The morality of abortion is a longstanding controversy. One may wonder whether it’s even possible to make significant progress on an issue over which so much ink has already been split and there is such polarizing disagreement (Boyle 1994). The papers in this issue show that this progress is possible—there is more to be said about abortion and other crucial beginning-of-life issues. They do so largely by applying contemporary philosophical tools to moral questions involving life’s beginning. The first two papers (...) defend the pro-life view from recent objections involving miscarriage and abortion doctors. The third shows how the social model of disability and the concept of transformative experience applies to classic debates like abortion and euthanasia. The final two papers address how rights and harms apply to children and to beings that do not yet exist. All five papers make a noteworthy contribution to the moral issues that arise at the beginning of life. (shrink)

It is widely accepted that children enjoy some form of a right to bodily integrity. However, there is little agreement about the precise nature and scope of this right. This paper offers a conceptual analysis of the child's right to bodily integrity, in order to further elucidate the relationship between the child's right to bodily integrity and considerations of autonomy. Following a discussion of Leif Wenar's work on the structure and justification of rights, I first explain how the adult's right (...) to bodily integrity can be distilled into separate elements that may plausibly be justified by different moral considerations. In particular, I claim that this analysis suggests that whilst the adult's right to bodily integrity is not wholly reducible to bodily autonomy, autonomy nonetheless remains entwined with our understanding of this right in a number of ways. On the basis of this discussion, I go on to outline three important complexities that arise when we consider the child's right to bodily integrity, before particularly focusing on the question of how third parties should determine whether or not to perform a physical interference upon a child who lacks decision-making capacity. Here, I raise some objections to Earp and Mazor's recent attempts to answer this question, before briefly defending an ‘autonomy-based interests’ account of permissible interference, an account that shares in what I take to be the spirit, if not the precise letter, of these earlier views. (shrink)

In this issue of Clinical Ethics, Jonathan Pugh rejects hypothetical consent-based conceptions of the child’s right to bodily integrity (RBI). Pugh also questions the relevance of adults’ regret of past bodily infringements in evaluating potential violations of children’s RBI. Pugh then argues that autonomy serves as the justification for our power to waive our bodily rights. Finally, Pugh claims that the child’s interest in developing the capacity for autonomy is key to evaluating potential RBI violations. In this article, I challenge (...) each of these arguments. First, I argue that it is the circumstances of parents vis-a-vis their children (rather than the difficulties in determining hypothetical agents' values) that should lead us to reject hypothetical-consent-based conceptions of the child’s RBI in favor of best-interests conceptions. Second, I argue that adults’ regret of childhood bodily interventions is highly relevant for evaluating these interventions’ permissibility. Third, I reject the claim that autonomy is the primary justification for our power to waive our bodily rights. Finally, I argue that Pugh overstates the importance of the child’s interest in developing the capacity for autonomy, at least when it comes to debates in contemporary liberal democracies over interventions in children’s bodies. (shrink)