Christine Overall

This chapter discusses whether there are good reasons, moral or pragmatic, for prospective parents to prefer the creation of genetically related children over adoption. I survey a number of familiar reasons for choosing procreation. Among them are the alleged intrinsic value of child-bearing, of human life, and human beings; the experiences of pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding; the alleged value of a genetic link between parent and child; and the alleged control and choice afforded by procreation. I show that, while there can be good reasons in some cases to value procreation, not all such reasons are plausible and none are universally persuasive. Moreover, procreation should not be regarded as being morally or pragmatically superior to adoption as a means of family-making. Most of the genuine reasons for choosing procreation also apply to adoption. As a means of family-making, although it is a prerequisite for the practice of adoption, procreation is not demonstrably more valuable than adoption.

Our universities are the locus of ongoing debates over the politics of gender, of class, of disadvantage and disability—and over the issue of “political correctness.” In _A Feminist I_ Christine Overall offers wide-ranging reflections from a first-person point of view on these issues, and on the politics of the modern university itself. In doing so she continually returns to underlying epistemological concerns. What are our assumptions about the ways in which knowledge is constructed? To what degree are our perceptions shaped by our social roles and identities? In the past generation feminists have led the way in recognising the importance of such questions, and recognising too the ways in which personal experience may be an invaluable reference point in academic theory and practice. But reliance on personal experience is fraught with problems; how is one to deal with tensions between the autobiographical and the analytic? This book points the way to resolving some of those tensions, and to fruitfully sustaining others. It is a book of considerable insight, warm humanity, and genuine importance.

Animal ethics is generating growing interest both within academia and outside it. This book focuses on ethical issues connected to animals who play an extremely important role in human lives: companion animals, with a special emphasis on dogs and cats, the animals most often chosen as pets. Companion animals are both vulnerable to and dependent upon us. What responsibilities do we owe to them, especially since we have the power and authority to make literal life-and-death decisions about them? What kinds of relationships should we have with our companion animals? And what might we learn from cats and dogs about the nature and limits of our own morality? The contributors write from a variety of philosophical perspectives, including utilitarianism, care ethics, feminist ethics, phenomenology, and the genealogy of ideas. The eighteen chapters are divided into two sections, to provide a general background to ethical debate about companion animals, followed by a focus on a number of crucial aspects of human relationships to companion animals. The first section discusses the nature of our relationships to companion animals, the foundations of our moral responsibilities to companion animals, what our relationships with companion animals teach us, and whether animals themselves can act ethically. The second part explores some specific ethical issues related to crucial aspects of companion animals' lives-breeding, reproduction, sterilization, cloning, adoption, feeding, training, working, sexual interactions, longevity, dying, and euthanasia.

This paper will explore some moral and conceptual aspects of the practice of surrogate motherhood. Although I put forward a number of criticisms of existing ideas about this subject, I do not claim to offer a fully developed position. Instead what I have tried to do is to call into question what seem to be some generally accepted assumptions about surrogate motherhood, and to lend plausibility to my view that surrogate motherhood may be morally troubling for reasons not always fully recognized by other writers on this issue. These reasons go beyond the fairly obvious consequentialist concerns about its effects on the persons - particularly the child — involved. A concern for the well being of a child produced by a surrogate is, I believe, entirely justified, but my focus in this paper will be upon the surrogate mother herself.

This paper is the latest in a debate with Robert Larmer as to whether the occurrence of a miracle would provide evidence for the existence of God or against the existence of God. Whereas Larmer’s view is categorical (miracles occur and are evidence for the existence of God), mine is hypothetical (if the events typically described as miracles were to occur -- although I do not believe they do -- they would be evidence against the existence of God). The reason is that miracles, if they were to occur, would be ontic, epistemic, and moral evils

Much can be learned about (old) age-identity and age-related oppression by noting their similarities to, respectively, impairment and ableism. Drawing upon the work of Shelley Tremain, I show that old age, like impairment, is not a biological given but is socially constructed, both conceptually and materially. I also describe the striking similarities and connections between ableism and ageism as systems of oppression. That disability and aging both rest upon a biological given is a fiction that functions to excuse and perpetuate the very social mechanisms that perpetuate ableist and ageist oppression.