¹ I have tried to elaborate on them in ‘Dispensing with Moral Rights’, Political Theory 5 (1977).Google Scholar

² ‘A Defence of Abortion and Infanticide’ as revised and reprinted in The Problem of Abortion, Feinberg, J. (ed.) (Belmont, Calif.: 1973), 51–91.Google Scholar For critical discussion see Benn, S., ‘Abortion, Infanticide and Respect for Persons’Google Scholar, ibid., 92–104, and Brody, B., Abortion and the Sanctity of Human Life: a Philosophical View (Cambridge, Mass, and London: 1976), 85ff.Google Scholar

³ See Smart, J. J. C. and Williams, B., Utilitarianism: For and Against (Cambridge: 1973), 98CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Bennett, J.'s ‘Whatever the Consequences’, Analysis 26 (1965–1966), 83–102CrossRefGoogle Scholar, is relevant to Williams's remarks and to the more recent discussion of similar matters in Harris, J., ‘The Survival Lottery’, Philosophy 50 (1975), 81–87CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed and the replies by Morillo, Carolyn, ‘As Sure as Shooting’, Philosophy 51 (1976), 80–89CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed, and Singer, Peter, ‘Utility and the Survival Lottery’, Philosophy 52 (1977), 218–222.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

⁴ Nozick, R., Anarchy, State and Utopia (New York: 1974), 34–35.Google Scholar

⁵ They apply also to the question of whether an innocent threat or an innocent shield of a threat may morally permissibly defend himself or herself. It should be noticed that the case of the innocent fat man is so devised as to preclude his taking self-defensive action. This is deliberate, and is intended to limit the factors that one has to cope with in deciding which actions are morally permitted.

⁶ Cf. Wasserstrom, Richard, ‘On the Morality of War: A Preliminary Inquiry’, in War and Morality, Wasserstrom, (ed.) (Belmont, Calif.: 1970).Google Scholar

⁷ Cf. Thompson, D. F., ‘The Means of Dealing with Criminals: Social Science and Social Philosophy’, Philosophy of the Social Sciences 5 (1975), 1–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁸ For some of the debate see e.g. Van den Haag, E., ‘On Deterrence and the Death Penalty’, Ethics 78 (1968), 280–288CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bedau, H. A. ‘The Death Penalty as a Deterrent: Argument and Evidence’, Ethics 80 (1970), 205–217CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and their rejoinders and replies in Ethics 81 (1971), 74–76Google Scholar. For an interesting presentation of it see also Conway, D. ‘Capital Punishment and Deterrence: Some Considerations in Dialogue Form’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 2 (1972), 431–443.Google Scholar

⁹ In Philosophy of Law he admits exceptions such as the mother who commits infanticide, the soldier who kills a fellow soldier in a duel and so on.

¹⁰ For a contemporary retributivist's view on the latter see Kleinig, J., Punishment and Desert (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoft 1973) 123ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹¹ Cf. Dworkin, G., ‘Paternalism’, The Monist 56 (1972), 64–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Carter, R., ‘Justifying Paternalism’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy 7 (1977), 133–145.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹² Vide the much publicized Karen Quinlan case. The original judgment by Justice Muir of the Supreme Court of New Jersey refusing Karen's father's request, which had the support of the Catholic authorities, to authorize the discontinuance of all extraordinary means of sustaining Karen's life processes is reprinted in Social Ethics: Morality and Social Policy, Mappes, T. and Zembaty, J. (eds) (New York: McGraw Hill 1977), 37–42Google Scholar. A debate between James Rachels and Tom Beauchamp on the moral significance of the killing-letting die distinction is published in the same volume, pp. 62–75.

¹³ I have discussed these matters in my ‘Voluntary and Nonvoluntary Euthanasia’, The Monist 59 (1976), 264–283.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Cf. Sumner, L. W., ‘A Matter of Life and Death’, Noûs 10 (1976), 145–171 (esp. p. 163).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁵ The pros and cons are well brought out in Moral Problems in Medicine, Gorovitz, S. et al. (eds) (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1976)Google Scholar in the section on ‘Birth Defects’.

¹⁶ If my discussion of the wrongness of killing certain animals was to the point, it will also serve to undermine the contention frequently made in discussions of abortion that once the issue of the humanity of the foetus is settled so too is that of the justifiability of abortion.

¹⁷ I am grateful to John Campbell, John Kleinig, Bruce Langtry and Peter Singer for helpful criticisms of an earlier draft of this paper.