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  • Title: Militant morality: civil disobedience and bioethics.
    Author: Cohen C.
    Journal: Hastings Cent Rep; 1989; 19(6):23-5. PubMed ID: 2606655.
    Abstract:
    Seven essays in this issue of the Hastings Center Report defend civil disobedience as a legitimate form of protest against terrible injustices: legalized abortion (G. Leber); abridgement of women's reproductive rights (S. Davis); government policy toward persons with AIDS (H. Spiers and A. Novick); abuse of the rights of animals (S. Siegel, C. Jackson, and P. Singer). An eighth essay, by B. Nathanson, examines the motivations of Operation Rescue, an organization that uses civil disobedience to protest legalized abortion. Cohen explores the problems that these authors and others encounter in trying to justify deliberately breaking the law in public conscientious protest. He examines three forms of protest -- direct civil disobedience, indirect civil disobedience, and direct action -- and three justifications -- higher-law, utilitarian, and only possible means. Cohen concludes that, in a democracy, objective justification of civil disobedience is very difficult.
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