-
34Childbearing, abortion and regret: a response to Kate GreasleyTheoretical Medicine and Bioethics 44 (3): 259-274. 2023.Is moral or other regret for abortion an indicator that abortion may not be morally or prudentially choice worthy? This paper examines the work of Kate Greasley in this area, who offers an explanation of any asymmetry in openness to regret between women who have abortions and women who give birth. The latter, not unlike Derek Parfit’s 14-year-old who conceives deliberately, may feel duty-bound not to regret their decision (in their case, to continue their pregnancy) and to affirm the life of the…Read more
-
129Contraception as ContralifeIn Ethical Sex, Fidelity Press. pp. 34-65. 2016.An in-depth critique of arguments of John Finnis, Germain Grisez, Joseph Boyle and William May to the effect that contraception is necessarily contralife in the sense of exhibiting a will against a possible person.
-
31Childbearing, Abortion and Regret: A Response to Kate GreasleyTheoretical Medicine and Bioethics: Philosophy of Medical Research and Practice (forthcoming). forthcoming.Is moral or other regret for abortion an indicator that abortion may not be morally or prudentially choice worthy? This paper examines the work of Kate Greasley in this area, who offers an explanation of any asymmetry in openness to regret between women who have abortions and women who give birth. The latter, not unlike Derek Parfit’s 14-year-old who conceives deliberately, may feel duty-bound not to regret their decision (in their case, to continue their pregnancy) and to affirm the life of…Read more
-
169Double effect donation or bodily respect? A 'third way' response to Camosy and VukovThe Linacre Quarterly. forthcoming.Is it possible to donate unpaired vital organs, foreseeing but not intending one's own death? We argue that this is indeed psychologically possible, and thus far agree with Charles Camosy and Joseph Vukov in their recent paper on 'double effect donation.' Where we disagree with these authors is that we see double effect donation not as a morally praiseworthy act akin to martyrdom but as a morally impermissible act that necessarily disrespects human bodily integrity. Respect for bodily integrity …Read more
-
44Double Effect Donation or Bodily Respect? A "Third Way" Response to Camosy and VukovLinacre Quarterly 1-17. forthcoming.Is it possible to donate unpaired vital organs, foreseeing but not intending one’s own death? We argue that this is indeed psychologically possible, and thus far agree with Charles Camosy and Joseph Vukov in their recent paper on “double effect donation.” Where we disagree with these authors is that we see double-effect donation not as a morally praiseworthy act akin to mar- tyrdom but as a morally impermissible act that necessarily disrespects human bodily integrity. Respect for bodily integrit…Read more
-
156Marital Willing (Chapter 4, Ethical Sex)In Ethical Sex: Sexual Choices and their Nature and Meaning, Fidelity. pp. 127-277. 2016.Conditional willing of morally impermissible actions like adultery tells us something about the moral agent, as does the liability to will such actions in certain unrealised contingencies. However, I argue, a liability to will wrongful actions in some circumstances need not (though it might) affect the moral permissibility of the act intended here and now e.g. terms of going through a marriage ceremony or enjoying sexual acts with one's spouse. This chapter explores the issue of conditional, pre…Read more
-
227Unintended Morally Determinative Aspects (UMDAs): Moral Absolutes, Moral Acts and Physical Features in Sexual and Reproductive EthicsStudia Philosophiae Christianae 51 47-65. 2015.Catholic sexual ethics proposes a number of exceptionless moral norms. This distinguishes it from theories which deny the possibility of any exceptionless moral norms (e.g. the proportionalist approach proposed in the aftermath of "Humanae Vitae" and condemned in "Veritatis Splendor"). I argue that Catholic teaching on sexual ethics refers to chosen physical structures in such a way as to make ‘new natural law’ theory inherently unstable. I outline a theory of “the moral act” (Veritatis Splendor…Read more
-
1528Elizabeth Anscombe and ContraceptionLogos I Ethos 50 47-65. 2019.In the 1960s, before the promulgation of Humanae Vitae, the Catholic philosophers Elizabeth Anscombe and Herbert McCabe OP debated whether there are convincing natural law arguments for the claim that contraception violates an exceptionless moral norm. This article revisits those arguments and critiques McCabe’s approach to natural law, concerned primarily with ‘social sin’ and not simply violations of ‘right reason,’ as one particularly ill-suited to addressing questions in sexual ethics an…Read more
-
484Targeting the Fetal Body and/or Mother-Child Connection: Vital Conflicts and AbortionThe Linacre Quarterly 1-14. 2019.Is the “act itself” of separating a pregnant woman and her previable child neither good nor bad morally, considered in the abstract? Recently, Maureen Condic and Donna Harrison have argued that such separation is justified to protect the mother’s life and that it does not constitute an abortion as the aim is not to kill the child. In our article on maternal–fetal conflicts, we agree there need be no such aim to kill (supplementing aims such as to remove). However, we argue that to understand “ab…Read more
-
33Ethical Sex: Sexual Choices and their Nature and MeaningFidelity Press. 2016.Ethical Sex: Sexual Choices and Their Nature and Meaning is a book-length exploration of the philosophy of sex. It engages with various approaches to the subject, covering natural law approaches and phenomenology as well as virtue ethics.
Anthony McCarthy
International Theological Institute