Human Dignity and Bioethics

382 | Diana Schaub
ways to kill yourself, and even quite a few ways to kill your fellows, so
long as they are the sort who don’t have any “future-directed plans.”
Although factory farming of sentient nonhuman animals won’t be
allowed, factory farming of human embryos for tissues and organs
would be unproblematic.
I don’t want to leave the impression that I’m opposed to bicycle
paths or in favor of the mistreatment of farm stock. In fact, I
am very sympathetic to the call to reconsider our obligations to the
natural world; both animal husbandry and environmental stewardship
should be part of our bioethical inquiries. Nonetheless, it seems
to me perverse to create entitlements to niceties for those beings,
whether human or nonhuman, who are in their prime with certain
functional capabilities, while refusing to protect the inalienable right
to life of each and every human being. But bicycle paths and public
parks (including, I assume, dog parks for our highly sensitive and
complexly communicative canine companions) are “interesting and
fun,” whereas protecting human life is burdensome.
Protecting human life is especially burdensome for women. Accordingly,
Nussbaum is receptive to the argument (while cagily withholding
a final endorsement) that women should not be made to
“bear a burden of life support that males are not required to bear.”
Since pregnancy and motherhood are not fairly distributed among
males and females—and, thus, certainly couldn’t pass constitutional
muster—mothers must have the option to abort their children. That
is the legal remedy for nature’s (or God’s) injustice to women. Should
a woman come to regret the choice she has made, the drugs, recreational
and/or lethal, will be there for her. According to Nussbaum,
she could even clone herself and start afresh.
Unlike Nussbaum who treats the works of the philosophers as
brightly colored scraps to be stitched together in a policy quilt of
her own liking, Susan Shell conscientiously uncovers the thought
of a particular philosopher. In most serious discussions of bioethics,
reference is bound to be made to Immanuel Kant. Shell seeks to go
beyond this obligatory acknowledgment of Kant’s influence on our
doctrines of personal autonomy and informed consent. She argues
that a fuller understanding of Kant—including elements of what
might be called a non-Kantian Kant—could continue to deepen
and guide our bioethical reasoning, even correcting (by limiting) the