Chris Kaposy

Improving Abortion Access in Canada

Though abortion is legal in Canada, policies currently in place at various levels of the health care system, and the individual actions of medical professionals, can inhibit access to abortion. This paper examines the various extra-legal barriers to abortion access that exist in Canada, and argues that these barriers are unjust because there are no good reasons for the restrictions on autonomy that they present. The paper then outlines the various policy measures that could be taken to improve access.

The public funding of abortion in Canada: going beyond the concept of medical necessity

This article defends the public funding of abortion in the Canadian health care system in light of objections by opponents of abortion that the procedure should be denied public funding. Abortion opponents point out that women terminate their pregnancies most often for social reasons, that the Canadian health care system only requires funding for medically necessary procedures, and that abortion for social reasons is not medically necessary care. I offer two lines of response. First, I briefly present an argument that characterizes abortion sought for social reasons as medically necessary care, directly contesting the anti-abortion position. Second, and more substantially, I present a justice argument that shows that even if abortion is not regarded as medically necessary care, the reasons that typically motivate women to seek abortion are sufficiently weighty from the moral perspective that it would be unjust to deny them public funding. I finish by drawing the more general conclusion that health care funding decisions should be guided by a broader concept of necessary care, rather than by a narrow concept of specifically medical necessity. A broad concept of necessary care has been debated in health care policy in the Netherlands, and I suggest that such a concept would be a more just and defensible guide for funding decisions than the concept of medical necessity.

Ethical muscle and scientific interests: a role for philosophy in scientific research.

Ethics, a branch of philosophy, has a place in the regulatory framework of human subjects research. Sometimes, however, ethical concepts and arguments play a more central role in scientific activity. This can happen, for example, when violations of research norms are also ethical violations. In such a situation, ethical arguments can be marshaled to improve the quality of the scientific research. I explore two different examples in which philosophers and scientists have used ethical arguments to plead for epistemological improvements in the conduct of research. The first example deals with research dishonesty in pharmaceutical development. The second example is concerned with neuropsychological research using fMRI technology.

The Real-Life Consequences of Being Denied Access to an Abortion

Why should we think anyone would want to do this? Several possibilities come to mind. One is the desire to be seen as a moderate. Some people do not want to be lumped in with either non-moderate position: perhaps because they prefer compromises or perhaps because they do not want to be perceived by others as uncompromising. Another possibility is the desire to be seen as recognizing that abortion is complicated. Plausibly, a subject who groups all the cases together, (either as all acceptable or as all unacceptable) as a non-moderate does, may appear to lack subtlety in ethical thinking. If one of these forces or some other moderating force is at work in a subject’s responses to the vignettes, we can expect the subject to do the best possible with the given set of vignettes, determining a split where the subject thinks it plausible. But what is crucial is this point: if such a subject were given a different set of vignettes, the subject might determine the split elsewhere. The point at which the subject determines the split, I am suggesting, may well be constrained by the given vignettes. Of course, these are just possibilities; I have not provided any reason to think that they were actually at work. Still, this range of possibilities is enough, because these possibilities are consistent with the subjects’ responses in the study. So if any forces such as these were at work, then the authors’ claim that the weightiest factor was whether the fetal age was one to two months or three to four months is false. Instead, some of the subjects’ responses resulted from a drive to be seen as moderates, plus the fact that they were only given vignettes in which the fetal age range is one to four months. Additional studies can settle the matter. For example, a study using vignettes, now with fetal age in the twoto five-month range rather than the oneto four-month range, will tell us whether moderates determine the split at the same point that they did in the authors’ study or whether they determine it elsewhere. It would be valuable to know whether some subjects would, then, determine the split elsewhere, perhaps between the twoto three-month range and the fourto five-month range. Other studies would help us measure peoples’ propensity to produce a moderate response; for example, a study that limits the vignettes to fetal age of one to two months and a study that limits the vignettes to fetal age of three to four months. These, and other, studies will help us to better understand any framing effects that might operate in addition to subjects’ cognitive algebra and the weights that they assign to factors like the age of the fetus.