Bruce P Blackshaw
Biographic Data
| ID | 4504119 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Bruce P Blackshaw |
| GIVEN NAMES | Bruce P |
| FAMILY NAME | Blackshaw |
| SIGNATURE | BLACKSHAW B P |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Birmingham |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9115-582X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 27 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 0 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 27 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 0 |
Reconsidering the impairment argument against abortion
Registers and quotas
Applying Pascal’s Wager to Procreation
Pascal’s wager uses decision theory to argue that it is rational to attempt to nurture belief in God, based on the expected utility of believing (infinite happiness) compared to not believing (at best, only finite happiness). A belief in an eternal conscious torment in hell (infinite suffering) for non-believers makes the differences in expected utility even more apparent, strengthening the argument. Similar reasoning can also be used to calculat…
Bodyoids and Moral Status
Bodyoids are human organisms engineered to lack consciousness and have been proposed as a potential solution to the shortage of bodies available for use as organ donors, cadavers in medical education, and as human research participants.In our bodyoids article (Rodger et al., 2025), we argued that creating bodyoids is ethically dubious.First, we explain that some accounts of moral status entail that bodyoids will possess full moral status, which i…
Bodyoids and Speculative Bioethics
Alexandre Erler’s commentary challenges our argument against creating human ‘bodyoids’. While he considers our concerns speculative, we briefly defend speculative bioethics as vital for anticipating ethical risks before technologies emerge. We maintain that historical practices such as organ procurement and embryo experimentation illustrate how instrumental uses of human bodies can erode moral boundaries. Erler’s confidence in safeguards like the…
No Brain, No Pain, No Problem? The Case Against Creating Human ‘Bodyoids’
The Moral Difficulty of Embryo-Friendly IVF
A reply to Gillham on the impairment principle
Defending the impairment argument
Kyle van Oosterum and Emma Curran have recently argued that the impairment argument against abortion is weak and accomplishes little. They also claim that impairment fails to explain what makes giving a child fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) immoral, which is an important premise of the argument. Here, I explain that the impairment argument is not as weak as they believe. Further, I argue that impairment offers a superior explanation for what makes g…
Abortion policies at the bedside
Hersey et al have outlined a proposed ethical framework for assessing abortion policies that locates the effect of government legislation between the provider and the patient, emphasising its influence on interactions between them. They claim that their framework offers an alternative to the personal moral claims that lie behind legislation restricting abortion access. However, they fail to observe that their own understanding of reproductive jus…
Contraception is not a reductio of Marquis
Are heartbeat bills ethically defensible
Inconsistency arguments still do not matter
William Simkulet has recently criticised Colgrove et al ’s defence against what they have called inconsistency arguments—arguments that claim opponents of abortion (OAs) act in ways inconsistent with their underlying beliefs about human fetuses (eg, that human fetuses are persons at conception). Colgrove et al presented three objections to inconsistency arguments, which Simkulet argues are unconvincing. Further, he maintains that OAs who hold tha…
Can prolife theorists justify an exception for rape
Prolife theorists typically hold to the claim that all human beings possess equal moral status from conception and consequently possess a right to life. This, they believe, entails that abortion is impermissible in all circumstances. Critics characterize this as an extreme anti‐abortion position, as it prima facie allows no exceptions, even in cases of rape. Here, I examine whether the prolife claim regarding equal moral status is compatible with…
Public health ethics and abortion
Agency, Pregnancy and Persons
Why we should not extend the 14-day rule
The 14-day rule restricts the culturing of human embryos in vitro for the purposes of scientific research for no longer than 14 days. Since researchers recently developed the capability to exceed the 14-day limit, pressure to modify the rule has started to build. Sophia McCully argues that the limit should be extended to 28 days, listing numerous potential benefits of doing so. We contend that McCully has not engaged with the main reasons why the…
Strengthening the impairment argument against abortion
Perry Hendricks’ impairment argument for the immorality of abortion is based on two premises: first, impairing a fetus with fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) is immoral, and second, if impairing an organism to some degree is immoral, then ceteris paribus, impairing it to a higher degree is also immoral. He calls this the impairment principle (TIP). Since abortion impairs a fetus to a higher degree than FAS, it follows from these two premises that abor…
Gestaticide
The rapid development of artificial womb technologies means that we must consider if and when it is permissible to kill the human subject of ectogestation—recently termed a ‘gestateling’ by Elizabeth Chloe Romanis—prior to ‘birth’. We describe the act of deliberately killing the gestateling as gestaticide and argue that there are good reasons to maintain that gestaticide is morally equivalent to infanticide, which we consider to be morally imperm…
Parental responsibilities and moral status
Prabhpal Singh has recently defended a relational account of the difference in moral status between fetuses and newborns as a way of explaining why abortion is permissible and infanticide is not. He claims that only a newborn can stand in a parent–child relation, not a fetus, and this relation has a moral dimension that bestows moral value. We challenge Singh’s reasoning, arguing that the case he presents is unconvincing. We suggest that the pare…
Strengthened impairment argument does not restate Marquis
With Perry Hendricks, I recently outlined a strengthened version of the impairment argument (SIA) for the immorality of abortion. Alex Gillham has argued that our use of Don Marquis’ deprivation of a ‘future-like ours’ account entails we were merely restating Marquis’ argument for the immorality of abortion. Here, I explain why SIA is more than just a reframing of Marquis
Prolife hypocrisy
Opponents of abortion are often described as ‘inconsistent’ (hypocrites) in terms of their beliefs, actions and/or priorities. They are alleged to do too little to combat spontaneous abortion, they should be adopting cryopreserved embryos with greater frequency and so on. These types of arguments—which we call ‘inconsistency arguments’—conform to a common pattern. Each specifies what consistent opponents of abortion would do (or believe), asserts…
Fine-tuning the impairment argument
Perry Hendricks’ original impairment argument for the immorality of abortion is based on the impairment principle: if impairing an organism to some degree is immoral, then ceteris paribus , impairing it to a higher degree is also immoral. Since abortion impairs a fetus to a higher degree than fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) and giving a fetus FAS is immoral, it follows that abortion is immoral. Critics have argued that the ceteris paribus is not met…
If fetuses are persons, abortion is a public health crisis
Pro‐life advocates commonly argue that fetuses have the moral status of persons, and an accompanying right to life, a view most pro‐choice advocates deny. A difficulty for this pro‐life position has been Judith Jarvis Thomson’s violinist analogy, in which she argues that even if the fetus is a person, abortion is often permissible because a pregnant woman is not obliged to continue to offer her body as life support. Here, we outline the moral the…
Genetic Selective Abortion
Jeremy Williams has argued that if we are committed to a liberal pro-choice stance with regard to selective abortion for disability, we will be unable to justify the prohibition of sex selective abortion. Here, I apply his reasoning to selective abortion based on other traits pregnant women may decide are undesirable. These include susceptibility to disease, level of intelligence, physical appearance, sexual orientation, religious belief and crim…
No prominent works on this page.
Genetic Selective Abortion
Jeremy Williams has argued that if we are committed to a liberal pro-choice stance with regard to selective abortion for disability, we will be unable to justify the prohibition of sex selective abortion. Here, I apply his reasoning to selective abortion based on other traits pregnant women may decide are undesirable. These include susceptibility to disease, level of intelligence, physical appearance, sexual orientation, religious belief and crim…
Frozen embryos and the obligation to adopt
Rob Lovering has developed an interesting new critique of views that regard embryos as equally valuable as other human beings: the moral argument for frozen human embryo adoption. The argument is aimed at those who believe that the death of a frozen embryo is a very bad thing, and Lovering concludes that some who hold this view ought to prevent one of these deaths by adopting and gestating a frozen embryo. Contra Lovering, we show that there are …
Defining life from death
To determine when the life of a human organism begins, Mark T. Brown has developed the somatic integration definition of life. Derived from diagnostic criteria for human death, Brown’s account requires the presence of a life‐regulation internal control system for an entity to be considered a living organism. According to Brown, the earliest point at which a developing human could satisfy this requirement is at the beginning of the fetal stage, an…
Why we should not extend the 14-day rule
The 14-day rule restricts the culturing of human embryos in vitro for the purposes of scientific research for no longer than 14 days. Since researchers recently developed the capability to exceed the 14-day limit, pressure to modify the rule has started to build. Sophia McCully argues that the limit should be extended to 28 days, listing numerous potential benefits of doing so. We contend that McCully has not engaged with the main reasons why the…
Strengthening the impairment argument against abortion
Perry Hendricks’ impairment argument for the immorality of abortion is based on two premises: first, impairing a fetus with fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) is immoral, and second, if impairing an organism to some degree is immoral, then ceteris paribus, impairing it to a higher degree is also immoral. He calls this the impairment principle (TIP). Since abortion impairs a fetus to a higher degree than FAS, it follows from these two premises that abor…
Gestaticide
The rapid development of artificial womb technologies means that we must consider if and when it is permissible to kill the human subject of ectogestation—recently termed a ‘gestateling’ by Elizabeth Chloe Romanis—prior to ‘birth’. We describe the act of deliberately killing the gestateling as gestaticide and argue that there are good reasons to maintain that gestaticide is morally equivalent to infanticide, which we consider to be morally imperm…
Parental responsibilities and moral status
Prabhpal Singh has recently defended a relational account of the difference in moral status between fetuses and newborns as a way of explaining why abortion is permissible and infanticide is not. He claims that only a newborn can stand in a parent–child relation, not a fetus, and this relation has a moral dimension that bestows moral value. We challenge Singh’s reasoning, arguing that the case he presents is unconvincing. We suggest that the pare…
Strengthened impairment argument does not restate Marquis
With Perry Hendricks, I recently outlined a strengthened version of the impairment argument (SIA) for the immorality of abortion. Alex Gillham has argued that our use of Don Marquis’ deprivation of a ‘future-like ours’ account entails we were merely restating Marquis’ argument for the immorality of abortion. Here, I explain why SIA is more than just a reframing of Marquis
Prolife hypocrisy
Opponents of abortion are often described as ‘inconsistent’ (hypocrites) in terms of their beliefs, actions and/or priorities. They are alleged to do too little to combat spontaneous abortion, they should be adopting cryopreserved embryos with greater frequency and so on. These types of arguments—which we call ‘inconsistency arguments’—conform to a common pattern. Each specifies what consistent opponents of abortion would do (or believe), asserts…
Fine-tuning the impairment argument
Perry Hendricks’ original impairment argument for the immorality of abortion is based on the impairment principle: if impairing an organism to some degree is immoral, then ceteris paribus , impairing it to a higher degree is also immoral. Since abortion impairs a fetus to a higher degree than fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) and giving a fetus FAS is immoral, it follows that abortion is immoral. Critics have argued that the ceteris paribus is not met…
If fetuses are persons, abortion is a public health crisis
Pro‐life advocates commonly argue that fetuses have the moral status of persons, and an accompanying right to life, a view most pro‐choice advocates deny. A difficulty for this pro‐life position has been Judith Jarvis Thomson’s violinist analogy, in which she argues that even if the fetus is a person, abortion is often permissible because a pregnant woman is not obliged to continue to offer her body as life support. Here, we outline the moral the…
Inconsistency arguments still do not matter
William Simkulet has recently criticised Colgrove et al ’s defence against what they have called inconsistency arguments—arguments that claim opponents of abortion (OAs) act in ways inconsistent with their underlying beliefs about human fetuses (eg, that human fetuses are persons at conception). Colgrove et al presented three objections to inconsistency arguments, which Simkulet argues are unconvincing. Further, he maintains that OAs who hold tha…
Can prolife theorists justify an exception for rape
Prolife theorists typically hold to the claim that all human beings possess equal moral status from conception and consequently possess a right to life. This, they believe, entails that abortion is impermissible in all circumstances. Critics characterize this as an extreme anti‐abortion position, as it prima facie allows no exceptions, even in cases of rape. Here, I examine whether the prolife claim regarding equal moral status is compatible with…
Public health ethics and abortion
Agency, Pregnancy and Persons
Abortion policies at the bedside
Hersey et al have outlined a proposed ethical framework for assessing abortion policies that locates the effect of government legislation between the provider and the patient, emphasising its influence on interactions between them. They claim that their framework offers an alternative to the personal moral claims that lie behind legislation restricting abortion access. However, they fail to observe that their own understanding of reproductive jus…
Contraception is not a reductio of Marquis
Are heartbeat bills ethically defensible
A reply to Gillham on the impairment principle
Defending the impairment argument
Kyle van Oosterum and Emma Curran have recently argued that the impairment argument against abortion is weak and accomplishes little. They also claim that impairment fails to explain what makes giving a child fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) immoral, which is an important premise of the argument. Here, I explain that the impairment argument is not as weak as they believe. Further, I argue that impairment offers a superior explanation for what makes g…
No Brain, No Pain, No Problem? The Case Against Creating Human ‘Bodyoids’
The Moral Difficulty of Embryo-Friendly IVF
Reconsidering the impairment argument against abortion
Registers and quotas
Applying Pascal’s Wager to Procreation
Pascal’s wager uses decision theory to argue that it is rational to attempt to nurture belief in God, based on the expected utility of believing (infinite happiness) compared to not believing (at best, only finite happiness). A belief in an eternal conscious torment in hell (infinite suffering) for non-believers makes the differences in expected utility even more apparent, strengthening the argument. Similar reasoning can also be used to calculat…
Reproductive Health and Technologies (15 works) · Abortion (14 works) · Philosophy (13 works) · Psychology (13 works) · Epistemology (10 works) · Neuroethics, Human Enhancement, Biomedical Innovations (10 works) · Pregnancy (10 works) · Computer Science (9 works) · Medicine (9 works) · Biology (8 works)