By Elizabeth Chloe Romanis. Sci-fi stories about the artificial womb abound – from Brave New World to the Growing Season, and now that scientists are seemingly making progress towards technology that might be partially capable of facilitating the process of gestation ex utero, there has emerged exciting academic debate about the potential implications. There is […]
Latest articles
How should we regulate child sex robots: restriction or experimentation?
By John Danaher This post is part of a series on ethical and legal perspectives in sexual and reproductive health first posted on the BMJ Sexual and Reproductive Health blog. In 2017, the Crown Prosecution Services (CPS) decided to clamp down on the importation of child sex dolls into the UK. In doing so, they faced […]
Disability, sexual rights and sexual duties: still puzzling after all this time?
By Ezio Di Nucci Steven J. Firth and Ivars Neiders (thanks! our little debate is ‘fun’ and, as you say, extremely important) have responded to my defense of the sexual rights puzzle according to which ‘universal positive sexual rights are incompatible with universal negative sexual rights’ by arguing that: There is a difference between ‘positive rights […]
The challenge of HIV decriminalisation
By Matthew Weait This post is part of a series on ethical and legal perspectives in sexual and reproductive health first posted on the BMJ Sexual and Reproductive Health blog. Ever since the discovery of HIV and its modes of transmission there has been a debate about the circumstances in which it is legitimate to criminalise those who […]
Baselining sexual rights as health care rights
By Steven J. Firth and Ivars Neiders We would both like to thank Ezio Di Nucci for his continued involvement in the matter of sexual rights as health care rights. We cannot stress enough the importance to disabled persons of advancing this debate, and we are certain of Di Nucci’s well-meaning intentions. Moreover, we acknowledge that […]
Stopping kids heading the ball misses the goal
By David Shaw On the 16th of January it was reported that the Scottish Football Association is to ban children under the age of 12 from heading the ball at football training. The change is due to the results of a study published in 2019, which showed that death rates from neurodegenerative disease including dementia […]
After death let men donate sperm to infertile people
By Nathan Hodson and Joshua Parker Of all the revolutionary advances provided by artificial reproductive techniques, few would have imagined that it would allow men to have their sperm removed after death and used to successfully produce offspring. Yet recent cases show that it is possible and apparently safe. In these cases it is the loved ones of the man […]
Sexual rights as healthcare rights?
By Ezio Di Nucci Thanks to Steven J. Firth and Ivars Neiders for continuing to engage with my ‘absurd’ sexual rights puzzle, according to which ‘universal positive sexual rights are incompatible with universal negative sexual rights’. In this short post I will address their proposed solution to the puzzle, which consists in normalizing sexual rights […]
Capacity-based decision-making for transgender adolescents
By Timothy F. Murphy This post is part of a series on ethical and legal perspectives in sexual and reproductive health first posted on the BMJ Sexual and Reproductive Health blog. Readers may be interested in the companion piece ‘Transgender children: limits on consent to permanent interventions’ by Heather Brunskell-Evans. Academics, clinicians, and trans people have focused […]
Transgender children: limits on consent to permanent interventions
By Heather Brunskell-Evans This post is part of a series on ethical and legal perspectives in sexual and reproductive health first posted on the BMJ Sexual and Reproductive Health blog. Be sure to check out the companion piece ‘Capacity-based decision-making for transgender adolescents’ by Timothy F. Murphy. When we talk about ‘transgender children’, we are referring […]