The conflict surrounding the short life of Charlie Gard is a classical ethical dilemma where all paths have arguments for and against.

I spoke to some people at Liberty Victoria and a number of civil liberty, human rights and non-governmental organisations about the law in regard to Census 2016 and the potential ramifications of boycotting or protesting the threats posed to individual privacy. The advice I got is below. I hope this

The western obsession with rights makes it difficult to see their limitations. We speak about rights as if they were the only moral value with meaning, ignoring other important moral values like responsibilities or duties. In fact, responsibilities are the counterparts to rights – you can’t have one without the

Cheaters never prosper, or so the proverb goes. Yet over the past few weeks, revelations about match-fixing in tennis and rumours that the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption will make no adverse findings against public officials behaving badly raises concerns that sometimes those with a case to answer may walk

Women’s rights have taken a battering this festive season. The Briggs fiasco, the Gayle insult to the professionalism of Channel Ten reporter Mel McLaughlin, and marauding hoodlums in Germany using women’s rights as a cover for a violent rampage against refugees all show the battle for gender equality

I caught up with a girlfriend in New York recently. She gave me a rundown on the lives of those with whom we’d gone to school. “She’s divorced”, was a description attached to many, though I was struck by the implicit judgment that came with my friend’s

Much has been said about the rise and fall of Australia’s first female prime minister. Particularly the fall. The consensus view was summed up by Labor senator and powerbroker Sam Dastyari on ABC-TV’s post-mortem on Labor’s six years in government, The Killing Season. “In one night, we

The campaign for gender equity needs bold ideas, powerful technology and the potent rage of a new generation When I was a girl growing up in Regan America, I yearned to have been born in different times. To me, the 1960s seemed to be a golden era of egalitarianism and

Today, we learned about the death of a 28-year-old pregnant woman from Sydney. She didn’t die today. She died last year, or perhaps even earlier. But we are hearing her story now because of a letter two of the women’s doctors have written about the case. The letter,

We need a positive message to give children the gift of good health, writes Leslie Cannold. FAT camps, prohibitions on junk food advertising, bans on sugary drinks in school canteens, Medicare subsidies for private weight-loss programs, chair-free classrooms, food pyramids. School weigh-ins, public service announcements telling kids to take more

Much ink has been spilled since last week’s release of the Commission of Audit’s recommendations on reducing the nation’s spending. However, one piece of advice – likely to be implemented – has attracted scant notice. Recommendation 31 includes calls for “better manage[ment]” of Australia’s overseas aid programme

A FEW years ago a child I know walked into an interview for a coveted scholarship place at a competitive high school. Things were going well until the panel asked the 13-year-old to name a person she most admired. ‘'But,’‘ they stipulated, ’‘it can’t be either of your parents.

Victoria has the oldest mental health legislation in the country. In the wake of Victoria’s Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities and Australia’s ratification of the United Nation conventions on the Rights of the Child and the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, a rights-oriented revamp was plainly required.

Words like “desire” and “choice” might be poor ways to describe circumscribed career moves that mothers make when trying to factor in childcare, writes Leslie Cannold. With a steady diet of redundancies in the news, and economists beginning to talk of jobless recoveries, and even recession, it may be time

This weekend marks six months since Julia Gillard stepped down from the highest office in the land. With International Women’s Day on the horizon, it is timely to reflect on Gillard’s rise and fall. What aspects of Gillard’s trajectory are emblematic of the challenges faced by female

Now is the time for informed debate on patient choices. The Lisa Bonchek Adams tweet story is a morality tale, but not one about patient choices at the end of life. Bonchek Adams is a blogger and tweeter living with metastatic breast cancer. Her condition can be treated but not

Leslie joins Jane Caro and Natasha Stott-Despoja among others in considering the take-aways from Julia Gillard’s tenure as Australia’s first female PM and suggesting ways forward for the next generation of women leaders. Leslie’s contribution is here: Australia’s first female prime minister, Julia Gillard said that

Many unsavoury items wash up along the foreshore. I know because my Labrador decided to sample some on a recent trip to the beach. She then proceeded to vomit and excrete them on what turned out to be a long walk home. The two bags I’d brought didn’t

With some exceptions, the strategy of the environment movement has been to provoke fear: fear for the quality of our own lives and over the survival of our grandchildren. It is questionable whether that is working. Some commentators, such as Guardian journalist Anne Kapf say the fear, or rather caring

This backing track feature appeared on the Large-Hearted Boy website. Leslie Cannold’s Book Notes music playlist for her debut novel, The Book of Rachael: What a great idea! I loved concocting this play list, and even more so when my intuitive interpretation of the project – to come up with

If Jesus had a sister, what might have her story been? Australian Cannold (The Abortion Myth) turns her attention to an obscure corner of history: the role of women in patriarchal Roman society and Jewish culture during the early years of Christianity. Foreshadowing Jesus’s anti-establishment views, Cannold imagines that

I’ve long been interested in why human societies have always had outcasts and why, even in modern times, we appear unable – or unwilling – to live without them. This wonder has seeped into my fiction. At the climax of The Book of Rachael, Rachael skulks on the edge of a

Last week, Women’s Agenda published an article titled ‘Why this man says Sheryl Sandberg’s vision for diversity isn’t achievable’. The author, Chris Golis, is a London Business School graduate who spent 30 years as a company director. In what might have been a ham-fisted attempt to promote

What do medical breakthroughs slated to improve the health of premature infants have to do with abortion rights? More than 20 years ago, I pursued this question in a master’s thesis for my bioethics degree. I was reacting to the claim by renowned philosopher Professor Peter Singer – made in

Once, a newspaper editor for whom I’d worked for years asked me to explain why Jewish people – usually so intelligent, politically astute and reasoned – were so irrational when it came to Israel. I knew how much he trusted me to even ask this question – trusted that I wouldn’t