•  6
    Reasons and Freedom
    Hastings Center Report 43 (1): 4-5. 2013.
    One of three commentaries on ‐Scholarly Discussion of Infanticide?” by Mirko D. Garasic, and “Reflections from a Troubled Stream: Giubilini and Minerva on ‘After‐Birth Abortion,’” by Michael Hauskeller, from the July‐August 2012 issue.
  •  110
    Abortion and the Argument from Potential: What We Owe to the Ones Who Might Exist
    Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 37 (1): 49-59. 2012.
    Next SectionI challenge the idea that the argument from potential (AFP) represents a valid moral objection to abortion. I consider the form of AFP that was defended by Hare, which holds that abortion is against the interests of the potential person who is prevented from existing. My reply is that AFP, though not unsound by itself, does not apply to the issue of abortion. The reason is that AFP only works in the cases of so-called same number and same people choices, but it falsely presupposes th…Read more
  •  131
    The Australian Federal Government has announced a two-year trial scheme to compensate living organ donors. The compensation will be the equivalent of six weeks paid leave at the rate of the national minimum wage. In this article I analyse the ethics of compensating living organ donors taking the Australian scheme as a reference point. Considering the long waiting lists for organ transplantations and the related costs on the healthcare system of treating patients waiting for an organ, the 1.3 mil…Read more
  •  121
    Euthanasia
    International Journal of Applied Philosophy 27 (1): 35-46. 2013.
    The current impasse in the old debate about the morality of euthanasia is mainly due to the fact that the actual source of conflict has not been properly identified—or so I shall argue. I will first analyse the two different issues involved in the debate, which are sometimes confusingly mixed up, namely: (a) what is euthanasia?, and (b) why is euthanasia morally problematic? Considering documents by physicians, philosophers and the Roman Catholic Church, I will show that (a) ‘euthanasia’ is defi…Read more
  •  130
    Reliance on intuitive and emotive responses is widespread across many areas of bioethics, and the current debate on biotechnological human enhancement is particularly interesting in this respect. A strand of “bioconservatives” that has explicitly drawn connections to the modern conservative tradition, dating back to Edmund Burke, appeals explicitly to the alleged wisdom of our intuitions and emotions to ground opposition to some biotechnologies or their uses. So-called bioliberals, those who in …Read more
  •  59
    After-birth abortion: why should the baby live?
    with Francesca Minerva
    Journal of Medical Ethics 39 (5): 261-263. 2013.
    Abortion is largely accepted even for reasons that do not have anything to do with the fetus' health. By showing that (1) both fetuses and newborns do not have the same moral status as actual persons, (2) the fact that both are potential persons is morally irrelevant and (3) adoption is not always in the best interest of actual people, the authors argue that what we call ‘after-birth abortion’ (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the…Read more
  •  11
    What in the World Is Moral Disgust?
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 94 (2): 227-242. 2016.
    I argue that much philosophical discussion of moral disgust suffers from two ambiguities: first, it is not clear whether arguments for the moral authority of disgust apply to disgust as a consequence of moral evaluations or instead to disgust as a moralizing emotion; second, it is not clear whether the word ‘moral’ is used in a normative or in a descriptive sense. This lack of clarity generates confusion between ‘fittingness’ and ‘appropriateness’ of disgust. I formulate three conditions that ar…Read more
  •  5
    Harms to Vendors: We Should Discourage, Not Prohibit Organ Sales
    American Journal of Bioethics 14 (10): 25-27. 2014.
    No abstract