B1 Other refereed article (e.g., editorial, letter, comment) in a scientific journal

Unexpecting: abortion, informed consent and transformative experiences




AuthorsRäsänen, Joona

PublisherBMJ Publishing Group

Publication year2025

Journal: Journal of Medical Ethics

ISSN0306-6800

eISSN1473-4257

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1136/jme-2025-111532

Publication's open availability at the time of reportingNo Open Access

Publication channel's open availability Partially Open Access publication channel

Web address https://doi.org/10.1136/jme-2025-111532


Abstract

Scholars in philosophy of medicine and bioethics have recently turned their attention to transformative experiences: experiences that teach something new that one could not have known before having the experience, while simultaneously changing one as a person. Sanne Elisa van der Marck recently argued, drawing on the work of Fiona Woollard, that the subjective experience of pregnancy should be included in moral debates on abortion, since pregnancy is a transformative experience. Van der Marck implicitly suggested that such a view strengthens autonomy-based pro-choice abortion arguments because only pregnant people have crucial knowledge of what it is like to be pregnant. However, as I will show, the upshot of her argument is that it undermines the autonomy-based pro-choice arguments. This is because if pregnancy is a transformative experience, then it becomes increasingly difficult to give informed consent for abortion, since only by going through pregnancy would one gain the knowledge of ‘what it is like’ that is necessary to make the rational choice of having the abortion in the first place. Thus, her argument has a counterintuitive conclusion—it limits rather than reinforces reproductive autonomy.


Funding information in the publication
This work was funded by HORIZON EUROPE European Innovation Council (101081293).


Last updated on 2025-04-12 at 12:45