It’s going to be a little while before regular blogging resumes here – I’m aiming to get back up to speed in the next 10 days or so – but, in the meantime, the special edition of the JME devoted to The Paper Of Which We Do Not Speak is now out and available here.  Some of the papers are open access; others aren’t.

For better or worse, part of being unable to do much blogging at the moment is that I’m not going to be around much to mod any comments that come in – as I’m sure they will – over the next few days.  Don’t go thinking you’re being blocked: it’s much more likely that I’m marking essays.

Sadly, the list entitled “Great Moments in Italian Pop” is short; but the entry that must surely be at the top is probably very near the top of the list entitled “Great Moments in All Pop”.  It’s a 1972 song by Adriano Celentano.

Prisencolinensinainciusol.

It’s pure gibberish – a parody of what anglophone pop sounds like to people who don’t speak English.

I mention it here for a couple of reasons.  The first is that it’s great.  The second is that it’s a nice way of talking about people who appear to be going through the motions of thinking about ethical matters, but who just get it wrong, and are actually talking gibberish.

Via Dominic Wilkinson, this gem from BioEdge is a lovely example of bioethical prisencolinensinainciusol.  On the face of it, it’s a plea for consistency when it comes to policymaking.

[I]n the Australian state of Queensland [...], the police union has argued that pregnant women who abuse alcohol should be forced to live in safe houses. “Those [unborn] children also deserve a right to full life and health and should not be disadvantaged simply because of the actions or inaction of their birth mother,” said Union president Ian Leavers.

Obviously this is a controversial issue, but I can’t understand how one can both defend access to legal abortion and lock up women who might harm their children.

The link provided is to The Australian, which is behind a paywall, so not something I can access.  However, News.com.au carries the story, too, reporting Union president Levers to have said that the state should be able to intervene in cases where children are at risk of foetal alcohol syndrome and drug addictions.

“Those children also deserve the right to a full life and health and should not be disadvantaged simply because of the actions or inaction of their birth mother.  The state must have the ability to intervene and protect the unborn child when its mother refuses, or is incapable or unwilling to do so.”

Mr Leavers said tougher laws would complement the criminal code, which provides for a charge of killing an unborn child or grievous bodily harm for any person who violently kills or harms an unborn child.

This is a bit odd, all told.  I mean: it might be easy enough to agree that pregnant women probably ought to reduce, or even eliminate, certain behaviours.  But the idea that that might be a matter for the law is very strange indeed.  What would the sanction be?  Is the idea that it’d be better for pregnant women to be in prison?  Fined?  And what about the plausible claim that alcohol or drug abuse is itself a health problem?  Or the distinct possibility that women who do drink or use drugs are much less likely to seek any medical advice at all during their pregnancy if they think that the state might punish them for their behaviour, thereby making a suboptimal situation even worse?  Legal intervention of the sort indicated would be both cack-handed and unjust.

But what about BioEdge‘s plea for consistency?  From what I can see, there’s a fairly obvious set of rejoinders.  First, the police union can say what it likes about what the law should be, but the role of the police is to enforce the law as it stands.  So not interfering with a woman’s legal right to abortion is not the same as defending it.  Likewise, mooting the idea that women might be sanctioned for risking the health of the foetus is not the same as locking women up.  BioEdge seems to have got the difference between voicing an idea, and enforcing a policy, utterly the wrong way around.  BioEdge‘s writer makes it sound like a moral argument is being made; but, really, it isn’t.  Second, that it’s odd to defend abortion but advocate sanctions against risky behaviour in pregnant women may be true – I mean, it’s not a crazy suggestion – but it doesn’t follow from that that one ought to change one’s mind about abortion (which is, I think, given BioEdge‘s commitments generally, what the implication is): all else being equal, and given a whole truckload of secondary arguments about the moral status of the foetus and the moral status of the mother, it’s at least prima facie more likely that it’s the risky behaviour claim that’s off.  Third, that the representative of a policing union has made a statement about what the law should be is in no way an indication that that statement should be taken seriously.

Come on, BioEdge.  Fair play to you: you look like you’re doing the job… but… Prisencolinensinainciusol.

Maybe there’ll be richer pickings from the other story behind the link.  In Tasmania,

the premier and deputy premier have released a long report on legalised euthanasia. They insist that there is no “sound evidence” of potential elder abuse. However, rates of child abuse are nearly 60% higher there than in other Australian states. Isn’t that a bit inconsistent? The kind of people who abuse children probably won’t mind abusing grannies.

Ummm… wait a sec: What?

Today’s blast of righteous indignation is directed towards New Mexico.  House Bill 206 says, in essence, that… well, it’s short, so here it is in full:

HOUSE BILL 206

51ST LEGISLATURE - STATE OF NEW MEXICO - FIRST SESSION, 2013

INTRODUCED BY

Cathrynn N. Brown

AN ACT

RELATING TO CRIMINAL LAW; SPECIFYING PROCURING OF AN ABORTION AS TAMPERING WITH EVIDENCE IN CASES OF CRIMINAL SEXUAL PENETRATION OR INCEST.

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF NEW MEXICO:

SECTION 1.  Section 30-22-5 NMSA 1978 (being Laws 1963, Chapter 303, Section 22-5, as amended) is amended to read:

“30-22-5.  TAMPERING WITH EVIDENCE.–

A.  Tampering with evidence consists of destroying, changing, hiding, placing or fabricating any physical evidence with intent to prevent the apprehension, prosecution or conviction of any person or to throw suspicion of the commission of a crime upon another.

B.  Tampering with evidence shall include procuring or facilitating an abortion, or compelling or coercing another to obtain an abortion, of a fetus that is the result of criminal sexual penetration or incest with the intent to destroy evidence of the crime.

C.  Whoever commits tampering with evidence shall be punished as follows:

(1)  if the highest crime for which tampering with evidence is committed is a capital or first degree felony or a second degree felony, the person committing tampering with evidence is guilty of a third degree felony;

(2)  if the highest crime for which tampering with evidence is committed is a third degree felony or a fourth degree felony, the person committing tampering with evidence is guilty of a fourth degree felony;

(3)  if the highest crime for which tampering with evidence is committed is a misdemeanor or a petty misdemeanor, the person committing tampering with evidence is guilty of a petty misdemeanor; and

(4)  if the highest crime for which tampering with evidence is committed is indeterminate, the person committing tampering with evidence is guilty of a fourth degree felony.”

SECTION 2.  EFFECTIVE DATE.–The effective date of the provisions of this act is July 1, 2013.

The new bit is section B.

In a statement, the congresswoman who introduced the Bill, one Cathrynn Brown, said that her intention was to punish the person who commits incest or rape and then procures or facilitates an abortion to destroy the evidence of the crime.

Hmmm.  Except that that’s not what it says, is it?  Maybe she should read the text of her own Bill.  It talks about procuring an abortion, as well as compelling or coercing another person to have one.

I think that the second bit is actually fairly unobjectionable.  To compel someone to have a medical procedure, whomever that someone is, and whatever the procedure, is to wrong them; and if you compel them to have the procedure in order to remove evidence of another wrong, then the wrongness is multiplied.  But, y’know… that first bit… um… more…

In the wake of Savita Halappanavar’s death, a statement was issued by the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference.  The whole thing is available here.  However, I think that a couple of paragraphs is particularly worth picking out:

Where a seriously ill pregnant woman needs medical treatment which may put the life of her baby at risk, such treatments are ethically permissible provided every effort has been made to save the life of both the mother and her baby.

Whereas abortion is the direct and intentional destruction of an unborn baby and is gravely immoral in all circumstances, this is different from medical treatments which do not directly and intentionally seek to end the life of the unborn baby. Current law and medical guidelines in Ireland allow nurses and doctors in Irish hospitals to apply this vital distinction in practice while upholding the equal right to life of both a mother and her unborn baby.

I think that the first of these paragraphs is pretty unexceptionable, and describes something approaching the default setting for medical interventions anyway.  We might want to talk about “reasonable efforts” rather than “every effort”, since the latter does perhaps tend towards the onerous; but the general gist seems OK to me – almost trivially so.

Note, though, how a great deal rides on a distinction between different kinds of pregnancy-terminating procedure (PTP, from now on).  Notably, there’s a line drawn around abortion as a particular form of PTP.  The statement admits that certain PTPs may be permissible: what matters is that there should be no intention to kill.  Thus certain PTPs may be permissible notwithstanding foetal death if that death is not intended.  I take this to mean that, should the foetus survive, permissible PTPs would be those in which there is no sense that the procedure had gone wrong.  Abortion would be the kind of PTP that is impermissible, precisely because the intention is to kill.  (At the extreme, successful delivery is a kind of PTP, too, since it does end the pregnancy – it’s just that it’s the kind of PTP that we celebrate, rather than tolerate.)

Fairly clearly, the Bishops’ statement relies on some form of the Doctrine of Double Effect: the idea that there’s a moral difference to be had between intending some outcome, and foreseeing it.  If the Doctrine holds water, it would provide a way to say that acting in order to shorten a life may have one moral value or require one moral argument, but acting despite a foreseen shortening may have or require another.

Now: put that slightly to one side, but keep it simmering while we look at something else. more…

The Liverpool Care Pathway provides a rubric for managing the care of the terminally ill as they approach death.  A helpful pamphlet explaining what it is and what it does is available here.  Ideally, I’d quote the lot; but for the sake of efficiency, I’ll make do with an edited quotation:

What is the Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP)?

The LCP is a pathway/ document that outlines this best care, irrespective of your relative/ friend’s diagnosis or whether they are dying at home, in hospital, in a hospice or a care home.

Medication/ treatment

Medication will be reviewed and any medication that is not helpful at this time may be stopped and new medication may be prescribed so that if a symptom should occur there would be no delay in responding.

It may not be possible to give medication by mouth at this time, so medication may be given by injection or sometimes if needed, by a continuous infusion by a small pump called a Syringe Driver, which will be tailored to individual needs.

It may not be appropriate to continue some tests at this time; these may include blood tests or blood pressure and temperature monitoring.

The staff should talk to you about maintaining your relative’s/ friend’s comfort; this should include discussion regarding position in bed, use of a special mattress and regular mouth care. You may want to be involved in elements of care at this time.

Diminished need for food and drink

Initially, as weakness develops, the effort of eating and drinking may simply have become too much and at this time help with feeding might be appreciated.

Your relative/friend will be supported to take food and fluids by mouth for as long as possible.

When someone stops eating and drinking it can be hard to accept, even when we know they are dying. It may be a physical sign that they are not going to get better. Your relative/friend may neither want or need food and/or drink and decisions about the use of artificial fluids (a drip) will be made in the best interests of your relative/friends for this moment in time. This decision will be explained to you and reviewed regularly.

This can be paraphrased further: medically futile treatment may be withdrawn; the main criterion for administering drugs will be symptom alleviation rather than life extension; some testing may be discontinued; it’s possible that there’ll come a point when artificial nutrition and hydration are no longer in the patient’s best interest, and they might be withdrawn if and when that point is reached.

None of this is particularly cheery; but death rarely is.  more…

Guest post by Sorcha Uí Chonnachtaigh

I am going to, rather controversially, agree with one aspect of the statements of pro-life activists commenting on this case. That is not something I thought I’d ever say. Like, ever ever.

A statement issued by Youth Defence (one of Ireland’s most radical pro-life organisations) made the valid point that “Irish doctors are always obliged to intervene to save the life of a mother, even if that risks the life of her baby”. Because of some misconceptions about the reasons for Savita’s maltreatment, it is assumed that Ireland needs to reform its abortion law so that this never happens again.  While I would strongly support abortion law reform in Ireland, it is not necessary to ensure this never happens again.  Mere legal regulation of the status quo on abortion would prevent this.  As the (limited) law stands, this should never have happened at all. While some believe that legislation to regulate access to already lawful abortions constitutes law reform, any such legislation would not alter the current legal position – it would merely give meaningful access to abortions.

I don’t agree with anything else that has been included in pro-life posts/articles (stop throwing things at your computer screens), but more on that later.  First, I want to elaborate on this to clear up some of the misconceptions about Irish law that have been expressed in condemnations of the case around the web.

If you have clicked through to this post, it is very likely that you’ve already read about the facts of Savita’s case, first reported in the  Irish Times on 14 November, and at least some of the estensive commentary pieces available on the issues arising from this case (like this, and this, and this).  (These links here are to pieces by Irish people with more informed knowledge of the legal situation.)

For the sake of comprehensiveness, I’ll provide an edited summary of the facts of the case (as reported to the Irish Times by Savita’s husband Praveen): more…

There’s a great little article recently published in the BMJ about what it’s like to be the medic considering withdrawal of feeding from a neonate.

Survival is often much longer than most physicians think; reflecting on my previous patients, the median time from withdrawal of hydration to death was 10 days.

I had no idea it’d be that long.  I had no idea it’d be that long even for healthy adults who stopped drinking, let alone already-ill neonates.  (My scientifically-naïve intuition would have been that an adult body could stand up to more than an infant one.)

The fact is ethically neutral; and we need to be careful about skipping over the fact/ value boundary too easily.  But value claims bounce off, and are informed by, factual claims, and this is the sort of thing that might well be important when considering questions about withholding and withdrawing treatment, and about killing and letting die, and all the rest of it.

And, of course, the infant isn’t the only morally relevant actor in all this:

It is draining to be the most responsible physician. Everyone is looking to me to preside over and support this process. I am honest with the nurse when I say that it is getting more and more difficult to make my legs walk me on to this unit as the days elapse, that examining the baby is an indescribable mixture of compassion, revulsion, and pain.

I can see how that’d be.

Don’t worry: this isn’t another instance of me yammering on about the right to die or the right to induce death.

I’ve recently received a parcel; it contained a copy of this book by Leanne Bell, which happened to fall open at p 204.  On that page, you’ll find this passage:

Active euthanasia involves a deliberate act intended to kill [...].  This is illegal in England and Wales because it satisfies the definition of ‘unlawful killing’ and will therefore either be murder or manslaughter depending on the mens rea (that is, the state of mind) of the doctor at the time.  He is likely to face criminal prosecution, regardless of whether the patient and/or the family requested or consented to it.  By contrast, passive euthanasia involves the withholding or withdrawing of treatment from the patient, i.e. an omission rather than an act, and, in certain circumstances, can be legal. [emphasis mine - IB]

No.  Wrong.  Wrong on two fronts.  Withholding treatment may be an omission, but withdrawing it isn’t.  More importantly, while the active/ passive distinction boils down to one between administration and non-administration, it is simply not true that non-administration is the same as passive euthanasia.

Euthanasia requires the intention to end life based on a motive of beneficence directed at the person who will die.  Neither withdrawing nor withholding treatment indicates the intention to end life.  Only if you’re withdrawing or withholding treatment with the intention that this should end life have you committed passive euthanasia.

There’s a simple test you can run here: When withdrawing or withholding treatment, would it be coherent to hope for the patient’s survival – however miraculous - without further intervention?  It would not be coherent in cases of euthanasia, because you can’t intend that life should end and yet hope that it doesn’t.  It could be coherent otherwise.

Or another version of the same test: If you are considering withholding or withdrawing treatment and the patient does not die, would you see this as contrary to your intention?  If yes, you’re considering passive euthanasia; if no, you aren’t.

Bell is by no means alone in getting PE wrong.  The mistake is all over the place – both in the clinical ethics literature, and in the wider public domain.  I’m not wholly sure where it’s come from, but I suspect it may derive from Rachels having made it in”Active and Passive Euthanasia“, and then a little more explicitly in ”Killing and Letting Die“:

Many people believe that “passive euthanasia” – allowing terminal patients to die, rather than pointlessly prolonging their lives – is sometimes permissible; but they also believe that killing patients is always wrong.

I’ve got a lot of time for Rachels, and much of what he says on killing and letting die in these essays is good.  But this is wrong.  Even good essays can have wrinkles in them; and this is a big one.  And if it’s the source of the same mistake being made elsewhere, that’s quite serious. more…

Earlier today, Sarah Catt was jailed for 8 years for inducing the termination of her own pregnancy at 39 weeks’ gestation.  The transcript of the comments of Mr Justice Cooke, sentencing, is available here.

I don’t want for this to get bogged down in questions of the moral rights and wrongs of abortion, at whatever stage during the pregnancy it takes place, or with what the law should permit.  Rather, I just thought that I’d highlight a couple of aspects of Cooke’s comments.

12. You could well have been charged under Section 1 of the Infant Life (Preservation) Act 1929 for destruction of a child capable of being born alive. Section 1(2) of that Act provides a presumption in law that if a woman is pregnant for 28 weeks, the child en ventre sa mere is capable of being born alive.

[...]

16. There is no mitigation available by reference to the Abortion Act, whatever view one takes of its provisions which are, wrongly, liberally construed in practice so as to make abortion available essentially on demand prior to 24 weeks with the approval of registered medical practitioners. more…

Unsurprisingly, the ruling handed down last week in respect of Tony Nicklinson and “Martin” has generated a lot of comment.  A lot of that comment has disagreed with the ruling.  David Allen Green, the Staggers‘ legal correspondent and also known as the blogger Jack of Kent, tweeted that it was a “dreadful court decision… depriving a person of basic dignity“; and in the wake of Nicklinson’s death, added that he thought it was still “entirely open for courts to rule in his favour rather than blame Parliament“.  Over at the Practical Ethics blog, Roger Crisp suggests that the High Court might even have acted unlawfully.

Sympathetic as I am to Nicklinson’s basic moral claim, I think that such responses are mistaken.  Not in the sense of their being in any way disreputable – it’s just that I’d argue for a different conclusion.  But, as such, it’s the possibility of an argument that matters, and there’re arguments to be had either way, some of which will be powerful, and some of which will be less so.  That’s the nature of debate.

There are others, though, whose response seems to me to get things entirely wrong.  I’ll give one example from each side. more…