It’s another blow to fatherhood, the traditional family, and all things good and pure, squeals the Daily Heil.* What could raise such spleen? By the looks of it, it’s Part 2 of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act (2008), although the paper doesn’t have the good grace to provide a link. This piece of legislation reduces […]
Category: Life and Death
Purdy and the Role of the Law
Having spent a chunk of my weekend reading the Purdy ruling, one of the things that it seems to illustrate is the way in which ethics and law sometimes seem to come apart. The ruling notes that Purdy and Puente are faced with “an impossible dilemma”, and that “although Mr Puente would be willing to […]
Update on Purdy
Debbie Purdy has lost her case for clarification of the law on assisted suicide. Details are all over your preferred news source: the BBC site seems to have crashed at the moment. I’ll post something more thought-through later. […]
Shit Priorities
Here’s a handful of moral statements that, I guess, many people would take to be trivially true: We ought to save lives where possible; Saving more lives is better than saving fewer; It is a good thing to save lives as efficiently as possible; Saving lives is more important than improving tolerable lives. Nothing too […]
Soran Reader on Euthanasia
Soran Reader (Philosophy, Durham) provides an insight into her own experience of being diagnosed with a brain tumour, and the availability or otherwise of euthanasia in the UK, in this week’s Times Higher Education. It’s powerful stuff. [T]he possibility that really threatens to break me is that I may be unable to remember my children. […]
Gordon Brown opposes something that noone wants anyway…
Gordon Brown was interviewed on the radio this morning by Cormack Murphy O’Connor, Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster. A titanic clash of intellects it was not. Apparently Super Gord is against reforming the laws on assisted suicide: In a interview with Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor, a guest editor on Today, Mr Brown was asked about calls […]
Personhood in Colorado: Update
I’m not sure if it’s definite yet, but at time of writing (10am GMT on the fifth), it looks like Colorado voters have overwhelmingly rejected proposals to alter the constitution to extend the definition of “person” to the point of fertilisation. Would it be too provocative to express happiness about this small victory for moral and […]
There’s going to be some kind of vote in America…
You may be aware that some Americans are going to be casting votes on… oh, something or other, this week. In Colorado, they’ll be doing the presidential shtick – but they’ll also be voting on whether to accept an amendment to the State constitution that would extend the definition of “person” to include all humans […]