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16Protecting the future child: Foetal alcohol spectrum disorder, easy rescue and the regulation of maternal behaviourBioethics 37 (8): 771-778. 2023.This paper argues that social contexts of inequality are crucial to understanding the ethics of gestational harm and responsibility. Recent debates on gestational harm have largely ignored the social context of gestators, including contexts of inequality and injustice. This can reinforce existing social injustices arising from colonialism, socio‐economic inequality and racism, for example, through increased regulation of maternal behaviour. To demonstrate this, I focus on the related notions of …Read more
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15Unconditional access to non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) for adult-onset conditions: a defenceJournal of Medical Ethics 50 (2): 102-107. 2024.Over the past decade, non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) has been adopted into routine obstetric care to screen for fetal sex, trisomies 21, 18 and 13, sex chromosome aneuploidies and fetal sex determination. It is predicted that the scope of NIPT will be expanded in the future, including screening for adult-onset conditions (AOCs). Some ethicists have proposed that using NIPT to detect severe autosomal AOCs that cannot be prevented or treated, such as Huntington’s disease, should only be offe…Read more
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Biopolitics and Human ReproductionIn Sergei Prozorov & Simona Rentea (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Biopolitics, Routledge. 2016.
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37The Routledge Handbook of Feminist Bioethics (edited book)Routledge. 2022.The Routledge Handbook of Feminist Bioethics is an outstanding resource for anyone with an interest in feminist bioethics, with chapters covering topics from justice and power to the climate crisis. Comprising 42 chapters by emerging and established scholars, the volume is divided into six parts: Foundations of Feminist Bioethics Identity and Identifications Science, Technology and Research Health and Social Care Reproduction and Making Families Widening the Scope of Feminist Bioethics The volum…Read more
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24Constitution of “The Already Dying”: The Emergence of Voluntary Assisted Dying in VictoriaJournal of Bioethical Inquiry 18 (2): 265-276. 2021.In June 2019 Victoria became the first state in Australia to permit “voluntary assisted dying”, with its governance detailed in the Voluntary Assisted Dying Act 2017. While taking lead from the regulation of medically assisted death practices in other parts of the world, Victoria’s legislation nevertheless remains distinct. The law in Victoria only makes VAD available to persons determined to be “already dying”: it is expressly limited to those medically prognosed to die “within weeks or months.…Read more
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22Gendering the seed: Mitochondrial replacement techniques and the erasure of the maternalBioethics 35 (7): 608-614. 2021.In order to avoid the implication that ‘mitochondrial replacement techniques’ (MRT) would produce ‘three parent babies’, discourses around these techniques typically dismiss the contribution of the mitochondria to genetic parenthood and personal identity. According to many participants in debates about MRT, ‘real parenthood’ is a matter of contributing nuclear DNA, which in turn implies that men and women make the same contribution to the embryo. Even when the importance of the mitochondria is a…Read more
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12Nuclear Families: Mitochondrial Replacement Techniques and the Regulation of ParenthoodScience, Technology, and Human Values 46 (3): 507-527. 2021.Since mitochondrial replacement techniques were developed and clinically introduced in the United Kingdom, there has been much discussion of whether these lead to children borne of three parents. In the UK, the regulation of MRT has dealt with this by stipulating that egg donors for the purposes of MRT are not genetic parents even though they contribute mitochondrial DNA to offspring. In this paper, I examine the way that the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act in the UK manages the question …Read more
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17FOUR / Biopolitics and the Concept of LifeIn Vernon W. Cisney & Nicolae Morar (eds.), Biopower: Foucault and Beyond, University of Chicago Press. pp. 82-101. 2015.
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8Ambiguous Encounters, Uncertain Foetuses: Women's Experiences of Obstetric UltrasoundFeminist Review 113 (1): 17-33. 2016.We examine pregnant women's experiences with routinised obstetric ultrasound as entailed in their antenatal care during planned pregnancies. This paper highlights the ambiguity of ultrasound technology in the constitution of maternal–foetal connections. Our analysis focusses on Australian women's experiences of the ontological, aesthetic and epistemological ambiguities afforded by ultrasound. We argue that these ambiguities offer possibilities for connecting to the foetus in ways that maintain a…Read more
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8Linguistic Survival and Ethicality: Biopolitics, Subjectivation, and Testimony in Remnants of AuschwitzIn Andrew Norris (ed.), Politics, metaphysics, and death: essays on Giorgio Agamben's Homo sacer, Duke University Press. pp. 198-221. 2005.
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26Ectogestation ethics: The implications of artificially extending gestation for viability, newborn resuscitation and abortionBioethics 34 (4): 371-384. 2019.Recent animal research suggests that it may soon be possible to support the human fetus in an artificial uterine environment for part of a pregnancy. A technique of extending gestation in this way (“ectogestation”) could be offered to parents of extremely premature infants (EPIs) to improve outcomes for their child. The use of artificial uteruses for ectogestation could generate ethical questions because of the technology’s potential impact on the point of “viability”—loosely defined as the stag…Read more
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368Seeing, Feeling, Doing: Mandatory Ultrasound Laws, Empathy and AbortionJournal of Practical Ethics 6 (2): 1-31. 2018.In recent years, a number of US states have adopted laws that require pregnant women to have an ultrasound examination, and be shown images of their foetus, prior to undergoing a pregnancy termination. In this paper, I examine one of the basic presumptions of these laws: that seeing one’s foetus changes the ways in which one might act in regard to it, particularly in terms of the decision to terminate the pregnancy or not. I argue that mandatory ultrasound laws compel women into a position of mo…Read more
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41The Case of the Missing Hand: Gender, Disability, and Bodily Norms in Selective TerminationHypatia 30 (1): 82-96. 2015.The practice of terminating a pregnancy following the diagnosis of a fetal abnormality raises questions about notions of bodily normality and the ways these shape ethical decision-making. This is particularly the case with terminations done on the basis of ostensibly minor morphological anomalies, such as cleft lip and isolated malformations of the limbs or digits. In this paper, I examine a recent case of selective termination after a morphology ultrasound scan revealed the fetus to be missing …Read more
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1Linguistic survival and ethicality: Biopolitics, subjectivation, and testimony in remnants of auschwitzIn Andrew Norris (ed.), Politics, metaphysics, and death: essays on Giorgio Agamben's Homo sacer, Duke University Press. 2005.
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28Philosophy of AgambenAcumen Publishing. 2008.About the Author:Catherine Mills is lecturer in philosophy, University of New South Wales, Sydney
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35Review of Annika thiem, Unbecoming Subjects: Judith Butler, Moral Philosophy, and Critical Responsibility (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2008 (12). 2008.
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31The performativity of personhoodJournal of Medical Ethics 39 (5): 325-325. 2013.In debates on infanticide, including the recent defence of so-called ‘after-birth abortion’, philosophers generally treat the term ‘the person’ as descriptive, such that statements claiming that something is a person can be considered true or false, depending on the characteristics of that thing. This obscures important aspects of its usage. J L Austen identified a subset of speech acts as performative, in that they do things in their very declaration or utterance. They do not simply describe st…Read more
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57Making Fetal PersonsphiloSOPHIA: A Journal of Continental Feminism 4 (1): 88-107. 2014.In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Making Fetal PersonsFetal Homicide, Ultrasound, and the Normative Significance of BirthCatherine MillsIn early 2012, the then attorney general of Western Australia, Christian Porter, announced plans to introduce fetal homicide laws that would “create a new offence of causing death or grievous bodily harm to an unborn child through an unlawful assault on its mother” (Porter 2012). While well established in the United States, fetal hom…Read more
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58Playing with Law: Agamben and Derrida on Postjuridical JusticeSouth Atlantic Quarterly 107 (1): 15--36. 2008.
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68Contesting the political: Butler and Foucault on power and resistanceJournal of Political Philosophy 11 (3). 2003.
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10Review of Herman Rapaport, Later Derrida: Reading the Recent Work (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2003 (9). 2003.
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44Images and Emotion in Abortion DebatesAmerican Journal of Bioethics 8 (12): 61-62. 2008.No abstract
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Monash UniversityRegular Faculty
Areas of Specialization
Applied Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |
Philosophy of Gender, Race, and Sexuality |
Continental Philosophy |