In this article, I confront Jessica Flanigan’s recent attempt to show not merely that women have a right to commit prenatal injury, but also that women who act on this right are praiseworthy and should not be criticized for this injury. I show that Flanigan’s arguments do not work, and I establish presumptive grounds against any such right—namely, prenatal injury, by definition, involves intentional or negligent harm and, as such, may be subsumed under a wider class of actions that are (...) presumptively wrong. (shrink)

Blackshaw and Hendricks have recently developed and defended the impairment argument against abortion, arguing that the immorality of giving a child fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) provides us with reason to believe that abortion is immoral. In this paper, we forward two criticisms of the impairment argument. First, we highlight that, as it currently stands, the argument is very weak and accomplishes very little. Second, we argue that Blackshaw and Hendricks are fundamentally mistaken about what makes giving a child FAS immoral. (...) Once we acknowledge this, it is clear that our intuitions about giving a child FAS provide no support for the supposed immorality of abortion. (shrink)

The impairment argument claims that abortion is immoral, because it results in a greater impairment to a fetus than other actions that are clearly immoral, such as inflicting fetal alcohol syndrome. Alex Gillham argues that the argument requires clarification of the meaning of greater impairment. He proposes two definitions, and points out the difficulties with each. In response, I argue that while the impairment argument’s definition of greater impairment is narrow in scope, it is sufficient for its intended purpose. Broadening (...) its scope to more controversial comparisons of impairment is likely to undermine the intuitive appeal of the impairment principle that the argument is based upon. (shrink)

Successful deployment of “artificial womb technology (AWT)” is anticipated within a decade or so. In the case of “partial” ectogestation, in vivo gestation precedes fetal transfer to an artificial...

I argue that, given certain prominent views of personal identity and prudence, the nonidentity problem, or a very similar problem, can arise postconception. I clarify and defend this claim by considering the implications of these views for prenatal injury.