PHIL 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Reproductive Rights, Negative And Positive Rights, Harm Principle
Document Summary
Why we have it: negative vs. positive rights. What the harm principle is and how it works. Levels of harm and the threshold: non-disease characteristics. Is sex selection a way to prevent harm. Robertson and dahl: procreative liberty is a negative right. -> could entail the location in which you reproduce [hospital, home ]. -> being able to procreate with the person you choose [we do limit this to some degree incest because of possible harm to the child] -> the only reason for which the gov. and society is justified in interfering with the actions of other people is if the action causes harm. -> concerned with the types of things that seems to be relevant harms, but the arguments don"t explain why the harm are harms arguments don"t explain why the harm are harms. -> sexism: belief that one sex is superior to the other. -> engaging in some actions would privilege one sex over the other (consequences)