Jansen expresses concern as to the legal implications of both selective reduction of pregnancy and unsuccessful attempts at termination of pregnancy using mifepristone. This commentary examines the legality of both procedures and concludes that Jansen is over-optimistic in his belief that neither procedure is likely to fall foul of the criminal laws on induced abortion. By contrast his anxiet...

Purpose – To overview and discuss the technical, economical, legal, and social reasons why public key infrastructures (PKIs) have failed so far, summarizing the lessons learned, and giving expectations about the future development of the field. Design/methodology/approach – A detailed analysis of the developments in the PKI field, pointing out the achievements so far and the issues that still r...

By examining discursive struggles around sexuality in contemporary India, I show how and when the legal status of sexuality becomes used by individuals and communities to make political claims about their relations in and to the post-colonial nation-state. The ‘modern’ legal system introduced by British colonial rule installed state regulation of homosexuality and sex work in India. I look at w...

Burmese colonial history suggests that a legal system cannot operate independently from the felt needs of the people who are supposed to obey the law. Despite a monopoly of force for many decades, the British failed to create a sustainable legal system in Burma. Colonial status shifted Burma’s economic role from subsistence agriculture to the generation of large-scale exports. By undermining th...

Sex selection for non-medical reasons is a major controversy in around the world. Here in this paper, we presented the ethical arguments about sex selection for non-medical reasons and discuss about them in Islamic context. Significant arguments about sex selection relate to sexism and sex discrimination, sex disproportion, human dignity, playing God, psychological pressure on unselected childr...

Stephen Pattison outlines his vision for medical humanities and then offers cautionary notes on what might go wrong with the movement. These notes are based on what he holds has already gone wrong with medical ethics, dramatically described as the "death course of a discipline". I have a great deal of sympathy both with his anxieties about the future development of medical humanities and with h...