Hello, and welcome to FAB Gab. This is a podcast for the International Journal of feminist approaches to bioethics brought to you by fab Network. My name is Kathryn McKay and today I'm joined by Jemma Rollo to discuss her paper, which is entitled A relational ethics of pregnancy. Hello, Jemma.
Hi, thanks for having me.
Thanks for joining me, it's great to have you. I'm very excited to talk about this paper. I wonder if you could give the listeners an elevator pitch of the relational ethics of pregnancy?
Yes, I can try. So basically, the idea is that I wanted to think about the ways that we view different pregnancies and how people make decisions around that. And for me, I really wanted to make sure that it was a woman centered feminist approach, but that it also was really considering and respectful of the value of the fetus. So yeah, just framing having a normative framework to deal with a whole variety of pregnancy issues.
And what what made you be interested in that?
Well, I'm a psychologist, and part of my work is to do non directive pregnancy counseling. So I've had a lot of women come in with a whole bunch of things to do with pregnancy. So whether they're considering avoiding a pregnancy, for a variety of reasons, women who have had fertility issues that have been pretty devastating for them, and how they want to manage that. And also from a personal experience, too, so obviously, being a woman, you get to speak to other women about what they've experienced. So things like, you know, friends having abortions or miscarriages, or fertility issues as well.
And you just saw that there was a gap in the literature that kind of, like we spend a lot of time in feminist bioethics thinking about, or at least from my point of view, thinking about reproductive tech, access to reproductive tech, and abortion. But I don't think that I hear that much about miscarriage.
Yeah, I think that there's definitely a gap there. I would hope that it's improved a little bit recently. But for me, yeah, there's definitely been a lot of focus on access to abortion, which is a very important issue, but not so much on how, as feminists, we can, you know, have solidarity with women who've experienced the loss of wanted pregnancy. And I think that's partly because that there's a worry that if you acknowledge that there's value in in a fetus or in a pregnancy, that that could be used politically, or the fear that it would be used politically to undermine access to abortion.
Right. So maybe you could take us through some of the main points of your argument. That Yes.
So again, for me, I think that probably the foundational assumption is one of gender equality. So this idea that just because you're a woman, or happen to be pregnant, as a woman, that you would have less access to things like bodily integrity. So you know, the idea that for non pregnant people, that there's really clear legislation that we would all be familiar with just you know, you're not allowed to interfere with somebody's body without their consent. Whereas I think there's sometimes an assumption that if you're a pregnant woman, that there are different expectations. And so for me, one of the main things in this paper is that there should not be differences that that should be the same, irrespective of your pregnancy status. And then, obviously, I've already mentioned consent, so the idea that the only the only way that that should be worked around as if the woman consents to it. So if they want to have things done to them to help with pregnancy, or to change her pregnancy status. And then there are some other things. So the way that the fetus and its relationship to the woman is viewed is, I think, an important part of this. So that's where the relational aspect comes in. So this idea that rather than sort of going down, I suppose a more traditional, perhaps feminist path of kind of have having a fetus minimizing approach where you I kind of put the fetus to one side and just mainly focus on the woman is in my approach is that the woman is still the center, but the the relationship that she has with her fetus or her pregnancy is of great ethical importance.
And why did you put that relationship at the center in that way?
Um, I think because it helps to answer some of the questions that I had. Like when I've had my own experiences with people, either in the clinic or just in normal relationships with them. The fetus is always at the center of the conversation, you know, how the woman feels about it, what the pregnancy means to her, potentially even what the pregnancy means to other people who, you know, may have an interest as well. I think in kind of normal, like non academic life, that that's just how we view it. And for me, the idea that in some of the more academic literature that that was sort of not acknowledged, was really important to me, because I think it's that relationship often that, yeah, that determines really the decision making that the the woman does.
And so, in your paper, I think you suggests that there is a kind of scale right of, of importance. And I wondered if you could say something about that, for the listeners who perhaps haven't read the paper yet? Yeah, sure.
Um, so for me, I guess I think about two scales almost. So if you can kind of think about them in parallel. So one is the non physical side. So this is the relational aspect. And, you know, if you imagine a pregnancy, this could say, if it was on a scale of one to 10, right, at the start of a pregnancy, you might not have a relationship yet, or feel like you have a relationship with the fetus. But as the pregnancy progresses, people tend to do things like get a scan, you know, start to feel movement, start to picture their lives with that baby, potential baby. And this helps to build the woman's relationship with it. Or the relationship could be one that the woman sees as a container far from ideal as not a good thing. And then the kind of rating scale would be right down the lower end for her. And other things impact on that as well. And that, that runs in parallel with I suppose this kind of physical scale to which I suppose you could think of as biological viability scale. So again, there's no guarantee that any pregnancy results in the birth of a baby, but at the start, that's kind of less likely, and towards the end of gestation, it's more likely. And so this idea that, that those two things vary depending on the circumstances of the pregnancy.
So I wonder if you can say something, because in the paper, you decide to tackle two topics they've already introduced, and you think of them as being quite opposite. So one is abortion, and one is miscarriage. So I guess I'm wondering, how do you think that your relational ethics of pregnancy addresses each of them?
Yeah. So yeah, as you say, I kind of deliberately chose these two, because I think, generally they can be seen as quite opposite. So when you think about abortion, I think the thing that comes to mind is obviously terminating a pregnancy. When you think about miscarriage, again, this is the end of pregnancy, but it's a wanted pregnancy, this idea that, you know, one person may want to stop the pregnancy and the other person wants to continue it. And again, in the academic work that I've read, people tend to focus on one or the other, because I think it's easier in some ways to not have to explain both these things at the same time. But for me, it's really important that you can partly because I think that there's not enough done around pregnancy loss and the importance of this for women. But also, because I think to have an overarching approach to pregnancy ethics, you need to be able to explain both. And so for me, while they might, at first seem quite opposite, it's using this Relational Approach to have a look at some of the similarities between them. And social me, and for some of the other people who've written on this, the main similarities are around consent. So the idea of whether it's wanted whether the woman's consenting to the pregnancy or not, obviously with abortion, that's the woman saying that she doesn't want to continue the pregnancy. And with pregnancy loss, miscarriage or you know, accidental loss through, you know, a car accident or something like that, the woman hasn't consented to that loss. So needing to be able to act explain why that's really significant is using the same idea that she she should be in charge of what happens to her body and that if she's wanting a pregnancy, and that's taken away from her that that's something that's significant in the same way that being pregnant without your consent is significant.
It seems like a really advantageous way to think about this. I wonder if there were any challenges or specific objections that you had to consider when you were working on this topic?
Um, yeah, I mean, it's a challenging area to work in, especially given that for me part of this is that I, I really do value fetuses and pregnancy, like, this is a really important thing for me personally. And obviously, in society, you know, this wouldn't be a contentious issue, if we all didn't have strong, you know, thoughts and feelings about this stuff. So in writing the paper, one of the challenges for me was actually, in the review process for publication, having one of the reviewers really pushed me on one of my points around abortion. So this idea that if we really are relying on the woman's bodily integrity, you know, how far along that sort of viability path, should we be okay with her saying, No, I don't want to be pregnant anymore. And whether that means that we need to allow for late term abortion. And again, for me, that's a really hard thing. You know, I lost sleep over this. Having had that feedback, but I think ultimately, sometimes it's about the least bad option in ethics. And the idea that I'm treating a woman as a different class of person, just because she's pregnant is for me a worse thing than needing to allow late term abortion, it's still a very difficult thing for me to think about and to read. Yeah,
yeah. Understandable. I think I remember that line in the paper, you just say something about the lesser, the greater evil is forcing a woman to continue against her consent.
Yeah. And again, for me, I think this is where the relational theory is really important. Because although it is obviously up to the woman, given that it's this is all occurring inside her body, the idea that there are also things that society and other people can do to help support women, and to give them a variety of options as much as possible, rather than feeling like, you know, it's just one or the other. Um, so thinking about how society might, yeah, support women to be able to have pregnancies at that stage? If, if that's practical reasons that she's making those sorts of decisions just to open options up. Yeah, and I guess, you know, the way that we view families, people's roles, the economic status of women, if they're having a child often changes. So all of these things are not included in this paper, but are things that we need to think about in giving the woman options. Yeah,
yeah, absolutely. So because there isn't very much written about miscarriage and stuff. I wonder if you could say a little bit more about what your relational ethics of pregnancy says about recognizing that, and the importance of it to women?
Yeah. Again, I think for me, this was written, keeping in mind that it's been written about real people and things that happen in their actual lives. And the idea that, you know, I think it's something like one in three women will experience a pregnancy loss in their lifetime, this is a really common thing. And it's not widely written about the idea that this theory gives space to, you know, have solidarity with women who experienced loss. So the idea that we don't need to minimize their losses in order to protect women's reproductive rights so that we can acknowledge that depending on the woman and her situation and her relationship with that particular pregnancy, that, that it can be a really life changing thing, a really significant thing for her leave space to have conversations where you can use the woman's relationship with it to frame the way that you talk about it. So, you know, say in my work, if somebody comes in and has experienced pregnancy loss for one person, that could be something that means the end of their hope of having a family. That's a really significant thing. And it feels to that one like the loss of a child and the loss of potential future. For another woman who was in a different situation, it might feel like a relief. And she also needs to be able to speak about that without taking away from other people's experiences. And I think that this theory, and this approach gives that space because it's very much about that, that relationship. And I think it's quite a different way of using relations theory to because I think, probably when it was first written about, it was very much seen as only applying to kind of existent humans, not to do with fetuses. But for me, the idea that you can have a relationship with a fetus again, it fits with my experience of women having pregnancies. And I think that the idea that you can do that, and still have protection for reproductive rights. Yeah, for me, that's really important.
Yeah. I think that makes sense, too. And I do think that it's something quite unique of this theory that we can have one in the same time, recognize the grief of one woman's loss of her desired pregnancy while supporting the choice that another woman is making determinate? Because this isn't about the personhood status or something like that. Yeah, the fetus. Yeah. So I think you kind of I don't I think you mentioned it, but you just sort of set it aside. You're like, maybe maybe not. Regarding personhood,
yeah, look personhood thing. And I think for me, again, I know people have very differing views on this. For me, the idea of when fetal life begins, and whether that equates to personhood and whether that should be the thing that determines the right or wrong of decision. Yet this this theory, this approach can set that to one side. And I think that's really important, if it's a question that can never be answered. Because otherwise, what do you do with that you still need to have some practical answers to how we deal with these issues. But even if even if you think as I do that a pregnancy starts at implantation. If you believe that we should have gender equality in terms of bodily integrity, it almost becomes irrelevant. Like while this is happening in somebody's body, that person is still has, I suppose like primacy they come first in ethical decision making. And I think this is, like an important thing to talk about with the paper too. I use the term nestedness. So this idea that, you know, it's almost like Russian dolls, like yes, there's a woman and inside a pregnant woman, there's a fetus or an embryo or whatever stage it's at. So that you acknowledged they there is something else to be considered, but that the woman's always at the front. Again, if it's happening in her body, she's her decisions. It's otherwise it would be unequal be discrimination.
Yeah. Very nimble. So just to wrap up, I guess it's been great to hear about the paper, if there was, you know, one or two sort of takeaways that you'd hope people would glean from the paper, what would they be?
I think, I think just an acknowledgement of the idea that you don't have to kind of pick sides that it doesn't have to be something that's politicized, where it's set up as a woman versus a fetus. The both those things can be really valuable. And it's thinking about the complexities in the relationship between the woman her fetus. And these ethical concepts like bodily integrity, consent. That, that we should be considering that, you know, I do really want to move away from the idea that there's two camps in this. Yeah.
And do you hope that this gets picked up to move forward?
Yeah, I do. I mean, I think there are, again, there are real practical things that we need to think about. I know, in Australia and atiim, and other places that we have issues in our legislation around how do we deal with, you know, a pregnant woman losing her pregnancy as a result of like a car accident or, you know, how do we have legal protection for the woman and her relationship with the fetus without undermining again, this idea that they are fetuses still contained by the woman. And again, you know, obviously in the states this idea that that we need to be able to do this without further losing women's rights around their, their reproductive goals in the way that their bodies are used.
Well, thank you so much for talking with me, Gemma, and fascinating. Thank you. And anybody who's interested can find that paper that we've discussed linked in this episode's notes along with the transcript. Thanks for listening to this episode of fat gab gab is hosted and produced by me Catherine McKay. You can find our other episodes on Spotify, radio, public anchor or wherever you get your podcasts of quality. Thanks again for listening. Bye
