Abstract
If pregnant women are unwilling or unable to assume their responsibility for the health and wellbeing of the child they are carrying, prenatal child protection becomes a societal and professional concern. As both pressure and coercion interfere with a person’s right to self-determination, such measures require justification. It is not sufficient that prenatal child protection is a morally important goal. The harm to be prevented must be plausible, and the measures must fulfil the criteria of effectiveness, proportionality and subsidiarity. Coercion always also requires a legal title. The concern that coercion would only be possible in later stages of pregnancy in order not to jeopardize women’s right to have an abortion, mistakenly assumes that prenatal child protection is about the fetus. However, it is about the future child.
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Dondorp, W., de Wert, G. (2017). Prenatal Child Protection. Ethics of Pressure and Coercion in Prenatal Care for Addicted Pregnant Women. In: Hens, K., Cutas, D., Horstkötter, D. (eds) Parental Responsibility in the Context of Neuroscience and Genetics. International Library of Ethics, Law, and the New Medicine, vol 69. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42834-5_8
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