Rights, Duties and the Body: Law and Ethics of the Maternal-Fetal Conflict.

• Position: Book Review

Portland, Oregon: Hart Publishing, 2002; www.hartpub.co.uk.

In England and in some U.S. states, courts have held that a pregnant woman has the right to refuse medical treatment needed by the fetus. In similar fashion, the idea of a general maternal legal duty of care toward the fetus has been rejected, most recently in Canada. The cases, however, leave the impression of an uncomfortable split between the ethics and the law, as if the problem were entirely one of not legally enforcing presumed moral duties. The effect is both puzzling and polarizing: puzzling in that the cases leave unanswered--as largely they must--the huge question of a pregnant woman's moral rights and duties; polarizing in that the cases leave troubling tensions about a pregnant woman's rights in the face of fetal harm or death. The tendency is to deny these by ever more strongly asserting a woman's rights. In turn this encourages a reaction in favor of fetal rights, one which is unlikely sufficiently to attend to a woman's interests and difficulties in pregnancy This could have serious legal repercussions for various instances of maternal-fetal conflict, including in those U.S. states or other jurisdictions which...