This article mobilizes accounts of the phenomenology of ethical expertise to discuss the actions and experiences of people who have participated in body gifting practices. The body gifting practices specifically addressed in the study are drawn from empirical research on shared breastfeeding, ovarian egg donation and surrogate pregnancy and organ donation processes. A central aim of the study is to investigate if and how people incorporate ethical principles into their everyday lives in the course of moral decision-making, and whether such principles guide moral behaviour in the way that philosophical ethicists say they should.
Banks, Sarah, Scully, Jackie Leach and Shakespeare, Tom ( 2006) ‘Ordinary Ethics: Lay People’s Deliberations on Social Sex Selection’, New Genetics and Society25(3): 289-303.
2.
Beauchamp, Tom L. and Childress, James F. ( 2001) Principles of Biomedical Ethics, 5th edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
3.
Busby, Helen ( 2004) ‘Blood Donation for Genetic Research: What Can We Learn from Donors’ Narratives?’, in Richard Tutton and Oonagh Corrigan (eds) Genetic Databases: Socio-Ethical Issues in the Collection and Use of DNA, pp. 39-56. London: Routledge.
4.
Coney, Sandra ( 1988) The Unfortunate Experiment. Auckland : Penguin.
5.
Corrigan, Oonagh P. ( 2003) ‘Empty Ethics: The Problem with Informed Consent’ , Sociology of Health and Illness25: 768-92.
6.
Dewey, John ( 1980) Theory of the Moral Life, introduction by Arnold Isenberg . New York: Irvington Publishers .
7.
Diprose, Rosalyn ( 1994) The Bodies of Women: Ethics, Embodiment and Sexual Difference . London and New York: Routledge.
8.
Diprose, Rosalyn ( 2002) Corporeal Generosity: On Giving with Nietzsche, Merleau-Ponty, and Levinas. Albany: State University of New York Press.
9.
Dreyfus, Hubert L. and Dreyfus, Stuart E. ( 1992) ‘What is Moral Maturity? Towards a Phenomenology of Ethical Expertise’, in James Ogilvy (ed.) Revisioning Philosophy, pp. 111-31. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
10.
Franklin, Sarah and Roberts, Celia ( 2006) Born and Made: An Ethnography of Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
11.
Haidt, Jonathan ( 2001) ‘The Emotional Dog and its Rational Tail: A Social Intuitionist Approach to Moral Judgment’, Psychological Review108(4): 814-34.
12.
Haight, Wendy L. ( 2000) ‘Moral Development in Context’, Human Development43(3): 157-60.
13.
Haimes, Erica ( 2002) ‘What Can the Social Sciences Contribute to the Study of Ethics? Theoretical, Empirical and Substantive Considerations’ , Bioethics16(2): 89-113.
14.
Haimes, Erica and Whong-Barr, Michael ( 2004) ‘Levels and Styles of Participation in Genetic Databases: A Case Study of the North Cumbria Community Genetics Project’, in Richard Tutton and Oonagh Corrigan (eds) Genetic Databases: Socio-Ethical Issues in the Collection and Use of DNA, pp. 57-77. London: Routledge.
15.
Haimes, Erica and Williams, Robin ( 2007) ‘Sociology, Ethics, and the Priority of the Particular: Learning from a Case Study of Genetic Deliberations’, The British Journal of Sociology58(3): 457-76.
16.
Hursthouse, Rosalind ( 1999) On Virtue Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
17.
Israel, Mark and Hay, Iain ( 2006) Research Ethics for Social Scientists: Between Ethical Conduct and Regulatory Compliance. London: Sage.
18.
Komesaroff, Paul (ed.) (1995) Troubled Bodies: Critical Perspectives on Postmodernism, Medical Ethics, and the Body. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.
19.
Komesaroff, Paul ( 1996) ‘Medicine and the Ethical Conditions of Modernity’ , in Jeanne Daly (ed.) Ethical Intersections: Health Research, Methods and Researcher Responsibility , pp. 34-48. St Leonards, NSW: Allen and Unwin.
20.
Manson, Neil C. and O’Neill, Onora ( 2007) Rethinking Informed Consent in Bioethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
21.
O’Neill, Onora ( 2002) Autonomy and Trust in Bioethics. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.
22.
Rapp, Rayna ( 1999) Testing Women, Testing the Fetus: The Social Impact of Amniocentesis in America. New York: Routledge.
23.
Roberts, Celia and Franklin, Sarah ( 2004) ‘Experiencing New Forms of Genetic Choice: Finding from an Ethnographic Study of Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis’, Human Fertility7(4): 285-93.
24.
Rose, Nikolas ( 2007) The Politics of Life Itself: Biomedicine, Power, and Subjectivity in the Twenty-First Century. Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press.
25.
Shannon, Thomas A. ( 1989) Surrogate Motherhood: The Ethics of Using Human Beings . New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company.
26.
Shaw, Rhonda ( 2004) ‘The Virtues of Cross-Nursing and the "Yuk Factor"’ , Australian Feminist Studies19(45): 287-99.
27.
Shaw, Rhonda ( 2007) ‘Cross-Nursing, Ethics, and Giving Breast Milk in the Contemporary Context’, Women’s Studies International Forum30: 439-50.
28.
Shildrick, Magrit and Mykitiuk, Roxanne (eds) (2005) Ethics of the Body: Postconventional Challenges. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
29.
Singer, Peter (ed.) (1994) Ethics . Oxford: Oxford University Press .
30.
Statman, Daniel ( 1997) ‘Introduction to Virtue Ethics’, in Daniel Statman (ed.) Virtue Ethics: A Critical Reader, pp. 1-41. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.
31.
Streat, Stephen ( 2004) ‘Clinical Review: Moral Assumptions and the Process of Organ Donation in the Intensive Care Unit’, Critical Care8; at: ccforum.com/inpress/cc2876
32.
Walker, Janet ( 2000) ‘Choosing Biases, Using Power and Practicing Resistance: Moral Development in a World without Certainty’, Human Development43(3): 135-56.
33.
Williams, Claire, Sandall, Jane, Lewando-Hundt, Gillian, Heyman, Bob, Spencer, Kevin and Grellier, Rachel ( 2005) ‘Women as Moral Pioneers? Experiences of First Trimester Antenatal Screening’, Social Science and Medicine61: 1983-92.
34.
Wolf, Susan M. (ed.) (1996) Feminism and Bioethics: Beyond Reproduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
