Michael Green   Manuel Vargas   phone, office information Additional Reading on Euthanasia Additional Reading on Rationing Euthanasia   Assisted suicide in general   Oregon guide for physician-assisted suicide   Physician-assisted suicide in Oregon   Physician-assisted suicide survey, NYT, April 1998   Physician-assisted suicide survey, WP, April 1998   Timothy Quill Moral philosophy Rationing   Criteria for rationing organs   Prisoners' organs for sale		Medical Ethics: Additional Reading on Abortion More philosophical material The Journal of Philosophy printed three short replies to Don Marquis's article (Journal of Philosophy 87 (1990): 262-277). I would not recommend any of them to students. Still, here's how they break down: 1) Ann E. Cudd, "Sensationalized Philosophy: A Reply to Marquis's 'Why Abortion is Immoral'" Cudd makes the kind of point you would expect from Thomson: Marquis left out the mother's rights. I think that's true and a good point. She makes the point in an unecessarily contentious way, however. She says Marquis presents his conclusion as if he'd shown killing was absolutely wrong as opposed to prima facie wrong. But, of course, he did no such thing: see Marquis, p. 190. To say X is prima facie wrong is to say that it's presumed wrong; other considerations may show that X is not wrong. To say that X is absolutely wrong is to say that it is definitely wrong and that no other considerations could alter that conclusion. Still, the basic point remains: Marquis needs a balancing principle and he doesn't provide one. 2) Peter K. McInerney, "Does a Fetus Have a Future-Like-Ours?" McInerney tries to show that fetuses don't have a personal future. He draws on some of the professional literature on the problem of personal identity, according to which what makes B a later stage of the person A is a complex set of psychological connections. Fetuses don't have those kinds of connections with future persons. Consequently, they do not have futures as persons. I'm suspicious of this argument because I'm suspicious of the suggestion that it has been definitively proven in the literature on personal identity that those kinds of psychological connections are necessary conditions for A and B to be the same person. I think I could suffer amnesia and very profound character changes and still be the same person. Want to read something that may convince you of that? See Bernard Williams, "The Self and the Future," reprinted in Perry, Personal Identity and Williams, Problems of the Self. 3) Alastair Norcross, "Killing, Abortion, and Contraception: A Reply to Marquis" Norcross tries to make the contraception objection, but he does so in a confusingly multi-faceted way; I only read it quickly, but I had a lot of trouble identifying which points struck him as the most important ones. Norcross also undercuts his own argument to a large extent. He gives examples suggesting that Marquis is right about why killing is wrong and then argues for the equivalency of killing and preventing conception. It looks like he's heading for the ultra-Catholic result: contraception is seriously immoral, just like killing. But that's not what he intended to do; he's aiming in the opposite direction, for the claim that contraception is legitimate and thus that Marquis must be wrong about the morality of killing. In the end, he gives us a promissory note. On the last page, he says there are additional reasons why killing is wrong and these distinguish the contraception (and abortion) from the "killing the adult" cases. He says that these additional arguments will appear in, you guessed it, another article. Current news Here's a quick summary of the political action surrounding abortion, as reported on the McNeil/Lehrer NewsHour in January 1997. It isn't edifying, but it tells you where the political actors expect to make hay on this topic. Court Cases Roe v. Wade The case that started it all. You can read the whole decision or an edited version without moving from your chair. In addition, you can get a quick summary and listen to the oral argument. Isn't the internet neat? Alternately, you can get some exercise and look it up in the law library: the case number is 410 U.S. 113 (1973). You don't know how to use a legal citation? Ask the librarians. My mother's a librarian, they love stuff like that, trust me. Planned Parenthood v. Casey This case involved fairly severe restrictions on the right to abortion. It's the most recent major case the Supreme Court has decided and the fact that it was so closely decided by a bitterly divided court strikes many as evidence that Roe is in jeopardy. Get the gist, the whole decision, or the oral arguments here. Or, get it there: 505 U.S. 833 (1992) This page was originally posted on 4/29/98; 5:38:00 PM and was last built on 4/29/98; 5:38:07 PM with BBEdit and Frontier 5 on a Macintosh running System 8.0.