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Entries Tagged as 'Abortion'

Is Abortion Liberal? Part 2

October 27th, 2008 27 Comments

In my previous post, Is Abortion Liberal? Part 1, I argued that liberals who support the non-initiation of force principle can support abortion only on two grounds; (a) the fetus is a person but its existence inside the mother without her consent constitutes a form aggression, and hence, the mother’s action of killing it is […]

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Is Abortion Liberal? Part 1

October 26th, 2008 11 Comments

Laws permitting abortion on demand are often deemed to be liberal. Further, political liberals are frequently ardent defenders of such laws. I think these conclusions are mistaken. In a series of two posts I will provide some reasons why. Most contemporary liberals advocate a form of the harm principle, famously articulated by Mill in On […]

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Praise from our Critics

June 20th, 2008 3 Comments

Despite holding to a somewhat contrary viewpoint and despite having had more than one clash of viewpoints it appears that our critics accord us some praise. I just now stumbled accross this thread on GayNZ.com’s forum discussing Christian blogs and websites and was pleasantly surprised by the comments on our blog. Kay writes: “The M […]

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Abortion and Brain Death: A Response to Farrar

March 19th, 2008 26 Comments

David Farrar of Kiwiblog weighs in on the abortion debate. I have met David a couple of times and worked with him on several issues and I have a lot of time for him but on this issue we disagree. Given how widely read Farrar’s blog is, and seeing the ethics of killing a fetus […]

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Genocide ! Who Cares? Tell them about crazy Falwell and Tinky Winky

March 2nd, 2008 1 Comment

A few years ago I heard with amusement the NZ media report that Jerry Falwell had condemned Tinky Winky from the Teletubbies as gay. A little while latter I came across an article in First Things pointing out that the sources of these reports were mistaken. I was not a fan of Falwell but whatever […]

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New Publication

November 21st, 2007 Comments Off on New Publication

I just received word from the Editor of The Journal of Ethics and Medicine that my article “Boonin’s Defense of the Sentience Criteria: A Critique” has been accepted for publication in a future issue (the exact issue is still being decided). There may be some minor amendments made but at present the following is the […]

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Imposing Your Beliefs Onto Others: A Defence

November 7th, 2007 1 Comment

Recently an acquaintance forwarded me a some comments about this blog on a internet forum. The critic, who goes by the handle Kaiwai stated: Matt Flanagan I find, yes, some of the things I agree with but there is generally speaking, a huge difference; I don’t set out to impose my views by way of […]

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