Your mother should know: pregnancy, the ethics of abortion, and knowledge through acquaintance of moral value

Woollard, Fiona (2022) Your mother should know: pregnancy, the ethics of abortion, and knowledge through acquaintance of moral value. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 103 (3), 471-492. (doi:10.1111/papq.12416).

Record type: Article

Abstract

An important strand in the debate on abortion focuses on the moral status of fetuses. Knowledge of the moral value of fetuses is needed to assess fetuses' moral status. As Errol Lord argues, acquaintance plays a key role in moral and aesthetic knowledge. Many pregnant persons have acquaintance with their fetus that provides privileged access to knowledge about that fetus' moral value. This knowledge is (1) very difficult to acquire without being pregnant and (2) relevant for assessing the moral status of fetuses. This has implications for public debate on abortion and the research methods of philosophers working on abortion.

Text

AuthorsAcceptedVersionWoollard Your Mother Should Know with link to version of record - Accepted Manuscript

Available under License University of Southampton Accepted Manuscript Licence.

Download (68kB)

Text

AuthorsAcceptedVersionWoollard Your Mother Should Know Feb2022 - Other

Available under License University of Southampton Accepted Manuscript Licence.

Download (67kB)

More information

Accepted/In Press date: 18 April 2022

e-pub ahead of print date: 25 May 2022

Published date: September 2022

Additional Information: Funding Information: This research was made possible through a Non-Residential Research Fellowship on The Experience Project in association with the University of Notre Dame, the University of North Carolina and the Templeton Foundation and through the research project PHILOSOPHY OF BIRTH: RETHINKING THE ORIGIN FROM MEDICAL HUMANITIES (FFI2016-77755-R) funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy within the Program for Research, Development and Innovation Oriented to Societal Challenges. It was presented at the Joint Session of the Mind Association and the Aristotelian Society 2017, University of Edinburgh, Reading Ethics and Political Philosophy (REAPP) Graduate and Early Careers Conference 2017; UNC Workshop on Transformative Experience, UNC at Chapel Hill; and the Visiting Speakers Seminar, School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics and Queen's University Belfast. I would like to thank members of the audiences at these events for extremely helpful comments. Special thanks go to two anonymous reviewers whose comments led to an extensive rewriting – and I hope considerable improvement – of the paper. Funding Information: This research was made possible through a Non‐Residential Research Fellowship on The Experience Project in association with the University of Notre Dame, the University of North Carolina and the Templeton Foundation and through the research project PHILOSOPHY OF BIRTH: RETHINKING THE ORIGIN FROM MEDICAL HUMANITIES (FFI2016‐77755‐R) funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy within the Program for Research, Development and Innovation Oriented to Societal Challenges. It was presented at the Joint Session of the Mind Association and the Aristotelian Society 2017, University of Edinburgh, Reading Ethics and Political Philosophy (REAPP) Graduate and Early Careers Conference 2017; UNC Workshop on Transformative Experience, UNC at Chapel Hill; and the Visiting Speakers Seminar, School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics and Queen's University Belfast. I would like to thank members of the audiences at these events for extremely helpful comments. Special thanks go to two anonymous reviewers whose comments led to an extensive rewriting – and I hope considerable improvement – of the paper. Publisher Copyright: © 2022 University of Southern California and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Learn more about Philosophy research