Toward a Libertarian Theory of Evictionism

There are not two but rather three views regarding the issue of abortion. The first two, pro life and pro choice, are well known. The present paper is dedicated to an elucidation of the third, evictionism. In this perspective, the pregnant woman is allowed to evict her unwanted fetus, but, if it is viable outside of the womb, she is not legally permitted, also, to put it to death, as would apply to abortion. In other words, abortion combines two very different acts, eviction and murder, and only the former is licit, under libertarian law.     

Ethical uneasiness and the need for open-ended reflexivity: the case of research into older people with a wish to die

This article focuses on research ethics in highly intimate research with possible impact on life and death. In order to stimulate an open-ended dialogue about research ethics, we reflect on four ethical challenges that came up during our research into older people with a wish to die. Drawing on our experiences, we discuss (1) the possibly confirming influence of our research on the death wish (moral experience of whether or not to disregard responsibility); (2) the suggested duty to intervene (moral experience of whether or not to compromise the person’s autonomy); (3) the researcher’s authority and power over the data (moral experience of threatening a person’s self-narrative) and (4) the dilemma of intimacy (moral experience of encountering the tragic). For guidance in addressing these challenges, we draw upon work on research ethics from phenomenological and care ethics scholars, as well as from those writing about relational ethics in health research. We suggest that being open about ethical uneasiness is important, because in most cases of a grey area, there are only open-ended answers needing an enquiring mind, rather than clear and fixed guidelines. Acknowledgement of ethical uneasiness and open-ended reflexivity are indispensable to constitute a morally good research practice.     

Good,Bad, and Captive Samaritans:

This paper adds-in pregnancy and consent to the abortion debate in the context of good samaritan arguments initiated by Judith Jarvis Thomson. Drawing upon legal and medical definitions, the abortion issue is reframed as the right of a woman to consent to what will be done to her body by the fetus rather than her right merely to choose what to do with her own body. This argument shifts abortion rights from the right to decisional autonomy established in Roe to the right to bodily integrity affirmed by samaritan case law. As a result, we see why women who are pregnant without their consent, in effect, are captive samaritans, a status unsubstantiated by either legislative statutes or legal precedents. Recasting abortion as a response to nonconsensual pregnancy opens new grounds guaranteeing women's reproductive rights.     

The right to life

In this issue is a lengthy, thought-provoking essay on the issues raised by unwanted pregnancy. Written by Robert Wennberg in 1984 for the Christian Scholar's Review (13:4), the article has been edited and condensed for our purposes and is quite relevant, I believe, for the student health population. Any practitioner who cares for students wrestling with these issues should at least acknowledge the moral and philosophical dilemmas presented. As one who has walked both sides of the argument, I find Wennberg's fair-mindedness compelling. In closing his article, the author raises the question of what will happen when it becomes possible to accomplish an "abortion"--or removal of the fetus from the mother--without killing the fetus. Will this procedure be acceptable to the average single college student? The New York Times, in an article on "High Tech Babies" (February 21, 1986), raised ethical questions posed by the technology of frozen embryos. Who decides what is to be done with frozen embryos? To whom do they belong? Do they have rights? The theoretical issues raised by Wennberg are already forcing themselves upon us. Whether we like it or not, the future is now. Regardless of your beliefs on this controversial topic, I urge you to read this article. Dr. Wennberg has also just completed a book on this subject, Life In The Balance.     

Acknowledgements

This article explores whether it is possible to understand the perspectives of people with whom we find it difficult or impossible to empathise, because their moral and political views are very different to our own. Focusing on our dilemmas in carrying out qualitative research with conservative evangelicals and anti‐abortion activists, we take issue with the assumption that understanding is connected with the presence of rapport and empathy in research interviews. This article argues instead that a reflexive approach, which considers researchers’ orientations towards their subject and their respondents and their emotional journeys through the research process, will enable more comprehensive interpretation of our research material.     

Toward a reconceptualization of "choice": challenges by women at the margins

It has been suggested that recent first world and third world feminist movements have gained impetus from a shared emphasis on "body politics" (abortion, rape, and domestic violence). It has been made clear by other writers, however, that first and third world women (including women of color in the first world) have very different conceptions of which policies and practices should be pursued to change their reproduction experiences (because the overriding experiences of their entire lives are so very different). Likewise, the concept of "the right to choose" has been challenged on the grounds that it ignores the external conditions (such as economics) which, in fact, dictate "choice." Eugenics also influences which "choices" are promoted among populations considered "undesirable." The dilemmas associated with reproductive choices are further highlighted by debate about the use of amniocentesis in India for sex determination and female feticide. At the center of this debate is whether calling for a ban on this practice would support or violate a woman's choice. The rhetoric of choice arose in the first place because women who wanted to end a pregnancy had "no choice" but to seek illegal abortions. However, working class women and Black women in the US object to the narrowness in the abortion rights agenda dictated by the use of this term. To assert women's "choice" absolves all others of the responsibility for a pregnancy. The "choice" concept is also vulnerable to political manipulation. "Choice" also evades ethical problems such as sex selection. Disabled feminists have also pointed out that it is as important to create conditions which include "the choice to have a disabled child" as it is to choose not to be a mother. Can feminists oppose the selective abortion of female fetuses while leaving the choice to abort a defective or unwanted fetus of either sex up to the mother? Objection to sex determination can be categorized as consequentialist (based on various predicted social and psychological consequences, such as more men would lead to more violence in the world) or nonconsequentialist (based on the inherent immorality of selective abortion). The benefits of sex selection would possibly include a reduction in sex-linked diseases and a reduction in the overall birth rate. Most US feminists support the moral, but not the legal, condemnation of sex selection. In India, where sex selection is openly practiced, feminists have tried to achieve legal prohibition of the use of tests for this purpose. This difference from the US position may be due to the difference in the abortion context in the 2 countries. Whether feminists support legal and/or moral prohibition of sex selection, however, almost all call for the longterm structural changes which must be made in the context of imperialism, racism, and poverty which would allow true "choices" to prevail.     

The Undeserving Rich: “Moral Values” and the White Working Class1

White working‐class citizens who vote for the Republican Party have been fodder for much political discussion and speculation recently, and a debate has arisen about the role that “moral values” played in the political decision making of this segment of voters. In this article, we defend a version of the moral values claim. We show that although the Republicans’ policies are unpopular, they are bundled with an overarching moral framework that is extremely resonant to this set of voters, and we use in‐depth interviews to uncover this framework. A key feature of this framework, on which in the 2004 presidential election George W. Bush scored high and John Kerry scored low, is the appropriate attitude to wealth, which serves as an indicator for a candidate’s general moral philosophy and as a heuristic about whether the candidate will govern with working‐class voters’ interests in mind. National Election Studies data support the argument that this was a key influence on the voting decision in 2004, even controlling for voters’ partisan identification.     

The transparency of aging

This article is not meant to provide answers but to provoke thinking related to the questions we should be asking about the ethical personhood of aging adults. Are we covering over the rich opportunities to learn from their stories with an invisible cloak of transparency? Health care professionals have a moral obligation to rethink the assumptions that underlie their definitions of quality of life in aging. We cannot know what should be done unless we learn to listen to the life stories of aging people. This may even help us to see what is most real.     

The Polish Parliament and the Making of Politics through Abortion: Nation,Gender and Democracy in the 1996 Liberalization Amendment Debate

The collapse of communism across East Central Europe was marked by a renewal of debates around reproduction, with abortion debates surfacing in Romania, Germany and Poland. Reproductive politics and more specifically abortion debates typically come to the forefront in times of crisis or societal transformation. Struggles over women's reproductive rights in Poland, as evidenced by continuing debate around the legal status of abortion, are in this postcommunist context intimately related to and bound up with ongoing symbolic and concrete re-definitions of Polish nationhood, identity and citizenship. Focusing on the connections between discourses of Polish nationhood, gender and democracy, this article offers a detailed and critical engagement with debate in the Sejm (the lower chamber of the Polish parliament) during the second reading of the 1996 liberalization of abortion amendment. Using a discourse analysis methodology, the article argues that abortion is a symbolic issue through which anxieties about postcommunist reform are raised, nationalist pasts and futures are imagined and through which political projects are articulated.     

Women's Rights vs. "Fetal Rights":

Policies restricting the employment opportunities of women have a long history in the U.S. The most recent manifestation has been so-called "fetal protection" policies, which exclude women of childbearing age from jobs involving exposure to toxins considered dangerous to a developing fetus. Traditional arguments that women's biology is justification to keep them from jobs have resurfaced in a new form. In the present debate the issue is framed as one of competing rights, those of fetus versus those of the woman. An analysis of public policy on this issue from a feminist legal standpoint reveals how the law's implicit male standard hinders the attainment of equal employment opportunity for women, as they must now compete with hypothetical fetuses sa well sa with men.     

Do Differences Matter?

Abstract

Have women members of Congress made a difference? A handful of studies have answered this “so what” question by looking for differences between male and female legislators. We build on previous research and propose an additional way of answering this question. If women members are making a difference, then they should be changing how men behave in Congress. Specifically, if women members are making a difference, then they should be changing how their male colleagues debate the issues. We content-analyze each House floor debate on the Hyde Amendment to see if women are changing how men debate the abortion issue. We find that men and women frame the abortion debate differently, and we find some evidence that women members of Congress have shifted the debate over time to focus less on the morality of abortion and more on the health of the pregnant women. We hope our research stimulates further work that not only looks for differences between men and women legislators, but also looks to see if the differences cause legislatures to change the way they do business.     

Behavioral economics of death and dying decisions: Both rational and irrational approaches

A decision to accept death and forego life-extending medical procedures can be both rational and irrational. This article reviews perspectives on death from the viewpoint of behavioral economics, which relies on psychology as the basis of decision-making in this regard. According to behavioral economics, both the benefits of living and the costs of death should be emphasized so that a person who is thinking about suicide reconsiders that option and, hopefully, changes his or her mind and tries to safeguard life and avoid life-threatening risks. One way to make dying decisions more rational is to write out a living will or advance directives to help doctors understand a patients’ intentions with regard to decisions about dying should they become unable to articulate that intention at some later, critical, life-or-death situation. Living wills and advance directives can therefore reduce the chances of mercy killing or euthanasia, especially in the context of a developing country, especially when life-extending technologies are limited.     

Narrative Diversity and Sympathetic Abortion: What Online Storytelling Reveals About the Prescribed Norms of the Mainstream Movements

Social movement scholarship demonstrates the importance of formula stories in raising awareness for social causes. The stories put forth by the opposing sides of the abortion rights issue in the United States utilize sympathetic narratives in furthering their arguments for and against abortion rights respectively, but differences in each side's narrative strategies are instructive in understanding current reproductive debate discourse. This article is a qualitative examination of abortion narratives published on two websites, one pro‐life and one pro‐choice. Chief among my findings are that narratives for each cause support opposed views of women's appropriate contemporary social roles and that authors' reported approaches to pregnancy and abortion are instrumental in constructing these broader understandings. Narratives posted by pro‐choice authors are confined by circumstantial norms surrounding unintended pregnancy (such as young age, student status, and first‐time pregnancy) as well as by a requirement to attribute empowering outcomes to the abortion decision. Pro‐life authors discuss a broader array of circumstances surrounding their pregnancies with narratives ultimately unified by themes of intense regret followed by atonement.     

Abortion,women and national development: the Nigeria experience

The author argues that, if women have the right of self-determination, it is immoral of society to withhold or limit women's access to abortion services in Nigeria. Morality must pertain to society as well as women. In Nigeria, the abortion argument tends to focus on the rights of the fetus or the third party's interest. The abortion issue must involve understanding the rationale that is used by abortion-seeking women. Denial of access to abortion services dehumanizes women and reduces growth in national development. Women carry the burden of responsibility associated with child bearing and rearing. Unwanted pregnancies impose severe psychological, physical, social, and medical dangers on women. Impaired psychological and physical illness creates pain and suffering and limits productivity. "Doing good" is not necessarily accomplished by either abortion or unwanted childbearing. Society both discourages the taking of a human life and supports the health of its citizens, many of whom are women. A child brought into this world who is not adequately taken care of will be a burden to society. When society pursues its own self-interest in preventing abortion as a choice for women, then society becomes immoral and selfish. A woman pursuing her own self-interest is not necessarily immoral. The decision becomes immoral if the woman acts against the wishes of the father. Morality is not necessarily the opposite of the promotion of one's self-interest. Women who seek to terminate a pregnancy for health reasons seek a virtuous option of enhancing the well-being of every individual in society. The right to life for the fetus is very different from the right to self-determination for the abortion-seeking woman. When the Yoruba define a wife as a servant to the husband, the Yoruba deny women personhood. Women know best what serves their self-interest and that of society.     

The Making of Childhood Mortality in Modern South Africa

This article examines the ways in which childhood mortality as an ideological tool is constituted as a shared moral order in modern society. The examination of record‐keeping as an ideological practice that produces a governable and self‐regulating population allows us to identify how and where it is incorporated into social life as an everyday morality. Under this moral order, death must be constituted as a medical necessity, rendering it culturally relevant, in order for social life to continue to be considered a meaningful and purposeful endeavour. The child's status in society as a sacred citizen ensures that children's deaths are constituted in even more particular ways, so that the possibility of medically ‘unnecessary’ child death remains morally unthinkable and thus does not expose the ideological underpinnings that continue to produce social life as a moral and thus meaningful affair.     

European integration : Sociological process or political project?

Within debate about prospects for future European unification, ‘integration’ is a fashionable and often confusing word. Depending on context, it may refer to long‐term socio‐economic processes ('convergence'), to processes of political construction, to symbolic processes ('European identity'), or to the quite separate issue of prudential co‐operation between states—or to some uncertain mixture of all four. Yet the concept of integration has a reputable sociological pedigree and remains useful for thinking about the issues raised by Europeanization. Thus, a fresh look at Durkheim's thinking on the possibility of solidarity within complex societies is of direct relevance to the contemporary European case. Of particular importance is the Durkheimian distinction between three complementary dimensions of integration—shared practices, social intercourse (or ‘moral density') and common ‘consciousness'—, and the suggestion that, in the absence of ‘mechanical solidarity’ based on similarity, the latter is both deeply problematic and derivative rather than generative. They shed light on the ambivalence of the process / project of Europeanization and open up a space for specific discussion of collective prudence—originally the essence of Europeanization and which, while in principle separable from it, has tended in practice to become tangled with the integration issue. As the borders of Europe become potentially less stable, disentanglement is of vital importance.     

The Moral Economy of Neoliberalism: How Voters Use Neoliberal Ideology to (De)Legitimate Undocumented Worker Access to Labor Markets

Neoliberalism is prevalent in American life. While researchers have documented the use of neoliberal ideology in institutional and macrolevel policy contexts, they have yet to investigate how voters use neoliberal ideology to legitimate their position on economic policy. I use data from semi‐structured interviews with 85 Tucsonans about why they voted the way they did on Proposition 202 (2008): “Arizona Stop Illegal Hiring”—which sought to reregulate undocumented worker labor market access—to address this gap. I found evidence of two distinct neoliberal ideological legitimations: “fair market competition” and “individual responsibility.” Furthermore, I use these data to shed light on the debate over whether neoliberalism spans partisan affiliation or converges with American conservatism. I found that voters across party lines who supported the measure paired neoliberal legitimations with conservative legitimations. We can interpret this bipartisan use of neoliberal ideology as evidence of a neoliberal “moral economy”—or consensus about the moral principles in which market action is embedded. Evidence of this moral economy indicates that moral principles from neoliberal ideology are simultaneously bipartisan and converge with American conservatism. These findings suggest that there could be a broader moral consensus among voters concerning the legitimacy of anti‐immigration economic policies.     

Feelings of power lead people to take sides with other powerful parties

Abstract

It has often been noted that power has various self-reinforcing effects, in the sense that it leads people to support the interests of other powerful people and harm the interests of the powerless. In the current article we investigate this in a fundamental manner and show that the experience of power makes people more inclined to side with parties that are higher in the hierarchy and against parties that are lower in that hierarchy. Two studies demonstrate that people who experience elevated power side with parties higher in the hierarchy and against parties lower in the hierarchy. A third experiment identifies an important moderator: if people sense their power is unfair and illegitimate, this effect is blocked. These results extend our understanding of the effects of power on moral thinking to actual side taking with one party against another in an interpersonal, moral conflict.