measures needed to realize these values in every daylife. Particularly when we talk about the end of life issues it appears that in general thearguments for euthanasia are drawn from the (...) naturalist interpretation of moral personhoodwhile the arguments against euthanasia, for their part, are derived from the idealistand/or humanist understanding of the same concept. This article focuses onexamining the metaphysical assumptions and internal contradiction found behind the opposingarguments presented by two prominent philosophers of these two traditions:Peter Singer and Ludger Honnefelder. The author claims that neither side of thedebate succeeds in defending its normative position without reconsidering how to takethe social aspects of moral personhood into account. The author holds that, despite ourneed to set individual's decision making into social context, the currentcommunitarian narrative concept of personhood fails to offer a convincing alternative.Instead of merely trying to replace psychological and atomistic view of personhood with acollective understanding of an individual's moral identity, we need to discuss thenormative relation between the concept of `moral personhood' and the demand for respect ofindividual autonomy in Western bioethics within a wider philosophical perspective. (shrink)

Quantitative utilitarianism demands equal treatment of human and nonhuman animals where there are no relevant differences between them. A difference is relevant only if it excludes the animal from suffering evil if it is treated differently. Quantitative utilitarianism cannot, however, resolve conflicts of interest nor prove that painless killing of animals is morally wrong. For this we need a higher qualitativegood. I suggest Care, as Heidegger understands it, is such a good, and that it is the essence not only of (...) human, but of nonhuman animaI Dasein as well. Because animals care, we are morally obliged to desist from killing them, even painlessly. (shrink)

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.

Some of the objections to life-extension stem from a concern with overpopulation. I will show that whether or not the overpopulation threat is realistic, arguments from overpopulation cannot ethically demand halting the quest for, nor access to, life-extension. The reason for this is that we have a right to life, which entitles us not to have meaningful life denied to us against our will and which does not allow discrimination solely on the grounds of age. (...) If the threat of overpopulation creates a rights conflict between the right to come into existence, the right to reproduce, the right to more opportunities and space , and the right to life, the latter ought to be given precedence. (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.

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)

One prominent argument in international law and religious thought for abolishing capital punishment is that it violates individuals’ right to life. Notably, this _right-to-life argument_ emerged from normative and legal frameworks that recognize deadly force against aggressors as justified when necessary to stop their unjust threat of grave harm. Can capital punishment be necessary in this sense—and thus justified defensive killing? If so, the right-to-life argument would have to admit certain exceptions where executions are justified. (...) Drawing on work by Hugo Bedau, I identify a thought experiment where executions are justified defensive killing but explain why they cannot be in our world. A state’s obligations to its prisoners include the _obligation to use nonlethal incapacitation_ (ONI), which applies as long as prisoners pose no imminent threat. ONI precludes executions for reasons of future dangerousness. By subjecting the right-to-life argument to closer scrutiny, this article ultimately places it on firmer ground. (shrink)

What does the right to life mean? The article considers three interpretations: (i) the right to life as the right to life-sustaining essentials, (ii) the right to life as the right not to be killed,s and (iii) the right to life as the right not to be killed unjustly. The article argues that (i) and (iii) accurately define the human right to life. The primary method is (...) philosophical analysis. The article concludes that the right to life is best defined or interpreted as either the right to life-sustaining goods (material or non-material) or the right not to be killed unjustly. (shrink)

In this article, the logical implications of a right to life are examined. It is first argued that the prohibition of Termination of life on request confers an inalienable right to life. A right is inalienable if it cannot legitimately be waived or transferred. Since voluntary euthanasia entails waiver of the right to life, the inalienability yields that it cannot be justified. Therefore, any ethical position that is in favor of voluntary euthanasia (...) has to argue that the right to life is an inalienable right and accept the conclusion that killing on request is justified. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Thomson's famous attempt to reconcile the fetus's putative right to life with robust abortion rights is not tenable. Given her view, whether or not an abortion violates the fetus's right to life depends on the abortion procedure utilised. And I argue that Thomson's view implies that any late term abortion that involves feticide is impermissible. In particular, this would rule out the partial birth abortion technique which has been so controversial (...) of late. (shrink)

One challenge to the idea that animals have a moral right to life claims that any such right would require us to intervene in the wild to prevent animals from being killed by predators. I argue that belief in an animal right to life does not commit us to supporting a program of predator-prey intervention. One common retort to the predator challenge contends that we are not required to save animals from predators because predators are (...) not moral agents. I suggest that this retort fails to overcome the predator challenge. I seek to articulate a more satisfactory argument explaining why we are not required to save wild prey from predators and how this position is perfectly consistent with the idea that animals have a basic right to life. (shrink)

In addressing bioethical issues at the beginning of human life, such as abortion, human embryonic stem cell research, and therapeutic cloning, a primary concern is to establish when a developing human embryo or fetus can be considered a “person”; for it is typically held that only persons are the subjects of moral rights, such as a “right to life.” The 13th century philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas defines a person as “an individual substance of a rational nature” (...) (ST Ia.29.1); he further asserts that all human beings are persons (ST Ia.16.12 ad 1), but that an embryo or fetus is not a human being until its body is informed by a “rational soul.” Aquinas’s account of human embryogenesis has been generally rejected today due to its dependence upon medieval biological information. A number of scholars, however, have attempted to combine Aquinas’s basic metaphysical account of human nature with current embryological data to develop a contemporary Thomistic account of a human being’s beginning. (shrink)

In the theory of rights we repeatedly encounter the problem of reconciling someone’s having a right, with his properly suffering damage to the interest protected by the right. In the case of right to life, we have to assess numerous cases in which individuals are killed or allowed to die, and yet we wish nonetheless to affirm their right to life. These cases include killing an aggressor in self-defense, accidental homicide, terminating life-sustaining therapy, (...) and capital punishment. (shrink)

I defend the consistency of affirming the right to life while rejecting universal healthcare and liveable income programmes. I also defend the rationality of accepting inconsistency.

Imagining a future world in which people no longer die provides a helpful tool for understanding our present ethical views. It becomes evident that the cardinal virtues of prudence, temperance, and courage are options for reasonable people rather than rational requirements. On the assumption that the medical means to immortality are not universally available, even justice becomes detached from theories that tie the supposed virtue to the protection of human rights. Several stratagems are available for defending a categorical right (...) to life under these circumstances, but none is compelling. Justice and human rights should therefore be understood as social conventions whose stability depends upon rejecting a tyranny of the immortals in favour of cultural traditions that connect rights and liberties with the means for their enjoyment. (shrink)

1. Of all the great natural or human rights, none has been so neglected by scholars and theorists as the right to life. Today, the salient fact about this right is the considerable disagreement over its scope, form and status. Everyone has noticed the general inflationary effect of talk about ‘human’ rights in our time, in contrast to the tidy list of ‘natural’ rights drawn up by Locke and others. Nowhere is this ballooning more noticeable than in (...) the right to life itself. For Jefferson, his predecessors and contemporaries, the right to life was simple enough; it meant “the right not to be deprived of life, … a life that God gave and nature supported.” On this basis, it is natural to see the right to life classically as having reference mainly to questions affecting the termination of life. Without much imagination, one could find this right also relevant to another class of questions, those affecting the prevention of human life. However, when one historian cautiously remarked during the Great Depression that “the right to life could be interpreted as giving the individual at least an emergency claim on society for sustenance …,” we have a significant increase in the scope of protections allegedly afforded by this right. How far this ‘emergency claim’ might reach was indicated some years later in an essay addressed to U.N.E.S.C.O. The “right of living,” it was argued. (shrink)

A member of Jehovah’s Witnesses agreed to receive blood when alone, but rejected it once the elders were present. She insisted that the elders should stay, they were allowed to do so, and she bled to death. Was it all right to allow her to have the elders present when she made her final decision? Was it all right to allow her to bleed to death? It was, according to an anti-paternalist principle, which I have earlier defended on (...) purely utilitarian grounds. The thrust of the present argument is that the principle stands even in cases with context-sensitive preferences. However, my utilitarian argument to this effect must now rely on something other than J.S. Mill’s standard presumption that in most cases the individual makes the right choices for herself. A reference to the general trust in the system of healthcare is essential to the utilitarian defense of the anti-paternalistic principle. (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)