← Return to search results
Back to Prindle Institute

harm

Posted on

On the Morality of Allowing Euthanasia for Those with Mental Illness: Part 1

photograph of empty hospital beds and drawn curtains

Starting in March 2023, Canada will allow those with a mental illness to seek medical aid in dying. Canada first legalized euthanasia in June 2016, but – like most jurisdictions that have passed such laws – restricted access only to those with a terminal illness. This law was expanded in 2021 to also include patients with a “grievous and irremediable medical condition” (that is, those who are going through incurable suffering, but who are not dying). Canada’s most recent amendment will now see them join the Netherlands as one of the first countries in the world to make euthanasia available for those with a severe and incurable mental illness.

What should our ethical position be on this law? Fortunately for us, euthanasia is an incredibly fertile area in moral philosophy. Generally, philosophers separate cases of euthanasia into one of two kinds. The first of these describes scenarios in which a doctor withdraws lifesaving or life-sustaining treatment from a patient. Suppose, for example, that a terminal cancer patient has only months to live, but is currently undergoing an aggressive course of chemotherapy to try and extend her life by several weeks. This treatment comes at an enormous physical and mental toll, however. Given this, she elects to cease treatment in order to maximize her quality of life in what little time she has left. This is what is referred to as “passive” euthanasia. Passive euthanasia can be contrasted with cases in which a doctor intentionally intervenes in order to end a patient’s life. Suppose, for example, that the patient above wanted to avoid the unnecessary pain and suffering that her illness will bring in the months preceding her inevitable death. Given this, she asks her doctor to administer a morphine overdose to end her life quickly and painlessly. This is what is referred to as “active” euthanasia.

This distinction is important, as many jurisdictions that criminalize active euthanasia have no such prohibitions against passive euthanasia. And this sentiment is often echoed by doctors. The American Medical Association (AMA), for example, has previously stated that active euthanasia is “contrary to that for which the medical profession stands and is contrary to the policy of the AMA.” Despite this, they hold that the passive euthanasia should be “the decision of the patient and or his immediate family.”

This distinction is an interesting one – especially since, in many cases, passive euthanasia can bring about far more suffering. Consider a terminal patient whose life is being prolonged using a respirator. Suppose, then, that this patient – knowing that her final weeks will be filled with unbearable suffering – elects to end her life prematurely. There are two ways in which this could be done: The first option would be to remove her respirator. The second option would instead involve administering a morphine overdose, quickly and painlessly ending her life. According to the approach outlined above, the former option (a case of passive euthanasia) would be acceptable, even though it sentences the patient to the harrowing experience of slowly suffocating to death. The latter option (a case of active euthanasia) would instead be seen as morally impermissible, despite the fact that it involves far less suffering for the patient.

Given the fact that passive euthanasia can often be far worse than active euthanasia, it might be tempting to think that there’s no important moral difference between the two. But some philosophers still believe there is. Philippa Foot, for example, argues that it all comes down to whether or not we are the agent of harm. Foot emphasizes that any harm that befalls a person (including death) comes as the result of a sequence of events – sort of like a long line of dominoes. The morally important question then becomes: who started this sequence of events? If it’s us – that is, if we are the one who tipped the first domino – then we are, according to Foot, the “agent of harm,” and therefore find ourselves morally responsible for the harm in question. If, however, the sequence of events is already in motion, then we’re off the hook. To use Foot’s own examples, this is the kind of reasoning that would allow us to drive past a dying person on the side of the road in order to save five other people, but would not allow us to drive directly over another individual for the same reason.

Returning to the discussion of euthanasia, Foot’s approach allows us to make a moral distinction between active and passive euthanasia on the basis of who sets the harmful sequence of events in motion. When we remove the respirator from a patient, the sequence of events that leads to her death comes about as the result of her disease. When we administer a morphine overdose, however, we initiate a new sequence of events – a sequence that we are responsible for. We become the agent of harm.

So, does all of this mean that providing active euthanasia (including in cases where a patient is suffering from a severe and incurable mental illness) is morally wrong? Not necessarily. While we’ve shown that there is an important moral distinction to be made between cases of passive and active euthanasia, we have not yet shown that this distinction is significant enough to make one kind (passive) always morally right, and the other kind (active) always morally wrong.

And there’s something even stranger going on here. Consider a case where someone suffering from a mental illness takes her own life. While we might see this as tragic or regrettable, few – if any – of us would say that the individual did something morally wrong. And this is interesting. Because if we insist on holding that active euthanasia is morally wrong, we are essentially saying that it’s morally impermissible for us to help an individual do something that is otherwise morally permissible. This is a strange conclusion indeed. In fact, we’d be hard-pressed to think of many other cases where it’s wrong for us to help someone do something that’s right. This strange anomaly just goes to show how complex this discussion is, and how much more there is to be said on the matter.

Posted on

The Curious Case of Evie Toombes: Alternative Realities and Non-Identity

photograph of elongated shadow of person on paved road

Evie Toombes just won a lawsuit against her mother’s doctor. She was born with spina bifida, a birth defect affecting her spine, which requires continual medical care. Taking folic acid before and during pregnancy can help reduce the risk of spina bifida, but Toombes says that the doctor told her mother that folic acid supplements weren’t necessary. The judge ruled that, had the doctor advised Toombes’ mother “about the relationship between folic acid supplementation and the prevention of spina bifida/neural tube defects,” she would have “delayed attempts to conceive” until she was sure her folic acid levels were adequate, and that “in the circumstances, there would have been a later conception, which would have resulted in a normal healthy child.” The judge therefore ruled that the doctor was liable for damages because of Toombes’ condition.

Let’s assume that Toombes is right about the facts. If so, the case may seem straightforward. But it actually raises an incredibly difficult philosophical conundrum noted by the philosopher Derek Parfit. Initially, it seems Toombes was harmed by the doctor’s failure to advise her mother about folic acid. But the suggestion is that, if he’d done so, her mother would have “delayed attempts to conceive,” resulting in the “later conception” of a “normal healthy child.” And, presumably, that child would not have been Evie Toombes. Had her mother waited, a different sperm would have fertilized a different egg, producing a different child. So had the doctor advised her mother to take folic acid and delay pregnancy, it’s not as though Toombes would have been born, just without spina bifida. A different child without spina bifida would have been born, and Toombes would not have existed at all.

It may be that some lives are so bad that non-existence would be better. And if your life is worse than non-existence, then it’s easy to see why you’d have a complaint against someone who’s responsible for your life. But Toombes’ life doesn’t seem to be like this: she is a successful equestrian. And anyway, she didn’t make that claim as part of her argument, and the court didn’t rely on it. However, if Toombes’ life is worth living, and if the doctor’s actions are responsible for her existing at all, it might seem puzzling how the doctor’s actions could have wronged her.

The non-identity problem arises in cases like this, where we can affect how well-off future people are, but only by also changing which future people come to exist. It’s a problem because causing future people to be less well-off seems wrong, but it’s also hard to see who is wronged in these cases, provided the people who come to exist have lives worth living. E.g., it seems that the doctor should have told Toombes’ mother about folic acid, but, assuming her life is worth living, it’s also hard to see how Toombes is wronged by his not doing so, since that’s why she exists.

The non-identity problem also has implications for many other real-world questions. For instance, if we enact sustainable environmental policies, perhaps future generations will be better-off. But these generations will also consist of different people: the butterfly effect of different policies means that different people will get married, will conceive at different times, etc. Provided the (different) people in the resource-depleted future have lives worth living, it may be hard to see why living unsustainably would be wrong.

(It might be plausible that the doctor wronged Toombes’ mother, whose existence doesn’t depend on his actions. But wrongs against currently-existing people may not be able to explain the wrong of the unsustainable environmental policy, provided the bad effects won’t show up for a long time. Some unsustainable policies might only help current people, by allowing them to live more comfortably. And anyway, the court thought Toombes was also wronged: she’s getting the damages.)

Because it is relevant to important questions like this, it would be very handy to know what the solution to the non-identity problem is. Unfortunately, all solutions have drawbacks.

An obvious possibility is to say that we should make the world as good as possible. Since well-being is good, then, all else equal, we would be obligated to make sure that better-off people exist in the future rather than worse-off ones. But the decision of the court was that the doctor wronged Toombes herself, not just that he failed to make the world as good as possible: if that was the problem, he should have been ordered to pay money to some charity that makes the world as good as possible, rather than paying money to Toombes. And anyway, it isn’t obvious that we’re obligated to make sure future generations contain as much well-being as possible. One way to do that is by having happy children. But most people don’t think we’re obligated to have children, even if, in some case, that would add the most happiness to the world on balance.

Another possibility is to say that we can wrong people without harming them. Perhaps telling comforting lies is like this: here, lying prevents a harm, but can still be wrong if the person has a right to know the painful truth. Perhaps individuals have a right against being caused to exist under certain sorts of difficult conditions. But notice that we can usually waive rights like this. If I have a right to the painful truth, I can waive this right and ask you not to tell me. People who haven’t been born yet can’t waive rights (or do anything else). But when people are not in a position to waive a right, we can permissibly act based on whether we think they would or should waive the right, or something like that. You have a right to refuse having your legs amputated. But if paramedics find you unconscious and must amputate your legs to save your life, they’ll probably do it, since they figure you would consent, if you could.  Why not think that, similarly, future people whose lives are worth living generally would or should consent to the only course of action that can bring them into being, even if their lives are difficult in some ways?

A third solution says that Toombes’ doctor didn’t act wrongly after all–and neither would we act wrongly by being environmentally unsustainable, etc. But that’s very hard to believe. It’s even harder to believe in other cases. Here’s a case inspired by the philosopher Gregory Kavka. Suppose I and my spouse sign a contract to sell our (not yet conceived) first child into slavery. Because of the deal, we conceive a child under slightly different circumstances than we otherwise would have, resulting in a different child. (Maybe the slaver gives us a special hotel room.) There’s no way to break the contract and keep our child from slavery. Suppose the child’s life is, though difficult, (barely) worth living. This solution appears to suggest that signing the slave contract is permissible: after all, the child has a life worth living, and wouldn’t exist otherwise. But that doesn’t seem right!

I wrote more about this in chapter eight of this book. There are other possible moves, but they have problems, too. So the non-identity problem is a real head-scratcher. Maybe someone reading this can make some progress on it.

Posted on

The Remote of Morty and the Ring of Gyges

photograph of several rick and morty action figures

The latest episode of sci-fi comedy Rick and Morty presented a variation on an idea previously seen in Groundhog Day among other stories. In it, Rick invents for Morty a remote that allows him to “save” his life at a certain point, try out different experiences and “load” the save to return back to the save point with no consequences. In this piece, I hope to explore what it means for consequences to matter morally and whether we should be thinking in terms of ultimate consequences at all. Before that, however, let us explore further how exactly this remote works.

The remote is meant to mimic the way many video games work, where one is able to save and return to the save point if one fails or dies, i.e. they allow one to “load” saves. In a video game, a “save state,” is a file that contains information about the save point and amounts to a record of the values of different variables changeable by participation in the game. It is conceivable that one could record the “save state” of the actual universe since the state of the universe is determined by the variable excitations of certain “fields,” like the electromagnetic field or the Higgs-induced mass field, as well as by the distribution of those excitations in the fabric of spacetime. While practically impossible, it is imaginable that someone could record the values of all of these and so be able to generate a save state of the universe at a given time. Indeed, if the simulation argument is true, something like this would be the case.

So, suppose you, mortal and small as you are, possessed a remote that allowed you to contact the Simulators and signal to them to load a previous save state (excepting, presumably, the state of your mind, as otherwise you would not remember your experiences between saving and reloading, rendering the remote useless). The moral dimension of this scenario comes with this question: would you continue to act in accordance with virtue if you knew your actions had “no consequences” beyond how they affected your mind? If you would, why? People are already comfortable with what they call “victimless” crimes. Doing wrong before reloading might be the ultimate victimless crime.

The reader of Plato cannot help but be reminded of the story of the Ring of Gyges by this scenario. In The Republic, Plato presents, through the character Glaucon, the story of a man who finds a ring, the so-called “Ring of Gyges” which allows the wearer to become invisible. With the power of the ring, the man, a shepherd, rapes the queen of the land and kills the king, taking his place (in fact this man is supposed to be the ancestor of Gyges, a historical king of Lydia). Glaucon then asks Socrates to imagine two such rings, one placed on a just man, another on an unjust man and to consider whether their actions would differ. Glaucon indicates that not only would they almost certainly act the same, but if the just man refrained from unjust actions he would actually be foolish for doing so while the man who acts unjustly would be happier.

One response to Glaucon’s argument is that the unjust man would not be happy because people generally feel empathetic pain when they hurt others, and feel guilt afterward for acting unjustly. This pain and guilt would mean the just man would end up happier, though he would lack the material comforts the unjust man might obtain. However, this response is not as helpful with the remote scenario, at least at first glance.

Consider the person who gleefully begins to use the remote and does all sorts of horrible things to people, just for fun or out of curiosity. Why would they feel guilt? Upon reloading a save, none of those people they hurt would feel hurt or even remember the experience. In some sense, those minds—the ones that experienced the harm induced by the remote user—do not exist. So the user might feel empathetic pain while they commit atrocities, or before they reload the save, but afterward it is not obvious these feelings would remain.

So suppose the ancestor of Gyges found this remote—instead of the ring—and did as he did, raping the queen, killing the king, and taking over rulership of the land. Our intuition is that those actions are wrong. But, once the shepherd reloads his save and becomes a shepherd once again, do those actions remain wrong? In other words, suppose the shepherd told his friend about what he had done and the friend believed him. Would the friend judge the shepherd as a bad person?

Most of us likely believe that something immoral is taking place, but it will prove particularly difficult to justify this intuition. A natural response to this question, for example, is to say “Of course! Anyone who is capable of something so horrible must be a bad person.” However, as we have learned from the Holocaust, ordinary people can tolerate or aid in horrible actions. Some of those who Americans often consider moral exemplars, the Founding Fathers, owned slaves. While those who perpetrated these harms did actually do something wrong, it seems fair to say that we are not so different from them that we would be incapable of acting likewise, in the right (or rather “wrong”) circumstances. We are all capable of great evil, it seems, but we rarely judge each other merely on the basis of what we think others are capable of. We judge each other for actual harms we perpetrate. On some definition of “actual,” those who are harmed by someone who uses the remote before they reload a save are not really “actual.”

“But,” you may retort, “while you’re right we don’t judge people for merely being capable of horrible actions, we do judge them for ‘following through’ so-to-speak. Isn’t committing the action, even if it gets undone by reloading, still morally blameworthy?” And you might be right. But we also usually require that someone know what they are doing to be horrible. A person with an intellectual disability who assaults someone in anger is not usually thought responsible for their actions in the same way someone capable of understanding the harms of their actions would be. Supposing that the shepherd sees nothing wrong with his actions, given that they have no permanent consequences, he does not seem to be doing wrong knowingly. He might recognize that, in other circumstances, his actions would be wrong. A soldier does not knowingly murder as does the serial killer since the soldier thinks there is a justification for his actions while the serial killer does not. Likewise the shepherd thinks under these circumstances there is no permanent harm wrought, and so he believes that he does no wrong.

The critical flaw with the shepherd seems to be his obsession with consequences as the only morally relevant criteria. More specifically, there is a problem with his only judging actions by their ultimate consequences. Suppose the shepherd did as he did, with the rape and the murder, and never reloaded his save. In this case, the shepherd clearly does wrong and the existence of the remote is irrelevant; it is as though it never existed. But in any of the cases where he does reload the save, any actions he takes to hurt other people (if they are indeed wrong) will be wrong in spite of the fact that his victims will not remember experiencing this parallel reality harm. These actions will be wrong even if the people he wrongs never even exist after he reloads the save—say, if those people were born, lived, and died all between the time he saved and the time he reloaded.

Ultimately, if our current understanding of physics is correct, the stars will all be swallowed by black holes, those black holes will eventually evaporate, and the whole universe will be a homogeneous soup of photons. No matter what course of action we take, this will be the result. It is a natural consequence of the second law of thermodynamics: entropy must always increase. Not only are our lives temporary due to death, but the consequences of our lives, of all the lives of all people who will ever live are temporary, ending in this same final result. In a sense, we are in a similar position to all those who make up the shepherd’s alternate reality; we will all eventually be erased.

And, yet, we cannot help but believe our actions are meaningful and it matters that people act in accordance with virtue—even in these outlandish remote-user scenarios. That we are temporary does not mean that harms perpetrated against us are insignificant. But, if this is true, then the suffering of the child who grew up without her father, who really herself “never existed,” at least in terms of having any impact on our final reality, really matters too. The alternative is the denial that any of our actions have moral significance given that the fate of the universe is the same regardless.

This remote is fantastical, but, like the Ring of Gyges, it provokes responses that make clear some really foundational moral principles. The story of the Ring of Gyges solidifies our belief that one ought to do right not because the law forces you to do so, but because you simply ought to do right. Various explanations for this conviction have been given. One common explanation is that doing wrong harms the doer. In a similar vein, German philosopher Immanuel Kant believed that harming animals was not wrong but still said that people should not do it since, by becoming comfortable harming animals, people might become more comfortable hurting humans. But, if you’re skeptical of these sorts of arguments (perhaps because they seem too doer-centric) and still think harming people while using the remote is wrong, then we are left to conclude that what is right or wrong is not so in virtue of ultimate consequences, but because doing right or wrong benefits or harms conscious people, whether they exist for a day or a lifetime, whether the actions they take impact humanity for millennia or not at all.

Posted on

Our Bodies, Ourselves?  Death, Values, and the Material We Leave Behind

Photograph of a replica of Lincoln's coffin. It is black and draped with white cloth and has a few flowers on top

Death of those we care about is deeply distressing for many reasons, one of which is that the empty space the person once occupied is often soon filled with dangling, unanswered questions. Many of these questions will likely never be answered, but some of the most captivating might be addressed by analysis of the biological material the person left behind. What considerations ought to guide our behavior when it comes to use of a person’s remaining biological material?

A fairly straightforward answer would be to say that there are no constraints that should govern our behavior. The motivating philosophy behind this view might be that when a person is dead, they can no longer be harmed, because that person no longer exists. If we find this argument compelling, we might have to rethink our attitudes about things like respect for a person’s wishes after death and about the moral permissibility of necrophilia. After all, if bodies are just things, we can’t do them any moral harm. Even the most expansive theories about the kinds of things that are deserving of moral consideration maintain that, for an entity to be morally considerable, it must have interests—there must be ways in which things can go better or worse for it. Dead bodies don’t meet this condition.  In this sense, a dead body is more like a stone or a glass of water.

Our social policies suggest that plenty of people disagree with this position.  Necrophilia is a crime, and we have many laws that govern the use of a person’s biological material after death. Many of these policies may be justified, but many may also not be.

One domain in which we seem to feel fairly comfortable treating a dead body as a thing is when we conduct autopsies on the victims of crime. One of the motivating considerations behind performing an autopsy is the idea that the body left behind potentially has many important secrets to reveal. Some of these secrets might turn out to be embarrassing or harmful to the ongoing reputation of the victim or might be painful to the loved ones left behind. Nevertheless, it seems that we have concluded, rightly or wrongly, that there are two related values that are more important in these kinds of cases than harm to the deceased—protection of the community against potential future crimes, and retributive justice.

On some occasions, bodies are exhumed so that genetic relationships can be evaluated. If they are old enough, some cases intuitively fall under the heading of forensic archaeology. When a body dating back to the 15th century was found under a Leicester car park in 2013, genetic tests were done to confirm that it was indeed the body of notorious British monarch Richard III. Officials have continued to take a different position when it comes to King Richard’s two young nephews. The bodies of two young boys were found in a wooden box buried on the grounds of the Tower of London in 1647. They were buried in Westminster Abbey, but their identity has never been confirmed. The concerns protecting the princes seem to be more pragmatic than moral in motivation. What should be done with the remains if the test reveals that they are not the princes? What might the tests tell us about lines of succession? In any event, it is interesting that time seems to make some difference in our perception of the moral landscape of these kinds of cases. Many seem to view disruption of a long dead body as morally neutral, while they view the exhumation of the more recently dead as disrespectful. Perhaps this is simply an irrational bias. On the other hand, it may well be that, at some point, the value of the historical knowledge we obtain from these kinds of cases outweighs the more limited privacy interests of the long dead.

Famous exhumations to test for parentage have been done in more recent cases as well. Famously, in 2017, the body of Salvador Dali was exhumed to determine if he was the father of Spanish astrologer and tarot card reader Pilar Abel. The result? Not the father. Similarly, chess grandmaster Bobby Fischer was exhumed in 2010 to determine whether he was the father of a then nine-year–old girl. The result? Not the father. There is an element of historical value involved in these cases as well—after all, both Dali and Fischer were famous individuals. There may be some value in knowing more of their stories. In addition to these considerations, one might think that children have the right to know who their parents are. For many people, knowledge about their parents is important on an existential level—it tells them something about who they are. One might also think that a person’s child has certain rights to inheritance that, at least at first glance, should be respected. On the other hand, anyone can make a paternity claim. Under what conditions would such a claim justify the exhumation of a body?

Moral dilemmas of this type don’t always involve exhumations. Sometimes they involve more accessible biological material—and sometimes that material is used for perhaps even more controversial purposes. Well-known utilitarian Jeremy Bentham left behind unusual instructions for his body. He wanted it preserved as an “auto-icon” and kept on display at the University College, London.His wishes were honored. Recently, scientists have collected biological samples that they intend to use to determine whether Bentham was autistic. Similarly, sheets on the bedding on which Abraham Lincoln died are being tested to determine whether the beloved president had a genetic condition known as Marfan Syndrome—a condition characterized in part by towering height and long limbs. These cases motivate important moral questions. Is it morally defensible to reveal a person’s personal medical information after they have died? Does revealing such information serve to further stigmatize and sensationalize medical conditions, or should we understand these revelations as normalizing and empowering? Should these decisions be governed by respect for the wishes of the dead, or should they be made in a way that promotes the best interests of the living?

Posted on

Antinatalism: The Tragedy of Being Born

A baby's hand holding a daffodil petal

On February 7th, Mumbai business executive Raphael Samuel made international headlines by indicating his intent to sue his parents for causing his life. Samuel explained that his parents’ decision to procreate was purely in their own self-interest and never accounted for the likelihood of suffering that he would later endure; just like how he might sue someone for causing him physical and mental distress, Samuel believes that his parents’ choice to give birth to him led to essentially the same result as if he had been kidnapped: he was forced to go somewhere against his will. Although he has been unable to find a lawyer to represent him and no judge has indicated a willingness to hear the case, Samuel insists that he is mostly concerned with making a public statement to underline his belief that procreation is not necessarily a good thing – and this is also why he plans to sue his parents for only one dollar.

Samuel affirms what’s known as ‘antinatalism,’ a philosophical position which contends that it is always, in principle, wrong to procreate. Though antinatalism can take a variety of forms, a common threadline amongst its defenders is not simply that an increased population overstresses the environment or that giving birth to people leads to problems for others down the line, but rather that it is bad for the person who is born that they are born – that is to say, antinatalism argues that birth is an inherent harm, not merely an instrumental one.

In the words of philosopher David Benatar, life is “permeated by badness” to a degree that irrevocably tips the scale against any possible assessment in its favor; despite being filled with pleasurable experiences and beautiful things, the world is also home to (literally) every kind of evil and pain – to force someone into such an arena against their will is to expose them to possible goods, but guaranteed harms. Of course, death is also a harm, so Benatar insists that it is only morally permissible to perpetuate a life, not to cause one to either begin or end.

Samuel is also concerned about the impact of humanity on other species; as he told the BBC, “There’s no point to humanity. So many people are suffering. If humanity is extinct, Earth and animals would be happier. They’ll certainly be better off. Also no human will then suffer. Human existence is totally pointless.” By 2050, Samuel’s home country of India alone is predicted to have nearly 1.7 billion residents, a threatening problem that has sparked national conversations about government policies to curtail overpopulation. In Samuel’s mind, antinatalism could serve a functional role to better manage the limited resources of an already-crowded globe.

In 1968, Garrett Hardin published a paper titled “The Tragedy of the Commons” where he argued that rational agents acting in their own self-interest could easily deplete a shared resource of limited size (for it always makes sense to each individual to take a little bit more, despite the eventual burden placed on the system as a whole). Particularly as questions of climate change, sustainability, and overpopulation loom in the contemporary discourse, Hardin’s illustration of a hillside laid barren by nothing but rational choices resonates more than many would care to admit.

So, although it is unlikely that many will find Raphael Samuel’s nihilistic doctrine or David Benatar’s anti-birth philosophy attractive in itself, a second look at the antinatalist thesis might make more sense than people initially think – even if it might make for some awkward tension at your next family gathering.

Posted on

What Does John Stuart Mill Have to Say about the Hijab?

The European Union’s highest court has recently ruled that companies are allowed to ban hijabs in their workplaces. It is a response to two cases: Samora Achbita, a woman working for a company in Belgium, was fired over her refusal to take off her veil at work; Asma Bougnani was likewise fired by a company in France, for the same reasons.

This is yet another battle in the long hijab wars that have been fought in Europe over the last 20 years. As usual, there is a political aligning on this issue: the far right welcomes such bans, the multicultural left vehemently opposes them, and the rest of the parties are either undecided, or simply confused, about their stand.

Continue reading “What Does John Stuart Mill Have to Say about the Hijab?”