Hostname: page-component-54dcc4c588-scsgl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-09-11T12:52:43.808Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

It’s Complicated: What Our Attitudes toward Pregnancy, Abortion, and Miscarriage Tell Us about the Moral Status of Early Fetuses

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 December 2020

K. Lindsey Chambers Open the ORCID record for K. Lindsey Chambers [Opens in a new window]
K. Lindsey Chambers*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky, USA
*
Email: klchambers@uky.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Many accounts of the morality of abortion assume that early fetuses must all have or lack moral status in virtue of developmental features that they share. Our actual attitudes toward early fetuses don’t reflect this all-or-nothing assumption. If we start with the assumption that our attitudes toward fetuses are accurately tracking their value, then we need an account of fetal moral status that can explain why it is appropriate to love some fetuses but not others. I argue that a fetus can come to have moral claims on persons who have taken up the activity of person-creation.

Keywords

Abortionfetusmoral statusprocreative ethicspregnancymiscarriageparental obligations

Information

Type
Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 50 , Issue 8 , November 2020 , pp. 950 - 965
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Canadian Journal of Philosophy

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Anderson, Elizabeth. 2004. “Animal Rights and the Values of Nonhuman Life.” In Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions, edited by Sunstein, Cass R. and Nussbaum, Martha Craven, 277. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Berg, Amy. 2017. “Abortion and Miscarriage.” Philosophical Studies 174 (5): 1217–26. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-016-0750-z.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chambers, K. Lindsey. 2019. “Wronging Future Children.” Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 6. https://doi.org/10.3998/ergo.12405314.0006.005.Google Scholar
Cleveland, Margot. 2017. “Yes, The Princeton Prof’s Argument for Early Abortion Is Stupid.” The Federalist (blog), August 14. https://thefederalist.com/2017/08/14/yes-princeton-profs-argument-early-abortion-stupid/.Google Scholar
Gensler, Harry J. 1986. “A Kantian Argument against Abortion.” Philosophical Studies: An International Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition 49 (1): 83–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harman, Elizabeth. 1999. “Creation Ethics: The Moral Status of Early Fetuses and the Ethics of Abortion.” Philosophy & Public Affairs 28 (4): 310–24.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Harman, Elizabeth. 2007. “Sacred Mountains and Beloved Fetuses: Can Loving or Worshipping Something Give It Moral Status?” Philosophical Studies: An International Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition 133 (1): 55–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hursthouse, Rosalind. 1991. “Virtue Theory and Abortion.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 20 (3): 223–46.Google ScholarPubMed
Julius, A. J. 2013. “The Possibility of Exchange.” Politics, Philosophy & Economics 12 (4): 361–74. https://doi.org/10.1177/1470594X13496068.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kant, Immanuel. 2011. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals: A German-English Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klier, Claudia M., Geller, P. A., and Ritsher, Jennifer Boyd. 2002. “Affective Disorders in the Aftermath of Miscarriage: A Comprehensive Review.” Archives of Women’s Mental Health 5 (4): 129–49. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00737-002-0146-2.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lindemann, Hilde. 2014. Holding and Letting Go: The Social Practice of Personal Identities. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://www-oxfordscholarship-com.ezproxy.uky.edu/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199754922.001.0001/acprof-9780199754922.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lindemann, Hilde. 2015. “Miscarriage and the Stories We Live By: Miscarriage and the Stories.” Journal of Social Philosophy 46 (1): 80–90. https://doi.org/10.1111/josp.12087.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marquis, Don. 1989. “Why Abortion Is Immoral.” The Journal of Philosophy 86 (4): 183–202. https://doi.org/10.2307/2026961.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
May, Todd. 2014. “Moral Individualism, Moral Relationalism, and Obligations to Non-Human Animals: Moral Individualism, Relationalism, and Obligations to Non-Human Animals.” Journal of Applied Philosophy 31 (2): 155–68. https://doi.org/10.1111/japp.12055.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McMahan, Jeff. 2002. The Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Margins of Life. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, Sarah Clark. 2015. “The Moral Meanings of Miscarriage.” Journal of Social Philosophy 46 (1): 141–157. https://doi.org/10.1111/josp.12091.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mulgan, Tim. 2006. Future People: A Moderate Consequentialist Account of Our Obligations to Future Generations. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/019928220X.001.0001/acprof-9780199282203.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Norlock, Kathryn. 2017. “Real (and) Imaginal Relationships with the Dead.” Journal of Value Inquiry 51 (2): 341–56. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-016-9573-6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nussbaum, Martha. 2004. “Emotions as Judgments of Value and Importance.” In Thinking about Feeling: Contemporary Philosophers on Emotions, edited by Solomon, Robert C., 183–99. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ord, Toby. 2008. “The Scourge: Moral Implications of Natural Embryo Loss.” The American Journal of Bioethics 8 (7): 12–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/15265160802248146.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Palmer, Clare. 2010. Animal Ethics in Context. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Parsons, Kate. 2010. “Feminist Reflections on Miscarriage, in Light of Abortion.” IJFab: International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics 3 (1). https://doi.org/10.3138/ijfab.3.1.1.Google Scholar
Porter, Lindsey. 2015. “Miscarriage and Person-Denying.” Journal of Social Philosophy 46 (1): 59–79. https://doi.org/10.1111/josp.12086.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rachels, James. 1999. Created from Animals: The Moral Implications of Darwinism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Reiheld, Alison. 2015. “‘The Event That Was Nothing’: Miscarriage as a Liminal Event.” Journal of Social Philosophy 46 (1): 9–26. https://doi.org/10.1111/josp.12084.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ross, W. D., and Stratton-Lake, Philip. 2002. The Right and the Good. New ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schouten, Gina. 2017. “Fetuses, Orphans, and a Famous Violinist: On the Ethics and Politics of Abortion.” Social Theory and Practice 43 (3): 637–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Singer, Peter. 1975. Animal Liberation. New York: Avon Books.Google Scholar
Spielman, Michael. 2012. “The Actual Future Principle.” Abort73 (blog), August 22. https://abort73.com/blog/the_actual_future_principle.Google Scholar
Steinbock, Bonnie. 1978. “Speciesism and the Idea of Equality.” Philosophy 53 (204): 247–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stoyles, Byron J. 2015. “The Value of Pregnancy and the Meaning of Pregnancy Loss.” Journal of Social Philosophy 46 (1): 91–105. https://doi.org/10.1111/josp.12088.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thompson, Janna. 2017. “The Ethics of Intergenerational Relationships.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 47 (2–3): 313–26. https://doi.org/10.1080/00455091.2017.1280382.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomson, Judith Jarvis. 1971. “A Defense of Abortion.” Philosophy & Public Affairs 1 (1): 47–66.Google Scholar
Vallicella, Bill. 2017. “Abortion: The Actual Future Principle, An Objection, and a Sophistical Reply.” Maverick Philosopher (blog), August 16. https://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2017/08/abortion-the-actual-future-principle-and-the-potentiality-principle.html.Google Scholar
Warren, Mary Anne. 1989. “The Moral Significance of Birth.” Hypatia 4 (3): 46–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wright, J. Lenore. 2018. “Relationality and Life: Phenomenological Reflections on Miscarriage.” IJFab: International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics 11 (2), 135–56. https://doi.org/10.3138/ijfab.2017.10.17.Google Scholar