Life and Death Issues in Bioethics

This dissertation is comprised of three papers which consider prominent issues in

bioethics. The three topics can be briefly stated as: 1) a refutation of the responsibility

objection to abortion, 2) a rejection of the orthodox bioethical arguments attempting to justify

removal of artificial nutrition and hydration from persistent vegetative state patients, and 3) a

demand to revise the current orthodox criteria for determining death.

The Responsibility Objection to Abortion is a common and prominent objection to

abortion in general. The objection claims that a woman is responsible for the fetus growing

inside her body as a result of her willing participation in sexual activity. I argue that the

Responsibility Objection to Abortion fails to establish that a woman must provide care to her

unborn fetus. I do so by examining the various iterations in which the responsibility objection

has been presented and then identifying the particular conception of responsibility that each

iteration of the objection must be utilizing in order to ground the particular version of the

objection. My contention is that once examined in this manner I am able to demonstrate that

each iteration of the objection is unable to establish an obligation to provide care on the part of

a pregnant woman to her unborn fetus. Thus, the responsibility objection ceases to be a serious

objection to a woman's reproductive freedom.