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4‘Assisted dying’ as a comforting heteronomy: the rejection of self-administration in the purported act of self-determinationThe New Bioethics 1-20. forthcoming.Abstract‘Assisted dying’ (an umbrella term for euthanasia and/or assisted suicide) is frequently defended as an act of autonomous self-determination in death but, given a choice, between 93.3% and 100% of patients are reluctant to self-administer (median 99.5%). If required to self-administer, fewer patients request assisted death and, of these, a sizable proportion do not self-administer but die of natural causes. This manifest avoidance runs counter to the concept of autonomous self-determinat…Read more
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33Angels: A Very Short IntroductionOxford University Press. 2011.What are angels? Where were they first encountered? Can we distinguish angels from gods, fairies, ghosts, and aliens? And why do they remain so popular? This Very Short Introduction investigates stories and speculations about angels in religions old and new, in art, literature, film, and the popular imagination.
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18Angels: A HistoryOxford University Press. 2010.What are angels? Where were they first encountered? Can we distinguish angels from gods, faeries, ghosts, and aliens? And why do they remain so popular? This concise introduction investigates stories and speculations about angels in religions old and new, in art, literature, film, and the popular imagination.
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9Book Review: Ryan T. Anderson, When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment Mark A. Yarhouse, Understanding Gender Dysphoria: Navigating Transgender Issues in a Changing Culture (review)Studies in Christian Ethics 32 (3): 402-406. 2019.
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22When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment (review)Studies in Christian Ethics 32 (3): 402-406. 2018.
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9Book Review: Ryan T. Anderson, When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment Mark A. Yarhouse, Understanding Gender Dysphoria: Navigating Transgender Issues in a Changing Culture (review)Studies in Christian Ethics 32 (3): 402-406. 2019.
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5Book Review: Calum MacKellar, The Image of God, Personhood and the Embryo (review)Studies in Christian Ethics 31 (2): 250-253. 2018.
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13Book Review: Calum MacKellar, The Image of God, Personhood and the Embryo (review)Studies in Christian Ethics 31 (2): 250-253. 2018.
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6Book Review: Neil Messer, Respecting Life: Theology and Bioethics (review)Studies in Christian Ethics 27 (2): 233-235. 2014.
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38The "Special Status" of the Human Embryo in the United Kingdom: An Exploration of the Use of Language in Public PolicyHuman Reproduction and Genetic Ethics 17 (1): 66-83. 2011.There is an apparent gap between public policy on embryo research in the United Kingdom and its ostensible justification. The rationale is respect for the “special status” of the embryo, but the policy actively promotes research in which embryos are destroyed. Richard Harries argues that this is consistent because, the “special status” of the human embryo is less than the absolute status of persons. However, this intermediate moral status does no evident work in decisions relating to the human e…Read more
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11The other woman: Evaluating the language of ‘three parent’ embryosClinical Ethics 10 (4): 97-106. 2015.The British Parliament has recently approved regulations to allow techniques ‘to prevent the transmission of serious mitochondrial disease from a mother to her child’. The regulations term these techniques ‘mitochondrial donation’, but in the popular media, the issue has been discussed under the heading of ‘three parent’ babies or ‘three parent’ embryos. This paper examines the language of the debate, with particular reference to one of the techniques approved. It concludes that the terminology …Read more
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92Truth in transition? Gender identity and Catholic anthropologyNew Blackfriars 99 (1084): 756-774. 2018.
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22Suicide TourismThe New Bioethics 26 (3): 286-289. 2020.There are many books about suicide and not a few about physician-assisted suicide or euthanasia, but this is the first academic monograph on the phenomenon of cross-border medical-assistance in sui...
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27Magisterial Teaching on Vital ConflictsThe National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 14 (1): 81-104. 2014.Rev. Kevin Flannery, SJ, has helpfully drawn attention to some key sources for magisterial teaching on “vital conflicts,” where interventions to save a mother’s life would involve or lead to the death of her unborn child. However, former responsa by the Holy Office on this topic from 1884 to 1902 need to be interpreted carefully and understood in relation to the context of the time. Recent teaching has indeed clarified that the condemnation of direct abortion is de fide. Nevertheless, in the las…Read more
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172Is there a logical slippery slope from voluntary to nonvoluntary euthanasia?Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 21 (4): 379-404. 2011.Slippery slope arguments have been important in the euthanasia debate for at least half a century. In 1957 the Cambridge legal scholar Glanville Williams wrote a controversial book, The Sanctity of Life and the Criminal Law, in which he presented the decriminalizing of euthanasia as a modern liberal proposal taking its rightful place alongside proposals to decriminalize contraception, sterilization, abortion, and attempted suicide (all of which the book also advocated).1 Opposition to these refo…Read more
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49Human Dignity in Healthcare: A Virtue Ethics ApproachThe New Bioethics 21 (1): 87-97. 2015.The term ‘dignity’ is used in a variety of ways but always to attribute or recognize some status in the person. The present paper concerns not the status itself but the virtue of acknowledging that status. This virtue, which Thomas Aquinas calls ‘observantia’, concerns how dignity is honoured, respected, or observed. By analogy with justice observantia can be thought of both as a general virtue and as a special virtue. As a general virtue observantia refers to that respect for human dignity that…Read more
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21Gender Identity, Analogy and Virtue: A Response Newton and WattNew Blackfriars 101 (1094): 478-489. 2020.New Blackfriars, EarlyView.
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28Gender Identity in Scripture: Indissoluble Marriage and Exceptional EunuchsStudies in Christian Ethics 34 (1): 3-16. 2021.There has been little considered reflection by Catholic theologians on the concepts of gender identity, gender dysphoria and gender transition. Seeking inspiration in the Scriptures, some Catholic thinkers have interpreted the first three chapters of Genesis and especially the text ‘male and female he created them’ (Gen. 1:27) as requiring all human beings to live in the gender role congruent with their biological sex, and have viewed the biology of sex as self-evident. This article argues that …Read more
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12Editing Out the EmbryoThe National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 17 (1): 83-105. 2017.Two conferences on genome editing held in December 2015 offer a lens through which to contrast bioethics policies in the United Kingdom and the United States. The Progress Educational Trust, which has no parallel in the United States, hosted the London conference and illustrates the close collaboration between government departments, scientific bodies, funding organizations, and lobby groups in the United Kingdom. The rhetoric of responsible regulation used in the United Kingdom protects not the…Read more
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28Ethics, Conflict and Medical Treatment for Children: From Disagreement to DissensusThe New Bioethics 25 (1): 94-97. 2019.Volume 25, Issue 1, March 2019, Page 94-97.
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43Doctors, dying children and religious parents: dialogue or demonization?Clinical Ethics 8 (1): 2-4. 2013.A recent online article in the Journal of Medical Ethics, which received wide media coverage, raised the possibility that children are being ‘subjected to torture’ due to the ‘fervent or fundamentalist views’ of their parents. However, the quality of argument in that article was inadequate to sustain such a radical thesis. There was no engagement with the perspectives of different religious traditions about end-of-life care. Instead the authors invoked practices such as male infant circumcision …Read more
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16Book Review: Ryan T. Anderson, When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment Mark A. Yarhouse, Understanding Gender Dysphoria: Navigating Transgender Issues in a Changing Culture (review)Studies in Christian Ethics 32 (3): 402-406. 2019.
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185Book Review: Robin Gill, Healthcare and Christian Ethics, New Studies in Christian Ethics, 26 . xiii + 229 pp. £45/ US$75 , ISBN 0—521—85723—6 (review)Studies in Christian Ethics 20 (2): 296-299. 2007.
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15Book Review: Neil Messer, Respecting Life: Theology and Bioethics (review)Studies in Christian Ethics 27 (2): 233-235. 2014.
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169Book Review: Charles C. Camosy, Peter Singer and Christian Ethics: Beyond PolarizationCamosyCharles C., Peter Singer and Christian Ethics: Beyond Polarization , viii + 278 pp., £18.99 , ISBN 978-0-521-14933-4 (review)Studies in Christian Ethics 26 (2): 227-230. 2013.
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137Book Reviews : Bioethics: A Christian Approach in a Pluralistic Age, by Scott B. Rae and Paul M. Cox. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1999. 326 pp. pb. £15.99. ISBN 0-8028-4595-9 (review)Studies in Christian Ethics 15 (1): 147-150. 2002.
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25Apostles of Suicide: Theological Precedent for Christian Support of ‘Assisted Dying’Studies in Christian Ethics 29 (3): 331-338. 2016.This article examines the claim of Paul Badham that there is theological precedent for ‘a Christian case for assisted dying’. The writings of Rev. William Inge and Joseph Fletcher do indeed advocate forms of assisted dying. However, this precedent is deeply problematic for its ugly attitude towards people with disabilities.
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50Aquinas as an Advocate of Abortion? The Appeal to 'Delayed Animation' in Contemporary Christian Ethical Debates on the Human EmbryoStudies in Christian Ethics 26 (1): 97-124. 2013.It has become common, in both popular and scholarly discourse, to appeal to ‘delayed animation’ as an argument for abortion (DAAA). Augustine and Aquinas seemingly held that the rational soul was infused midway in pregnancy, and therefore did not regard early abortion as homicide. The authority of these thinkers is thus cited by some contemporary Christians as a reason to tolerate or, for proportionate reasons, to promote first-trimester abortion and embryo experimentation. The present essay is …Read more