Fiona Woollard
  • Home
  • Contact
  • Blog
  • Doing and Allowing
  • Philosophy of Pregnancy and Motherhood
  • Working to Combat Maternal Guilt and Shame
  • Publications and Works in Progress
  • Motherhood and Defeasible Duties to Benefit
  • Pregnancy and Moral Distinctions
  • Breastfeeding Dilemma Workshop
  • Mother Knows Best
  • Infant Feeding
  • Driverless Cars
  • FeelingGoodAboutFeedingBabies
  • FAH Advanced Seminar Series 2020
  • RAPP Project

Pregnancy and Moral Distinctions 

(Co-authored with Elselijn Kingma.) We argue that careful attention to the nature of pregnancy shows that many traditionally important moral distinctions, such the doing/allowing distinction, action/omission distinction and the harming/benefiting distinction, do not apply easily to pregnant women and their fetuses.   This has important practical implications in cases of ‘maternal-fetal conflict’.

Our first paper, "Can You Harm Your Foetus?  Pregnancy, Physical Indistinctness and Difficult Deontological Distinctions" addresses pregnancy and the doing/allowing distinction.  This paper has been conditionally accepted at Ethics. If you would like to read and comment on a draft paper, please email: f.woollard@soton.ac.uk)

This is part of a series of projects on Philosophy of Pregnancy and Early Motherhood at the University of Southampton, run by Elselijn Kingma and Fiona Woollard.



Proudly powered by Weebly