For the United Nations Population Fund, a few key concepts—sex as integral to well-being, and the importance of caring for others, consent, and bodily autonomy—exhaust the moral significance of sex. Its recent statement implies that sex is nothing but a purely physical act between two bodies. But can sex be distilled so simply?
Author: Grace Emily Stark (Grace Emily Stark)
Physician Assisted Suicide and the Rise of Suicide Cults
Assisted death proponents argue for physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia on the grounds of promoting autonomy and suspending suffering. Suicide groups like the Dutch Coöperatie Laatste Wil ask the next logical question: why is physician involvement needed at all?
Physicians Without Chests: On the Call to End Conscientious Objection in Medicine
An article recently published in a prestigious medical journal argues that conscientious objection should be eliminated from the practice of medicine. The argument is unsound, its conclusion dangerous and inhumane.
Even Very Sick Children Deserve Medical Care: Why Every State Needs “Simon’s Law”
Parents of very young, very sick children deserve the right to make medical decisions for their sons and daughters, no matter how difficult those decisions may be.
From “Physician Knows Best” to the Cult of Autonomy: A Seismic Shift in Bioethics
As American medical ethics shifted from a model of paternalistic beneficence to a model of patient autonomy, self-determination became enshrined as the paramount value—ironically to the detriment of our society’s most vulnerable members.