Moral Status and Human Life: The Case for Children's Superiority
J. Dwyer, Moral Status and Human Life: The Case for Children's Superiority, Cambridge University Press, October 2010
12 Pages Posted: 8 Nov 2012
Date Written: 2010
Abstract
This book develops a comprehensive theory of moral status, responding to the disparate partial accounts offered by animal rights proponents, environmental theorists, Kantians, and care ethicists and drawing from a naturalistic account of human moral psychology. It generates a multi-variable, sliding-scale rubric of moral status. It then applies the theory and rubric to do a rough comparison of the moral status of adults and children. It concludes, contrary to the historically prevailing view, that children occupy a higher moral status and so should receive greater consideration than adults in our moral and political deliberations. Finally, the book suggests some applications to current legal and policy debates.
Keywords: children's rights, moral status, human life, abortion, autonomy, sentience
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