Can you do harm to your fetus? Pregnancy, barriers, and the doing/allowing distinction

Kingma, Elselijn and Woollard, Fiona (2024) Can you do harm to your fetus? Pregnancy, barriers, and the doing/allowing distinction. Ethics, 135 (2), 290, [319]. (doi:10.1086/732613).

Record type: Article

Abstract

When pregnant persons do not behave in the way that is optimal for their fetus, they are often framed as doing harm. This framing acts provides a justificatory bypass for defences of widespread expectations of pregnant persons, allowing them to avoid substantial questions about special obligations in pregnancy. In many cases, this framing is either incorrect or misleading. Either (1) it is incorrect because the pregnant person does not count as doing harm, or (2) it is misleading because the classification as doing harm presupposes an answer to precisely those substantive questions that the justificatory bypass functions to avoid.

Text

KingmaWoollardCanYouDoHarmToYourFetusPureVersion - Accepted Manuscript

Restricted to Repository staff only until 17 April 2025.

Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial.

Request a copy