By Rosamund Scott

This ebook addresses the legislation and ethics bearing on a pregnant woman's refusal of clinical therapy wanted by way of the fetus she contains. In England and a few U.S. states a pregnant girl can now refuse such therapy. however, courts have said the residual moral dilemmas, occasionally adverting to the inappropriateness right here of felony compulsion of presumed ethical tasks. This leaves the influence of an uncomfortable break up among the ethics and the legislations. This learn seeks to give an explanation for and justify a pregnant woman's felony correct to refuse clinical therapy and hence unravel, as far as attainable, the encircling moral, criminal and social tensions. the assumption of daily maternal behavior that may reason prenatal damage can also be touched upon. Innovatively, the writer adopts a joint philosophical and criminal method directed to matters either one of precept and coverage, revealing robust conceptual hyperlinks among the ethics and the legislations. as well as a moral exploration of the maternal-fetal dating the writer explores the proper English, American and a few Canadian arguments from the legislations of remedy refusal, abortion, tort and rescue.

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Additional resources for Rights, Duties and the Body: Law and Ethics of the Maternal-Fetal Conflict

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2. It may be relevant that John Stuart Mill seems to refer in his “harm principle” to the actions of individuals harming others: “[T]he sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. . ), (Fontana: London, 1962) 135. ) In alluding to Mill at this point, I mean to imply that the idea of harming another through one’s body was probably not one he considered and hence that he would not have made the distinction that I suggest and introduce here.

To Theories of ights, (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1984). 50 WN Hohfeld, Fundamental Legal Conceptions as Applied in Judicial easoning (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1919). 49 16 1: Relation of the Fetus to the Pregnant Woman is it that the right and the duty in this case come to be so related? Essentially, there have been two theories about this relation. 51 In a utilitarian system, all duties are intended to advance some individual benefit; it is only where a particular individual will benefit from the performance of some duty, however, that there will be a correlative right.

4. xxxii General Introduction the light of my overall purpose of explaining and justifying a pregnant woman’s moral and legal right to refuse medical treatment and reconciling this with the prospect of prenatal harm or death. Thus, I am concerned to formulate an argument which addresses the justification of harm to the fetus. When we turn to the law, this is an analysis which pays attention to the de facto, rather than the de jure interests of the fetus. In this regard, the key to the “gradualist” understanding of the maternal–fetal relationship which I endorse at the level of moral theory is that the more advanced the fetus’s development, the more serious the reason a woman will need to justify harm to it, an argument which I refine to apply also to the “future child” (who will be but is not yet born) who may instead be in issue in some cases.

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