Does birth make a difference to the moral rights of the fetus/infant? Should it make a difference to its legal rights? Most contemporary philosophers believe that birth cannot make a difference to moral rights. If this is true, then it becomes difficult to justify either a moral or a legal distinction between late abortion and infanticide. I argue that the view that birth is irrelevant to moral rights rests upon two highly questionable assumptions about the theoretical foundations of moral rights. (...) If we reject these assumptions, then we are free to take account of the contrasting biological and social relationships that make even relatively late abortion morally different from infanticide. (shrink)

In this article, Ms. Krieger explores the controversy concerning pregnancy disability leave presented by the case of California Federal Savings v. Guerra in light of Thomas Kuhn's model of scientific paradigm change and Carol Gilligan's theory regarding sex differences in moral reasoning. She argues that the controversy reflects a period of paradigm crisis in equality jurisprudence, brought about in part by the recent inclusion of greater numbers of women into the jurisprudential community.

ABSTRACT This paper is concerned with the contrast in views between traditional mainstream Chinese philosophy and Western liberal individualism on the importance of the concept of individual rights in social and political thought. The contrast is striking because, whereas individual and political rights have long featured in public discourse in the West, in China, mainstream social and political thought has developed without a notion of individual rights. In search of the significance of this major difference, the paper traces ideas of (...) the self in China through Confucian ethics, and compares the Confucian conception of the self with the deontological liberal conception of the subject as a bearer of rights in the West. Having established that the Chinese way of thinking about the self and about moral agency is in stark contrast to the image of the self as a bearer of rights in the deontological conception, the paper goes on to discuss the inadequacy of the moral individualism of a rights‐based morality and argues for an alternative view of morality which places importance on the intrinsic value of collective goods and on membership in a society. (shrink)

Linda Krieger's paper in this volume relies on the concepts of "equal" and "special" rights, and I focus my attention upon the bivalent view of equality which justifies the creation of special rights. Krieger argues, I point out, that equality of effect is a fundamentally more just consideration than equality of treatment, and special rights allow disadvantaged groups to achieve this equality of effect.

A discussion of the relationship between feminism and philosophy, and the importance of gender in the evolution of our moral identities. It is argued that it is possible to develop a concept of moral identity which includes both women and men. The author teaches feminist and social theory at the Flinders University of South Australia.

Discusses the political implications of reproduction, examines feminist and traditional masculine theories, and suggests a reformed interpretation of Marxist principles.

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This book should be essential reading for anyone interested in the new reproductive technologies, biomedical ethics, and women's health.

Fox-Genovese, Kaminer, and Riley all write the history of feminism as a history of conflict between feminists who desire to deny difference in favor of equality and those who desire to celebrate difference. And they all ask what this contradiction lying at the heart of feminist theory implies for the practice of feminist politics. These works reveal the need for feminists who engage this debate to be self-conscious in their formulations.