Likely the first question about Margaret Somervilleʼs book will concern the title: what does Bird on an Ethics Wire mean? She explains:

Somerville’s book is true to this picture in two ways. Firstly, she defends views that run contrary to the mainstream on various ethical issues. But, secondly, she does so while generously engaging views with which she disagrees.

The next question concerns the topic of the book. This answer is less straightforward. On the one hand, it is about, as suggested by the subtitle, the “culture wars” of contemporary Western societies: “permissives”/neo-liberals/secularists versus “restrictives”/neo-conservatives/religionists. The various issues it discusses—religion in the public square (Chapter 1), academic freedom (Chapter 2), human dignity (Chapter 3), physician-assisted suicide (Chapter 4), abortion (Chapter 6), and genetic enhancement among them—are simply illustrations of clashes between these warring factions. On the other hand, as the book progresses, it seems increasingly that these issues themselves and Somervilleʼs views on them are what the book is about. In the end, this is more a book about bioethics than sociology.

What of the contrarian views she defends? Of the several issues discussed, physician-assisted suicide and genetic enhancement are of particular concern to Somerville, with both issues popping up throughout the book. Negatively, she argues that physician-assisted suicide is immoral and ought to be illegal and that germ-line editing also is wrong. Positively, she argues for enhanced palliative care (e.g., 138, 176, 262) and proposes that we recognize a human right “to be born from natural human biological origins” (248; cf. 110).

In part, Somerville draws these conclusions on the basis of general considerations. In part, she offers arguments specific to various issues. For instance, as one reason to not evict religion from the public square, she writes, “I propose that the most important task of religious voices in the public square is to place and keep social-ethical-values issues in a moral context” (31). In the following comments, though, I focus on a couple of the general considerations that I found insightful.

One element of Somerville’s approach is to consider these issues not only at the individual level but also at the societal level. While discussions of issues such as physician-assisted suicide and reproductive technologies normally focus on individuals and individual cases, individualsʼ choices also have a “cumulative impact” on societal values and institutions that should not be ignored (141, 240, 252; cf. 132, 181, 225, 253, 267). She distinguishes between respect for an individual’s life and respect for life in general (101, 178, 262), concerned that mainstream views sacrifice the latter. She also detects this same tendency in Canadian jurisprudence which, since the inception of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, sees through a “charter”—i.e., individualistic—“lens” (155; cf. 252). Even if one disagrees with her conclusions regarding specific issues, it is hard to dispute her diagnosis of individualistic tendencies in contemporary philosophy and law.

Another noteworthy aspect of Somervilleʼs general approach is the long-term view she urges. “What must we regard as sacred and hold in trust for [future generations] in order not to leave them worse off than we are or with fewer choices or options than we have?” (96) Will our legacy be a society “in which no reasonable person would want to live?” (284) Specifically in regards to physician-assisted suicide she asks, “How do we want our grandchildren and great-grandchildren to die?” (43) These provocative questions substantially reframe the issues. A controlling analogy throughout the book compares our physical environment to our “metaphysical” one, the “values, principles, attitudes, beliefs” on which our society is based (196; cf. 45, 166, 255). We “hold in trust” both the physical and metaphysical for future societies (52, 112, 163, 199, 255).

As pregnant with wisdom as this long-term perspective is, Somerville’s treatment of other key ideas is insufficient. Her response to the charge of speciesism is one example. She says that what “differentiates us from all other animals” is that humans are “meaning-seeking animals” (194; cf. 113). However, this characteristic seems untrue of human beings with serious cognitive impairments. If, then, moral status is simply a biological matter of having human genes, apart from possessing any particular capacities, such as autonomy or self-awareness, Somerville remains guilty as charged. Similarly, while she identifies the “essence” of humanity as the human spirit, this spirit is under-explained. While she typically associates it with “transcendence” (78), she also refers to the “essence of our humanness” as a “messy quality” that she thinks should be left untouched by attempts to perfect the human genome (186). But what exactly is this “messy quality”? If we are to hold in trust the human spirit, it would behoove us to know what it is. Additionally, while she generously engages with opposing views as they are presented in popular discourse, she largely leaves professional philosophical opponents unaddressed. For instance, one wonders how she would respond to John Rawls and other public reason advocates who argue, quite unlike Somerville, for a considerable degree of religious restraint in the public square. ^{Footnote 1}

On balance, Bird on an Ethics Wire should likely be judged in one of two ways. One is that it is full of wisdom, a wisdom that learns from the past with an eye to the future and that recognizes the limits of language and reason. The other is that it is a less-than-cogent philosophical treatise, lacking clarity and precision, overly reliant on intuition and inexpert sociology. It seems only one can be true. Readers will draw their own judgments, but I suppose the ultimate judge, as Somerville suggests, will be history.