By L. Syd M Johnson When Brain Death/Death by Neurologic Criteria (BD/DNC) occurs during pregnancy, complex questions emerge concerning the moral and legal status of the brain dead pregnant person, the continuation of life-sustaining treatment to save a fetus, the exploitation of pregnant bodies, and the potential conflicts between the prior, autonomous wishes of pregnant […]
Category: Abortion
Adriana Smith is Far From the First Incubator
By Joel Cox & Allison Bajada “We’re just human incubators to them,” writes Gonzalez-Ramirez for The Cut. Those who are disturbed by the recent case of Adriana Smith – like this author – may not realize how often bodies are used as incubators through normothermic regional perfusion (NRP) for organ donation. For those unaware, doctors […]
Abortion, Infanticide, and the Wrongness of Killing
By James G. Robinson What makes it wrong to kill a human being? A simple and commonly invoked answer is that human beings have a right to life and killing them would violate this right. For many ethicists, however, the right to life is not something that we all have simply because we are members […]
Abortion in Germany – a (short) moment of hope for decriminalisation?
By Hilary Bowman-Smart, Christin Hempeler. The long-standing political and social debate around abortion has experienced a resurgence in many countries. Over the 20th century, significant progress has been made on reproductive rights, including access to abortion services. However, recent years have seen much of that progress falter or slide backwards. We saw the fall of […]
Trumping rights?
By Ezio Di Nucci. Our team just finished another round of the ethics course at Copenhagen’s medical school, and we are now grading exams, which this semester included the following case study: A 32-year-old woman is in early labor. Tests indicate fetal hypoxia, i.e., that the fetus lacks sufficient oxygen. Various attempts are made to […]
How state abortion policies are impacting future physicians
By Kellen Mermin-Bunnell and Ariana Traub. In June 2022, the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision overruled the federal right to abortion. This decision has long-standing implications not just for reproductive healthcare but for all healthcare in the US. Since the decision, individual states have created their own laws protecting, limiting, or banning abortion. […]
Preservation of Foetus in case of medical termination of Pregnancy of sexual assault victims: An Indian perspective
By Aditi Srivastava. The intersection of laws relating to medical termination of pregnancy and criminal procedure gives rise to complex and critical medico-legal issues. This blog post delves into one such issue, that is, the role of foetal tissue preservation in cases of medical termination of pregnancy involving sexual assault victims, in the Indian context. […]
Abortion and regret
By Anthony McCarthy Some women regret their abortions. Does this tell us anything interesting about whether abortion is, morally or prudentially, a choice worth making? A number of empirical papers have assessed the prevalence of abortion regret, reporting that a large majority of women do not regret their abortions. While use of the Turnaway Study data […]
Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization and doctors’ conscientious commitment to provide abortion care
By Alberto Giubilini, Udo Schuklenk, Francesca Minerva. Julian Savulescu. The reversal of the 1973 Roe v Wade ruling by the US Supreme Court in the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization removed the Constitutional protection of women’s right to access abortion services in the US. This decision has resulted in renewed interest in the […]
Coney Barrett´s juxtaposition: covid = abortion?
By Ezio Di Nucci. While the left was busy making excuses for vaccine mandates, conservatives saw an opportunity: if autonomy could be sacrificed on the altar of public health, then the modest gains made against patriarchal oppression during the 20th century might no longer be beyond reach, early in the 21st. In December 2021, during […]