Wesley J. Smith: Bioethics is Becoming Just Another "Social Justice" Political Movement

Which means: loony leftist.

Not much of a surprise, unfortunately.

Thing is, philosophical issues are usually so murky, and arguments so lame and easy to come by, that you can respectably argue for just about anything you want. In a discipline that is 17 to 1 leftists to conservatives, that means that the actual positions and arguments people propose and defend will probably lean left. Add to this that negative arguments, including skeptical ones, are easy and numerous in philosophy. So it's easier to argue against established positions. So, what you get is typically: leftists deploying skeptical arguments against established positions.

   Add to this that bioethics is one of the more disreputable subfields of philosophy. If you were to list the least-rigorous disciplinary backwaters, you'd just about have to include bioethics alongside applied ethics generally, race and gender blather...and the absolute weakest, least-rigorous subfield, feminist philosophy. You'd have to include a lot of recent Continental quasi-philosophy like Lacan and Deleuze, too. It's no accident that feminism is rotten with that stuff.

   At any rate: this stuff about bioethics comes as absolutely no surprise.