Abstract

In his article entitled ‘Moral parenthood: not gestational’, Benjamin Lange makes the following central and narrow claim: that moral parenthood cannot be defended fully based on an ‘emotional relationship’ facilitated by gestation.1 By ‘moral parenthood’, Lange appears to mean a moral right to parent the child. The ‘emotional relationship’ under scrutiny seems to be a form of intimate relationship during pregnancy involving an emotional attachment between the pregnant woman (or, in Lange’s terminology, the ‘gestational procreator’) and the newborn. In other words, Lange critiques the view that a moral right to parent a child can be grounded in an emotional relationship, as developed during pregnancy, between the mother and child. Lange discusses the possible emotions of both of them, during pregnancy, and at the time of birth. He notes some problems in seeing this relationship as one that has sufficiently weighty moral importance: it is asymmetrical, for example, and the relationship is not obviously reciprocal. The central claim here is in fact quite easily convincing. It is quite right that emotions alone should not ground a moral right to parent a child. Lange accepts for example that ‘gestational procreators are usually highly emotionally invested in their pregnancy’ (p3),1 and this ‘usually’ …