Making peace in gestational conflicts

Mary Anne Warren's claim that there is room for only one person with full and equal rights inside a single human skin ([1], p. 63) calls attention to the vast range of moral conflict engendered by assigning full basic moral rights to fetuses. Thereby, it serves as a goad to thinking about conflicts between pregnant women and their fetuses in a way that emphasizes relationships rather than rights. I sketch out what a care orientation might suggest about resolving gestational conflicts. I also argue that the care orientation, with its commitment to the significance of the partial and the particular, cannot be absorbed within standard, impartialist moral theory.     

Gallbladder distention and the effects of several drugs on heart rate,respiratory movements and cortical potentials in cats with hypothalamic lesions

The effects of chronic hypothalamic lesions and various drugs on the viscero-visceral reflexes of cats have been investigated, utilizing measurement of the bioelectrical activity of the cerebral cortex. After coagulation of the posterolateral hypothalamus the heart rate decreased by 40–60 beats per minute, but eventually it regained its initial value. The viscero-visceral reflexes from the gallbladder to the heart were preserved after the operative procedure. Chlorpromazine and atropine blocked both arousal and the cardiorespiratory response to stimulation of the gallbladder. Similar effects were produced by novocaine and pantocaine.     

The fertility related behavior of Mexican American adolescents

Data from a clinic sample of pregnant adolescents are analyzed for differences in fertility related variables between Mexican American and non Mexican. The independent variables are birthplace, ethnicity, and exposure to United States culture of Mexican and non Mexican adolescents. The dependent variables are talking about sex, pregnancy, birth control, hearing about birth control, and use of birth control. The data support the hypothesis that in the process of acculturation the fertility related behavior of immigrant Mexican adolescent females is affected by the indigenous United States Mexican culture rather than by United States Anglo culture. Implications for delivery of services are discussed. The delivery of fertility related services should take into account the cultural preferences of Mexican women, and should not involve coercion from legal or medical authorities. While liberation of Mexican American women, and accompanying changes in childbearing patterns may be desirable, these efforts should originate within the Mexican American community. Data is presented in tables on selected sample and subsample characteristics and compares fertility behaviors across ethnic groups, including Anglo, Black, US non-Mexican, and US Mexican.     

Prenatal diagnosis, personal identity, and disability

A fascinating criticism of abortion occasioned by prenatal diagnosis of potentially disabling traits is that the complex test-and-abortion sends a morally disparaging message to people living with disabilities. I have argued that available versions of this "expressivist" argument are inadequate on two grounds. The most fundamental is that, considered as a practice, abortions prompted by prenatal testing are not semantically well-behaved enough to send any particular message; they do not function as signs in a rule-governed symbol system. Further, even granting, for the sake of argument, the expressive power of testing and aborting, it would not be possible, contra the argument's proponents, to distinguish between abortions undertaken because of beliefs about the disabling conditions the fetus might face as a child and abortions undertaken for many other possible reasons -- e.g., because of the poverty the fetus would face or the increase in family size that the birth of a new child would occasion. Here, I respond to criticisms of those arguments, and propose and defend another: the expressivist argument cannot, in general, distinguish successfully between abortion and therapy as modalities for responding to disabilities.     

On Latour’s Social Theory and Theory of Society,and His Contribution to Saving the World

Latour is widely considered a critic and renewer of research in the social sciences. The ecologically minded Left has also acclaimed him as a theorist interested in bringing nature back both into sociological theory and into society and politics. To enable a more detailed discussion of Latour’s claims, I will here outline his theory and the ways in which it is related to classical theory, such as Durkheim, and the methodology of the interpretive paradigm, such as Schütz. My thesis is that Latour’s empirical studies may be read as unfolding the methodological consequences of the interpretive paradigm, and that his early work is a brilliant proof of Durkheim’s theory of the morphology of social facts. Latour has now elaborated the insights he gained from concrete laboratory studies toward a general theory of the social, of society, and of politics. These generalizations have made his theory at least partly problematic. The political implication of Latour’s theory of society is a generalization of the call for equality to encompass everything; in other words, Latour criticizes the exclusion of nonhuman entities from political representation. The paper closes by discussing the political consequences of this proposal.