This paper recounts a dystopian tragedy, analogous to online dating, where people choose their partners from an enormous number of people, where rejections are made inthe blink of an eye based on physical appearance and where men outnumber women. The moral of the story is discussed. It is argued that Tinder and other dating apps are a problem for justice and that this should be a public and political concern. It is suggested that we take measures to correct the inequalities (...) in online dating. (shrink)

This paper recounts a dystopian tragedy, analogous to online dating, where people choose their partners from an enormous number of people, where rejections are made in the blink of an eye based on physical appearance and where men outnumber women. The moral of the story is discussed. It is argued that Tinder and other dating apps are a problem for justice and that this should be a public and political concern. It is suggested that we take measures to correct the (...) inequalities in online dating. (shrink)

Termillä ”poliittinen köyhyys” on aiemmin tarkoitettu resurssien köyhyydestä erillistä köyhyyden muotoa, jossa ihmiset kärsivät vaikuttavan vapauden tasa-arvon puutteesta eli kyvyttömyydestä osallistua tasa-arvoisina toimijoina poliittiseen vaikuttamiseen. Tässä artikkelissa etsin filosofista lähestymistapaa, jonka avulla olisi mahdollista diagnosoida poliittisen osallistumisen epätasa-arvoa myös henkilökohtaisen poliittisen toimijuuden kokemuksen katoamisena. En käsittele niitä varsinaisia prosesseja, joiden myötä poliittinen osallistuminen käy joillekuille mahdottomaksi. Sen sijaan pyrin kuvailemaan poliittista köyhyyttä yleisemmin, osallistumisen kokemuksellisten ehtojen katoamisena. Poliittisessa köyhyydessä ei ole kysymys vain osallistumisen ulkoisista esteistä, kuten osallistumiseen vaadittavien materiaalisten resurssien (...) tai kommunikatiivisten ja kognitiivisten kykyjen epätasa-arvoisesta jakautumisesta eri ryhmien kesken. Väitän, että taustalla voi olla myös ihmisen elämän affektiivinen köyhtyminen, joka ilmenee poliittisen toimijuuden kokemuksen murtumisena ja katoamisena. Käytän tässä artikkelissa Maurice Merleau-Pontyn ja Hannah Arendtin poliittista fenomenologiaa löytääkseni osallistumattomuuteen näkökulman, joka painottaa poliittisen toimijuuden ruumiillisuutta ja intersubjektiivisuutta. (shrink)

Ethical vegans and vegetarians believe that it is seriously immoral to bring into existence animals whose lives would be miserable. In this paper, I will discuss whether such a belief also leads to the conclusion that it is seriously immoral to bring human beings into existence. I will argue that vegans should abstain from having children since they believe that unnecessary suffering should be avoided. After all, humans will suffer in life, and having children is not necessary for a good (...) life. Thus vegans, and probably vegetarians as well, should not have children. I will consider several objections against this controversial claim, show why the objections fail and conclude that it would be best for ethical vegans to abstain from procreation. (shrink)

Many people believe that the abortion debate will end when at some point in the future it will be possible for fetuses to develop outside the womb. Ectogenesis, as this technology is called, would make possible to reconcile pro-life and pro-choice positions. That is because it is commonly believed that there is no right to the death of the fetus if it can be detached alive and gestated in an artificial womb. Recently Eric Mathison and Jeremy Davis defended this position, (...) by arguing against three common arguments for a right to the death of the fetus. I claim that their arguments are mistaken. I argue that there is a right to the death of the fetus because gestating a fetus in an artificial womb when genetic parents refuse it violates their rights not to become a biological parent, their rights to genetic privacy and their property rights. The right to the death of the fetus, however, is not a woman's right but genetic parents’ collective right which only can be used together. (shrink)

Should a person who feels his legal age does not correspond with his experienced age be allowed to change his legal age? In this paper, I argue that in some cases people should be allowed to change their legal age. Such cases would be when: 1) the person genuinely feels his age differs significantly from his chronological age and 2) the person’s biological age is recognized to be significantly different from his chronological age and 3) age change would likely prevent, (...) stop or reduce ageism, discrimination due to age, he would otherwise face. I also consider some objections against the view that people should be allowed to change their legal age and find them lacking. (shrink)

The purpose of this dissertation is to design a conception of political poverty that can address the loss of the experience of political freedom. This form of political poverty is described as separate from poverty of resources and opportunities, and poverty of capabilities required for participation. The study aims to make intelligible how a person or a group can suffer from a diminishing and fracturing of social experience, which can lead to the inability to experience oneself as a capable and (...) credible political agent, political engagement as a meaningful field of action, and democratic politics as a meaningful avenue for changing things for the better. This is a phenomenon which has been heretofore neglected by political theorists. -/- The study presents a heuristic diagnosis of political poverty as loss of experiential freedom that involves four aspects of experience that have specifically political relevance: loss of trust, loss of expressivity, loss of a sense of access to the public world, and the loss of future temporality in experience. Diminishing and fracturing of these aspects of social experience can lead to politically impoverished persons and groups to become complicit in their own marginalisation by remaining unmotivated to challenge it. These aspects of social experience are approached through phenomenological portraits, chosen from literature on social exclusion and poverty. The diagnosis remains open to further development through exploration of other aspects of experience. -/- The study draws on the thinking of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Hannah Arendt to present an account of political freedom as only experienced in co-existence with others. Through a critical discussion of their work, a more comprehensive account of political agency is developed. The experience of having political agency involves not just the cognitive and communicative capacities of the subject, but also the entire perceptual and motor intentionality of their lived body. The experience of meaningfulness is approached by exploring the intersubjective constitution of the self in a dialectical process with their social environment. This experience is described as a form of faith in oneself as an agent and in the meaningfulness of political engagement. Such faith is a practical, meaning-giving intentional relationship of a lived body to their social environment. -/- This study emphasizes the experience of being a capable and credible political agent, and experiencing politics as a meaningful field for engagement, as important aspects of political freedom that should be considered alongside inclusivity of democratic processes, the equality of opportunity to participate, and the equality of the cognitive and communicative capabilities required for effective participation. In order to discuss political poverty as the loss of experiential freedom, we must go beyond objectivist models of social critique and approach the problem with the tools of existential phenomenology. (shrink)

Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva's controversial article ‘After-Birth Abortion: Why Should the Baby Live?’ has received a lot of criticism since its publishing. Part of the recent criticism has been made by pro-life philosopher Christopher Kaczor, who argues against infanticide in his updated book ‘Ethics of Abortion’. Kaczor makes four arguments to show where Giubilini and Minerva's argument for permitting infanticide goes wrong. In this article I argue that Kaczor's arguments, and some similar arguments presented by other philosophers, are mistaken (...) and cannot show Giubilini and Minerva's view to be flawed. I claim that if one wants to reject the permissibility of infanticide, one must find better arguments for doing so. (shrink)

I argued in ‘Pro‐life arguments against infanticide and why they are not convincing’ that arguments presented by pro‐life philosophers are mistaken and cannot show infanticide to be immoral. Several scholars have offered responses to my arguments. In this paper, I reply to my critics: Daniel Rodger, Bruce P. Blackshaw and Clinton Wilcox. I also reply to Christopher Kaczor. I argue that pro‐life arguments still are not convincing.

Fetal reduction is the practice of reducing the number of fetuses in a multiple pregnancy, such as quadruplets, to a twin or singleton pregnancy. Use of assisted reproductive technologies increases the likelihood of multiple pregnancies, and many fetal reductions are done after in vitro fertilisation and embryo transfer, either because of social or health-related reasons. In this paper, I apply Joe Horton’s all or nothing problem to the ethics of fetal reduction in the case of a twin pregnancy. I argue (...) that in the case of a twin pregnancy, there are two intuitively plausible claims: abortion is morally permissible, and it is morally wrong to abort just one of the fetuses. But since we should choose morally permissible acts rather than impermissible ones, the two claims lead to another highly implausible claim: the woman ought to abort both fetuses rather than only one. Yet, this does not seem right. A plausible moral theory cannot advocate such a pro-death view. Or can it? I suggest ways to solve this problem and draw implications for each solution. There are no data in this work. (shrink)

In my paper recently published in a collection of controversial arguments in this journal, I argued that the same principles that are behind ethical veganism also warrant antinatalist conclusions. I thus suggested that to be consistent in their ethical reasoning, moral vegans should not have children. William Bülow has kindly responded to my claims and offered a plausible reply, which, according to him, concludes that at least some moral vegans may resist antinatalism. In this short paper, I reply to Bülow.

This article provides a philosophical overview of different approaches to age and ageing. It is often assumed that our age is determined by the amount of time we have been alive. Here, I challenge this belief. I argue that there are at least three plausible, yet unsatisfactory, accounts to age and ageing: the chronological account, the biological account, and the experiential account. I show that all of them fall short of fully determining what it means to age. Addressing these problems, (...) I suggest the Two‐tier principle of age: whenever the three accounts of age contradict, combine the two accounts that differ the least, and reject the third. However, while this principle does solve some difficulties, it is itself vulnerable to problems; therefore I propose we should jettison it. I conclude that there are no accounts to ageing that are satisfactory; they all come with a bullet to bite. (shrink)

Employers sometimes use personality tests in hiring or specifically look for candidates with certain personality traits such as being social, outgoing, active, and extraverted. Therefore, they hire based on personality, specifically extraversion in part at least. The question arises whether this practice is morally permissible. We argue that, in a range of cases, it is not. The common belief is that, generally, it is not permissible to hire based on sex or race, and the wrongness of such hiring practices is (...) based on two widely accepted principles: the Relevance Principle and the Fairness Principle. The Relevance Principle states that hiring should be based on what is relevant to job performance, while the Fairness Principle states that hiring should be based on features that individuals can control. Since hiring based on sex or race violates these principles, it is wrong. However, we argue that, in a range of cases, hiring based on extraversion also violates these principles, and assuming the validity of the Relevance and the Fairness Principles, it follows that personality discrimination is morally wrong in those cases. (shrink)

A few decades from now, it might become possible to gestate fetuses in artificial wombs. Ectogestation as this is called, raises major legal and ethical issues, especially for abortion rights. In countries allowing abortion, regulation often revolves around the viability threshold—the point in fetal development after which the fetus can survive outside the womb. How should viability be understood—and abortion thus regulated—after ectogestation? Should we ban, allow or require the use of artificial wombs as an alternative to standard abortions? Drawing (...) on Cohen, I evaluate three possible positions for the post-ectogestative abortion laws: restrictive, conservative and liberal. While the restrictive position appears untenable, I argue that the liberal and conservative positions can be combined to form a legally and morally coherent basis for post-ectogestative abortion legislation, offering an improvement from the point of both prolife and prochoice positions. (shrink)

Calum Miller recently argued that a commitment to a very modest form of egalitarianism—equality between non-disabled human adults—implies fetal personhood. Miller claims that the most plausible basis for human equality is in being human—an attribute which fetuses have—therefore, abortion is likely to be morally wrong. In this paper, I offer a plausible defence for the view that equality between non-disabled human adults does not imply fetal personhood. I also offer a challenge for Miller’s view.

García-Barranquero et al explore the desirability of human ageing. They differentiate between chronological and biological views of ageing and contend that the positive aspects of ageing are solely linked to chronological ageing. Consequently, the authors embrace the potential for technological interventions in biological ageing. Contrary to their stance, I argue that there are sometimes desirable aspects associated with biological ageing. Therefore, proposals aiming to eliminate, mitigate or diminish biological ageing are not without problems.

Robert Sparrow argues that genome editing is unlikely to be person-affecting for the foreseeable future and, as a result, will neither benefit nor harm edited individuals. We regard Sparrow’...

In an article of this journal, Perry Hendricks makes a novel argument for the immorality of abortion. According to his impairment argument, abortion is immoral because: (a) it is wrong to impair a fetus to the nth degree, such as causing the fetus to have fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS); (b) it is wrong to impair a fetus to the n+1 degree (to cause the fetus to be more impaired than to have FAS); (c) killing the fetus impairs the fetus to (...) the n+1 degree (causes it to be more impaired than to have FAS); (d) abortion kills the fetus; (e) therefore, abortion is immoral. The impairment argument is a promising account for the wrongness of abortion because it does not rely on the controversial metaphysical premise that a fetus is a person. This article aims to show, that despite some immediate advantages over the rival theories of the immorality of abortion there is a reason to believe that the impairment argument is untenable. That is because there are goods that can be achieved by abortion but that cannot be achieved by impairing the fetus. (shrink)

This paper defends and develops Elizabeth Harman’s Actual Future Principle with a concept called Schrödinger’s Fetus. I argue that all early fetuses are Schrödinger’s Fetuses: those early fetuses that survive and become conscious beings have full moral status already as early fetuses, but those fetuses that die as early fetuses lack moral status. With Schrödinger’s Fetus, it becomes possible to accept two widely held but contradictory intuitions to be true, and to avoid certain reductiones ad absurdum that pro-life and pro-choice (...) positions face. It also gives a simple solution to the problem of prenatal harm. (shrink)

Ellie Anderson had always known that she wanted to have children. Her mother, Louise, was aware of this wish. Ellie was designated male at birth, but according to news sources, identified as a girl from the age of three. She was hoping to undergo gender reassignment surgery at 18, but died unexpectedly at only 16, leaving Louise grappling not only with the grief of losing her daughter, but with a complex legal problem. Ellie had had her sperm frozen before starting (...) hormone treatment, specifically so that she would retain the chance of becoming a parent after her gender reassignment. Ellie had considered what might happen to the sperm if she died and was adamant that her children should be brought into the world. She made her mother promise to ensure that this would happen. But according to UK law, Ellie’s mother has no legal right to retain her sperm, or to use it to fulfil Ellie’s wishes. In this paper, we raise several key ethical questions on this case, namely: does a refusal to bring Ellie’s children into the world wrong her posthumously? Is Ellie’s mother morally entitled to use her daughter’s sperm as Ellie wished? Should the fact that Ellie was a minor at the time of her death or the fact that she was transgendered undermine her wish to have children? Can Ellie become a parent posthumously? We consider how these complex ethical questions could be approached. (shrink)

Lippert-Rasmussen and Petersen discuss my ‘Moral case for legal age change’ in their article ‘Age change, official age and fairness in health’. They argue that in important healthcare settings (such as distributing vital organs for dying patients), the state should treat people on the basis of their chronological age because chronological age is a better proxy for what matters from the point of view of justice than adjusted official age. While adjusted legal age should not be used in deciding who (...) gets scarce vital organs, I remind the readers that using chronological age as a proxy is problematic as well. Using age as a proxy could give wrong results and it is better, if possible, for states to use the vital information directly than use age as a proxy. (shrink)

In the article, Twin pregnancy, fetal reduction and the ‘all or nothing problem’, I argued that there is a moral problem in multifetal pregnancy reduction from a twin to a singleton pregnancy. Drawing on Horton’s original version of the ‘all or nothing problem’, I argued that there are two intuitively plausible claims in 2-to-1 MFPR: aborting both fetuses is morally permissible, aborting only one of the twin fetuses is morally wrong. Yet, with the assumption that one should select permissible choice (...) over impermissible choice, the two claims lead to a counter-intuitive conclusion: the woman ought to abort both fetuses rather than only one. It would be odd to promote such a pro-death view. Begović _et al_ discuss my article and offer insightful criticism, claiming, that there is no ‘all or nothing problem’ present in 2-to-1 MFPR. In this short reply, I respond to some of their criticism. (shrink)

Romanis has written another interesting and important paper on reproductive ethics entitled assisted gestative technologies.1 In this short commentary, I continue the discussion on the question of who should have access to AGTs. This commentary should not be understood as a critical reply but as a friendly extension of one of the paper’s themes. I am not trying to solve the question of who should have access to these technologies but I put forth some groundwork for future work. Romanis calls (...) AGTs new technologies that allow people to undertake gestation involving technological intervention—or to have another person or a device perform the reproductive and gestational labour on their behalf. People using AGTs might or might not use their own genetic material for reproduction. Romanis argues that these AGTs—such as uterus transplantation or artificial wombs—collectively raise ethical, legal and social issues that are distinct for example from assisted conception. One important question related to AGTs is who should have access to such technologies. This is crucial especially …. (shrink)

Blumenthal-Barby et al. (2022) present a nuanced and convincing case for the continued presence of moral and political philosophers in bioethics. We agree with the authors that philosophers should have a role in bioethical inquiry. However, we partly disagree on what that role should be. We assess the case taking our clues from a concern the authors mention – and another one that they do not directly address.

It is a common practice for authors of an academic work to thank the anonymous reviewers at the journal that is publishing it. Allegedly, scholars thank the reviewers because their comments improved the paper and thanking them is a proper way to show gratitude to them. Yet often, a paper that is eventually accepted by one journal is first rejected by other journals, and even though those journals’ reviewers also supply comments that improve the quality of the work, those reviewers (...) are not customarily thanked. We contacted prominent scholars in bioethics and philosophy of medicine and asked whether thanking such reviewers would be a welcome trend. Having received responses from 107 scholars, we discuss the suggested proposal in light of both philosophical argument and the results of this survey. We argue that when an author’s work is published, the author should thank the reviewers whose comments improved the paper regardless of whether those reviewers’ journals rejected or accepted the work. That is because scholars should show gratitude to those who deserve it, and those whose comments improved the paper deserve gratitude. We also consider objections against this practice raised by scholars and show why they are not entirely persuasive. (shrink)

Is it wrong to create a blind child, for example by in vitro fertilization, if you could create a sighted child instead? Intuitively many people believe it is wrong, but this belief is difficult to justify. When there is a possibility to create and select either ‘blind’ or ‘sighted’ embryos choosing a set of ‘blind’ embryos seems to harm no-one since choosing ‘sighted’ embryos would create a different child altogether. So when the parents choose ‘blind’ embryos, they give some specific (...) individual a life that is the only option for her. Because her life is worth living (as blind peoples’ lives are), the parents have not wronged the child by creating her. This is the reasoning behind the famous non-identity problem. I suggest that the non-identity problem is based on a misunderstanding. I claim that when choosing a ‘blind’ embryo, prospective parents harm ‘their child’, whoever she or he will be. Put another way: parents harm their child in the de dicto sense and that is morally wrong. (shrink)

The aim of this commentary is to critically examine Matti Häyry’s article ‘Just Better Utilitarianism’, where he argues that liberal utilitarianism can offer a basis for moral and political choices in bioethics and thus could be helpful in decision-making. This commentary, while generally sympathetic to Häyry’s perspective, argues that Häyry should expand on who belongs to our moral community because, to solve practical ethical issues, we need to determine who (and what) deserves our moral consideration. Challenging Häyry’s principle of actual (...) or prospective existence, this commentary suggests that – at least sometimes – the quality of life of those who will never come into existence matters. In a similar vein, this commentary aims to show that determining how to treat mindless humans such as fetuses might pose difficulties for liberal utilitarianism unless the issue of the boundaries of the moral community is addressed. (shrink)

In ‘Moral case for legal age change’, I argue that sometimes people should be allowed to change their age. I refute six immediate objections against the view that age change is permissible. I argue that the objections cannot show that legal age change should always be prohibited. In this paper, I consider some further objections against legal age change raised by Iain Brassington, Toni Saad and William Simkulet. I argue that the objections fail to show that age change should never (...) be allowed. (shrink)

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

On 24 July 2022, the landmark decision Roe v. Wade (1973), that secured a right to abortion for decades, was overruled by the US Supreme Court. The Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organisation severely restricts access to legal abortion care in the USA, since it will give the states the power to ban abortion. It has been claimed that overruling Roe will have disproportionate impacts on women of color and that restricting access to abortion contributes to or (...) amounts to structural racism. In this paper, we consider whether restricting abortion access as a consequence of overruling Roe could be understood as discrimination against women of color (and women in general). We argue that banning abortion is indirectly discriminatory against women of color and directly (but neither indirectly, nor structurally) discriminatory against women in general. (shrink)

We recently suggested that there are both pragmatic and normative reasons to classify pregnancy as a disease. Several scholars argued against our claims. In this response, we defend the disease view of pregnancy against their criticism. We claim that the dysfunctional account of disease that some of our critics rely on has some counterintuitive results. Furthermore, we claim that our critics assume what needs to be argued that the primary function of our sexual organs is to reproduce. Since only a (...) small percentage of sexual intercourse leads to pregnancy, it is far from obvious that reproduction is the primary biological function of our sexual organs. We also claim that while taking pregnancy itself as a reference class could avoid the conclusion that pregnancy is a disease, the strategy is problematic since it renders the Boorsean approach to disease and health circular and effectively deprives it of any utility in determining whether a particular phenomenon is a disease or not. (shrink)

Andrea Bidoli argues that ectogestation could be seen as an emancipatory intervention for women. Specifically, she claims that ectogestation would create unique conditions to reevaluate one’s reproductive preference, address certain specific negative social implications of gestation and childbirth, and that it is unfair to hold ectogestation to a higher standard than other innovations such as modern contraceptives and non-medical egg freezing. In this commentary, I claim that Bidoli—like so many others—unjustly bypasses men and their reproductive desires. For a long time, (...) the discussion of the ethics of ectogenesis has focused on women and their reproductive liberation. However, since in many countries, an increasing number of men in reproductive age face difficulties in finding a partner and lack access to other forms of assisted reproduction, it is men who need ectogestation the most. (shrink)

Pierson et al. (2024) conducted a survey of American bioethicists and compared their bioethical views to those of the general U.S. population. Recently, we also conducted a survey of researchers wo...

In 1975, The New England Journal of Medicine published James Rachels' article 'Active and Passive Euthanasia'. The argumentative method that Rachels introduced, the Bare Difference Argument (also known as the Contrast Strategy), became one of the most widely used tools in ethical reasoning. The argument, however, fails to show active euthanasia being morally permissible. It fails because Rachels takes the intuitions from the case where letting die is morally impermissible and applies the intuitions to cases where letting die is morally (...) permissible. While it is possible to create thought-experiments that are more analogous to euthanasia, in this respect, than Rachels' cases, they too are disanalogous to euthanasia with some of the relevant features. Creating the perfect analogy, however, would be a mistake too. Such a case would be too analogous; people would simply be divided on what kind of moral intuitions they would have. The problem thus highlights a methodological limit in philosophical bioethics and raises questions related to the roles of philosophical ethicists in the context of assisted dying. (shrink)

We often show a greater inclination to assist and avoid harming people identified as those at high risk of great harm than to assist and avoid harming people who will suffer similar harm but are not identified (as yet). Call this the identified person bias. Some ethicists think such bias is justified; others disagree and claim that the bias is discriminatory against statistical people. While the issue is present in public policy and politics, perhaps the most notable examples can be (...) found in medical ethics such as in ICU triage decisions made during the COVID‐19 pandemic. The Rule of Rescue, as the application of the identified person bias is sometimes called, states that spending large amounts of resources rescuing identifiable individuals who are in imminent danger is justified. In this paper, I show that our distorted attitudes toward time play a role in identified person bias. I claim that ICU triage decisions are better explained by a preference to treat people sooner rather than later, which is at least partially due to near bias (positive events are to be preferred to be near rather than distant), than by a preference to treat identified lives over statistical lives. Thus, another bias, near bias, is involved in the reasoning behind the identified person bias and the Rule of Rescue. (shrink)

In a recent JME paper, Matthew John Minehan applies John Rawls’ veil of ignorance against Judith Thomson’s famous violinist argument for the permissibility of abortion. Minehan asks readers to ‘imagine that one morning you are back to back in bed with another person. One of you is conscious and the other unconscious. You do not know which one you are’. Since from this position of ignorance, you have an equal chance of being the unconscious violinist and the conscious person attached (...) to him, it would be rational to oppose a right for detachment. Likewise, behind the veil of ignorance, it is rational to oppose abortions since you could be the fetus, Minehan claims. This paper provides a plausible reply to this argument. (shrink)

In their important article, Haward et al. (2020) discuss whether guidelines for treating extremely premature babies should be altered to free up ventilators during crises such as COVID-19 pandemic. The authors’ claim is that premature babies do not deserve special consideration for ventilator treatment but merely equal consideration. In this brief commentary, I continue their discussion by considering additional factors that may help us determine whom we should save in a crisis: babies or the elderly.

Discrimination is an important real-life issue that affects many individuals and groups. It is also a fruitful field of study that intersects several disciplines and methods. This Special Section brings together papers on discrimination and prioritization in healthcare from leading scholars in bioethics and closely related fields.

In this article I use Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s existential phenomenology as a method for presenting a disclosing critique of aphonia as the loss of a political voice of one’s own. I claim that aphonia is a phenomenon that is qualitatively different from a lack of opportunities for democratic participation and a lack of the communicative capabilities required for effective political participation. I give examples from sociological literature on social exclusion and political apathy, and then diagnose them using Merleau-Ponty’s concepts of operative (...) intentionality and the lived body. A picture emerges of aphonia as the diminishing of the expressive modality of the lived body. This can lead to the inability to perceive oneself as a capable public speaker and the public realm as a welcoming field of possibilities for political engagement. I propose that democratic theory should consider the way that the negative social experiences of social marginalization can diminish, or even completely take away, the capability to authentically give a voice to one’s experiences in public on one’s own terms. I conclude with a call for grass-roots alternatives towards engendering political participation among marginalized groups through a “therapeutic” approach to political inclusion. (shrink)

In this paper, we identify some key features of what makes something a disease, and consider whether these apply to pregnancy. We argue that there are some compelling grounds for regarding pregnancy as a disease. Like a disease, pregnancy affects the health of the pregnant person, causing a range of symptoms from discomfort to death. Like a disease, pregnancy can be treated medically. Like a disease, pregnancy is caused by a pathogen, an external organism invading the host’s body. Like a (...) disease, the risk of getting pregnant can be reduced by using prophylactic measures. We address the question of whether the ‘normality’ of pregnancy, its current necessity for human survival, or the value often attached to it are reasons to reject the view that pregnancy is a disease. We point out that applying theories of disease to the case of pregnancy, can in many cases illuminate inconsistencies and problems within these theories. Finally, we show that it is difficult to find one theory of disease that captures all paradigm cases of diseases, while convincingly excluding pregnancy. We conclude that there are both normative and pragmatic reasons to consider pregnancy a disease. (shrink)

Joona Räsänen has argued that pro‐life arguments against the permissibility of infanticide are not persuasive, and fail to show it to be immoral. We responded to Räsänen’s arguments, concluding that his critique of pro‐life arguments was misplaced. Räsänen has recently replied in ‘Why pro‐life arguments still are not convincing: A reply to my critics’, providing some additional arguments as to why he does not find pro‐life arguments against infanticide convincing. Here, we respond briefly to Räsänen’s critique of the substance (...) view, and also to his most important claim: that possession of a right to life by an infant does not rule out the permissibility of infanticide. We demonstrate that this claim is unfounded, and conclude that Räsänen has not refuted pro‐life arguments against infanticide. (shrink)

Joona Räsänen, in his article ‘Ectogenesis, abortion and a right to the death of the fetus’, has argued for the view that parents have a right to the death of the fetus. In this article, I will explicate the three arguments Räsänen defends, and show that two of them have false or unmotivated premises and hence fail, and that the support he offers for his third argument is inconsistent with other views he expresses in his article. Therefore, I conclude (...) that there is no right to the death of the fetus—or, if there is one, Räsänen has not shown it. (shrink)

Joona Räsänen has proposed a concept he calls Schrödinger’s Fetus as a solution to reconciling what he believes are two widely held but contradictory intuitions. I show that Elizabeth Harman’s Actual Future Principle, upon which Schrödinger’s Fetus is based, uses a more convincing account of personhood. I also argue that both Räsänen and Harman, by embracing animalism, weaken their arguments by allowing Don Marquis’ ‘future like ours’ argument for the immorality of abortion into the frame.