Medical Law and Moral RightsSpringer Science & Business Media, 2005 M10 26 - 215 páginas Medical Law and Moral Rights discusses live issue arising in modern medical practice. Do patients undergoing intolerable irremediable suffering have a moral right to physician-assisted suicide? Ought they to have a comparable legal right? Do the moral duties of a mother to care for and not abuse her child also apply to her fetus? Ought fetuses to be given legal rights requiring pregnant women to submit to medical treatment without their consent? Ought single women, homosexual couples or persons carrying serious genetic defects to have a legal right to procreate? Ought a physician to perform an abortion requested for some frivolous reason? Ought physicians to be permitted to refuse to provide medically futile treatment demanded by their patients? An examination of relevant court cases shows how United States law answers these questions. The author then advocates improvements in the law to make it respect our moral rights more fully. To justify his conclusions, he proposes original conceptions of the human rights to life, procreational autonomy, privacy, equitable treatment and personal security. Thus, these essays test the usefulness of the theory of rights explained and defended in An Approach to Rights and elsewhere. |
Contenido
INTRODUCTION | 1 |
12 Moral Problems | 3 |
13 Moral Theory | 4 |
14 A Conception of Rights | 7 |
DEFINING THE RIGHTS TO PHYSICIANASSISTED SUICIDE | 10 |
21 Constitutional Rights | 11 |
22 The Modality of the Rights | 15 |
23 Linkage | 18 |
64 Temporal Puzzles | 80 |
65 Possible RightHolders? | 82 |
66 Fetal Agency as Legal Fiction | 85 |
67 Conclusion | 87 |
MATERNAL DUTIES AND FETAL RIGHTS | 90 |
71 Maternal Duties | 92 |
72 Maternal Violations | 98 |
73 Proposed Fetal Rights | 100 |
24 Statutory Rights | 19 |
25 Conclusions | 21 |
GLUCKSBERG v COMPASSION | 24 |
32 Due Process Analysis | 25 |
33 Defining the Issues | 26 |
34 No Fundamental Right | 27 |
35 Statute Not Arbitrary | 34 |
36 The Holding of the Court | 36 |
37 My Conclusion | 37 |
A LEGAL RIGHT TO PHYSICIANASSISTED SUICIDE | 38 |
42 Reasons to Enact | 40 |
43 Arguments Against Enactment | 45 |
A MORAL RIGHT TO PHYSICIANASSISTED SUICIDE | 54 |
52 The Liberty to Request Assistance | 58 |
53 The Liberty to Obtain Assistance | 60 |
54 Protective Perimeters | 61 |
55 Conclusion | 68 |
THE CONCEPT OF FETAL RIGHTS | 70 |
62 Why the Born Alive Rule? | 71 |
63 When a Separate Individual? | 73 |
74 Objections and Replies | 103 |
75 Conclusion | 114 |
THE SCOPE OF THE RIGHT TO PROCREATIONAL AUTONOMY | 120 |
82 Grounds of the Constitutional Right | 125 |
83 The Human Right to Procreational Autonomy | 135 |
84 The Human Right to Privacy | 138 |
85 The Ideal Scope | 145 |
POSSESSORS OF THE RIGHT TO PROCREATIONAL AUTONOMY | 147 |
92 Reasoning of the Courts | 149 |
93 Potential Judicial Decisions | 153 |
94 Conclusions | 180 |
101 Recent Futility Cases | 183 |
102 Reasons for a Legal Liberty | 185 |
103 Reasons Against a Legal Liberty | 193 |
104 Conclusion | 206 |
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