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VIRTUAL SEMINAR – Pregnancy and superior moral status: a proposal for two thresholds of personhood – RECORDING

This is a recording of the online seminar that took place on 19th July 2023 featuring Heloise Robinson

By Phil Greenwood · July 26, 2023

Heloise Robinson is the Singer Fellow in Law at Exeter College, University of Oxford. Her research is in the field of medical law and ethics, with a particular focus on disability issues, and on questions relating to women and pregnancy.

In her paper, titled Pregnancy and superior moral status: a proposal for two thresholds of personhood’, Dr Robinson suggests that, if we are committed to accepting a threshold approach to personhood, according to which all beings above the threshold are persons with equal moral status, there are strong reasons to also recognise a second threshold that would be reached through human pregnancy, and that would confer on pregnant women a temporary superior moral status.

Paper available freely via the Journal of Medical Ethics: https://jme.bmj.com/content/early/2023/05/30/jme-2022-108799