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Ethics, Feminism, and Human Reproduction*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2010

Michael Yeo
Michael Yeo
Affiliation:
Westminster Institute for Ethics and Human Values
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Extract

This work interlinks three rapidly developing fields: human reproduction, applied ethics, and feminism. The convergence of the three, each of which is interesting and important in its own right, creates a synergistic effect by which each mutually illuminates the others.

Type
Critical Notice/Etude critique
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 28 , Issue 4 , Fall 1989 , pp. 655 - 662
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1989

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References

1 At least, this is the dominant theme in two recent feminist anthologies I have read. See Code, Lorraine, Mullett, Sheila and Overall, Christine, eds., Feminist Perspectives: Philosophical Essays on Method and Morals (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988)Google Scholar, and Kittay, Eva and Meyers, Diana, eds., Women and Moral Theory (Totowa, NJ: Rowan & Littlefield Publishers, 1987).Google Scholar

2 The charge of failing to question underlying assumptions has been made against applied ethics in general from a non-feminist point of view. See Noble, Cheryl, “Ethics and Experts”, The Hastings Center Report 12/3 (June 1982), 7–9.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

3 Bayles, Michael, Reproductive Ethics (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1984), 12.Google Scholar

4 A recent study of sex preferences indicates that achieving balance is more important to parents than having boys (Schollaert, Paul and Teachman, Jay, “Gender of Children and Birth Timing”, Demography 26/3 [August 1989], 411–423).Google Scholar

5 It is ironic that Overall lays this conflict exclusively on anti-feminists and non-feminists. One of the paradigm images (and one that has been highly influential) picturing the maternal/fetal in adversarial terms comes from a now classic essay by Judith Thompson that Overall herself holds up as an instance of feminist analysis (10). See Thompson, Judith, “A Defense of Abortion”, Philosophy and Public Affairs 1/1 (Fall 1971), 47–66Google Scholar. Overall later quotes approvingly from Thompson's famous violinist example (77). On the same page, she also indirectly (and no doubt unwittingly) compares occupancy of the womb with rape and slavery. The signs by which feminists, anti-feminists, and non-feminists may be distinguished are not as unambiguous as Overall leads us to believe.