In my previous post, Does Abortion Benefit the Fetus? A Critique of Himma Part 1, I discussed Kenneth Einar Himma’s argument that even if a fetus is a human being, laws permitting feticide are compatible with the harm principle.I elaborated an important objection to Himma’s argument, an objection articulated by Mark Murphy, which appeals to […]
Entries Tagged as 'David Boonin'
Does Abortion Benefit the Fetus? A Critique of Himma Part 2
December 24th, 2009 7 Comments
Tags: Abortion · Augustine · David Boonin · Eschatology · Feticide · Infanticide · Kenneth Einar Himma · Lalia Williamson · Mark Murphy
Boonin’s Defense of the Sentience Criterion: A Critique Part II
July 16th, 2009 Comments Off on Boonin’s Defense of the Sentience Criterion: A Critique Part II
In Boonin’s Defense of the Sentience Criterion: A Critique Part I, I noted that a defender of the permissibility of feticide, who does not also want to endorse infanticide and who defends the sentience criterion, must “identify a reason for holding that the potential of a human brain is morally relevant after” the fetus acquires […]
Tags: Abortion · David Boonin · Don Marquis · Ethics and Medicine · Feticide · Sentience
Boonin’s Defense of the Sentience Criterion: A Critique Part I
July 15th, 2009 3 Comments
This two-part series was originally published as: Matthew Flannagan “Boonin’s Defense of the Sentience Criterion: A Critique” Ethics and Medicine – An International Journal of Bioethics Vol 25:2 (Summer 2009) 95-106. It is reproduced on this blog with permission. Abstract Defenders of the permissibility of feticide commonly argue that killing an organism is not homicide […]
Tags: Abortion · David Boonin · Don Marquis · Ethics and Medicine · Feticide · Sentience
Is Abortion Liberal? Part 2
October 27th, 2008 27 Comments
In my previous post, Is Abortion Liberal? Part 1, I argued that liberals who support the non-initiation of force principle can support abortion only on two grounds; (a) the fetus is a person but its existence inside the mother without her consent constitutes a form aggression, and hence, the mother’s action of killing it is […]
Tags: Abortion · Classical Liberalism · David Boonin · Feticide · Francis Beckwith · Liberalism · Libertarianism · Michael Tooley · Peter Cresswell · Rodney Hide
New Publication
November 21st, 2007 Comments Off on New Publication
I just received word from the Editor of The Journal of Ethics and Medicine that my article “Boonin’s Defense of the Sentience Criteria: A Critique” has been accepted for publication in a future issue (the exact issue is still being decided). There may be some minor amendments made but at present the following is the […]
Tags: Abortion · David Boonin · Ethics · Feticide · Published
A common objection to belief in the God of the Bible is that a good, kind, and loving deity would never command the wholesale slaughter of nations. In the tradition of his popular Is God a Moral Monster?, Paul Copan teams up with Matthew Flannagan to tackle some of the most confusing and uncomfortable passages of Scripture. Together they help the Christian and nonbeliever alike understand the biblical, theological, philosophical, and ethical implications of Old Testament warfare passages.
