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364Seeing, 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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110Reproductive Autonomy as Self-Making: Procreative Liberty and the Practice of Ethical SubjectivityJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 38 (6): 639-656. 2013.In this article, I consider recent debates on the notion of procreative liberty, to argue that reproductive freedom can be understood as a form of positive freedom—that is, the freedom to make oneself according to various ethical and aesthetic principles or values. To make this argument, I draw on Michel Foucault’s later work on ethics. Both adopting and adapting Foucault’s notion of ethics as a practice of the self and of liberty, I argue that reproductive autonomy requires enactment to gain me…Read more
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101Futures of Reproduction: Bioethics and BiopoliticsSpringer. 2011.Issues in reproductive ethics, such as the capacity of parents to ‘choose children’, present challenges to philosophical ideas of freedom, responsibility and harm. This book responds to these challenges by proposing a new framework for thinking about the ethics of reproduction that emphasizes the ways that social norms affect decisions about who is born. The book provides clear and thorough discussions of some of the dominant problems in reproductive ethics - human enhancement and the notion of …Read more
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68Contesting the political: Butler and Foucault on power and resistanceJournal of Political Philosophy 11 (3). 2003.
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57Playing with Law: Agamben and Derrida on Postjuridical JusticeSouth Atlantic Quarterly 107 (1): 15--36. 2008.
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57Efficacy and Vulnerability: Judith Butler on Reiteration and ResistanceAustralian Feminist Studies 15 (32): 265--279. 2000.
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54Making 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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44Images and Emotion in Abortion DebatesAmerican Journal of Bioethics 8 (12): 61-62. 2008.No abstract
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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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36The 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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352. Undoing Ethics: Butler on Precarity, Opacity and ResponsibilityIn Moya Lloyd (ed.), Butler and Ethics, Edinburgh University Press. pp. 41-64. 2015.
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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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35The Philosophy of AgambenRoutledge. 2008.Giorgio Agamben has gained widespread popularity in recent years for his rethinking of radical politics and his approach to metaphysics and language. However, the extraordinary breadth of historical, legal and philosophical sources which contribute to the complexity and depth of Agamben's thinking can also make his work intimidating. Covering the full range of Agamben's work, this critical introduction outlines Agamben's key concerns: metaphysics, language and potentiality, aesthetics and poetic…Read more
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33A Manner of Speaking: Declaration, Critique and the Trope of InterrogationLaw and Critique 21 (3): 247--260. 2010.In this paper I will argue for the ethical and political virtue of a form of critique associated with the work of Michel Foucault. Foucault’s tryptich of essays on critique---namely ”What is Critique?’ ”What is Revolution?’ and ”What is Enlightenment?’---develop a formulation of critique understood as an attitude or disposition, a kind of relation that one bears to oneself and to the actuality of the present. I suggest that this critical attitude goes hand in hand with a mode of intellectual pra…Read more
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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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27Philosophy of AgambenAcumen Publishing. 2008.About the Author:Catherine Mills is lecturer in philosophy, University of New South Wales, Sydney
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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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22Constitution 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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21Gendering 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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21Review of Sean Gaston, Derrida and Disinterest (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2005 (11). 2005.
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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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14Protecting 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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Monash UniversityRegular Faculty
Areas of Specialization
Applied Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |
Philosophy of Gender, Race, and Sexuality |
Continental Philosophy |