Maggie Little has argued that understanding the intimacy of gestation is crucial for assessing the ethics of abortion. Here I extend Little’s insight, exploring the importance of intimacy in and after pregnancy, beyond the ethics of abortion. I argue that Gestational intimacy can thus be experienced as unchosen or inescapable, even during a willing pregnancy and that this should be recognised as a burden bourn by the gestating parent. Both the degree and the type of burden should be recognised in calculations about the fair division of parental burdens. This also provides additional reason to avoid imposing additional unwanted intimate interactions (and infringements of bodily autonomy in general) on the gestating parent – and thus make obstetric violence even more problematic. I then turn to intimacy after pregnancy, arguing that intimacy is important in showing why we should be very sceptical of any duty to breastfeed/chestfeed.
philosophy visiting speaker sessions
University of Reading