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When Choice Itself Hurts The Quality Of Life, Richard Stith Jan 2016

When Choice Itself Hurts The Quality Of Life, Richard Stith

Law Faculty Publications

“When Choice Itself Hurts the Quality of Life” (how the results of choice may be seen as the fault of the chooser), Human Life Review, vol. XLII, No. 4, Fall 2016. For a more extensive analysis, see "Her Choice, Her Problem: How Having a Choice Can Diminish Family Solidarity", International Journal of the Jurisprudence of the Family, 2 Intl. J. Jurisprudence Fam. 179 (2011)

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Her Choice, Her Problem: How Having A Choice Can Diminish Family Solidarity, Richard Stith Jan 2011

Her Choice, Her Problem: How Having A Choice Can Diminish Family Solidarity, Richard Stith

Law Faculty Publications

This Article explores a little-noticed dimension of abortion and assisted suicide (or voluntary euthanasia): how choosing to reject those options can have a negative impact on the legally authorized choosers. Women who refuse abortion may be blamed for their choice by boyfriends, neighbors, employers, and others. Similarly, infirm or dying persons may find family and other caregivers upset by their refusal to agree to assisted suicide when voluntary death seems the sensible option. Finally, the author questions whether a life chosen as an option can ever have the dignity of a life simply accepted, i.e., whether the child a mother …

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Los Grandes Rechazos De La Sentencia Roe V. Wade, Richard Stith Jan 2010

Los Grandes Rechazos De La Sentencia Roe V. Wade, Richard Stith

Law Faculty Publications

: Quizás mayormente a causa del poder económico de los Estados Unidos, su alta jurisprudencia constitucional suele tener mucha influencia en otros países. En particular, la sentencia de la Corte Suprema norteamericana Roe v. Wade, que declaró un derecho al aborto durante todo el embarazo, puede conducir a la legalización del aborto a petición por los grandes tribunales de otras naciones. Pero antes de intentar de andar este surco abierto por la Corte estadounidense, los otros tribunales desearán saber que la sentencia ha sido rotundamente rechazada por fuentes bastante sorprendentes. El razonamiento de Roe ha sido rechazado por los peritos …

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Abortion As Betrayal, Richard Stith Jan 2009

Abortion As Betrayal, Richard Stith

Law Faculty Publications

Abortion is worse than ordinary murder, principally because it involves the betrayal of a dependent by a natural guardian. Furthermore, abortion is emblematic of wider lethal betrayals of radically dependent persons. All these betrayals are rationalized precisely by the victims’ lack of autonomy-based dignity. Christianity counters by affirming the concern and respect due to those who helplessly suffer worldly disdain.

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The Priority Of Respect: How Our Common Humanity Can Ground Our Individual Dignity, Richard Stith Jan 2004

The Priority Of Respect: How Our Common Humanity Can Ground Our Individual Dignity, Richard Stith

Law Faculty Publications

In this essay, we notice that the priority of persons, the unbridgeable political gap between persons and mere things, corresponds to a special sort of moral and legal treatment for persons, namely, as irreplaceable individuals. Normative language that conflates the category of person with fungible kinds of being can thus appear to justify destroying and replacing human beings, just as we do with things. Lethal consequences may result, for example, from a common but improper extension of the word “value” to persons. The attitude and act called “respect” brings forth much more adequately than “value” the distinctively individual priority of …

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On The Strength Of Its Human Dignity: The Pro-Life 1993 Decision Of The German Constitutional Court, Richard Stith Jul 1993