Kate Greasley, Stowell Junior Research Fellow in Law, University College, Oxford
Opponents of abortion choice increasingly point to post-abortion regret as a reason for women to decide against abortion. The potential of post-abortion regret seems to be offered up both as an indication that abortion choice is morally unjustified, and as a reason for believing that abortion is not the most prudent or welfare-maximising decision for a pregnant woman to make. In particular, the relatively higher incidence of post-abortion regret as compared with post-natal regret is thought to be good evidence for the moral impermissibility and, or, imprudence of abortion choice. I will set out to challenge these claims. I expose the falseness of their advocates’ assumption that retrospective attitudes such as regret necessarily track moral or rational justification. Moreover, I argue that certain features of reproductive decision- making makes regret an especially unsuitable yardstick for assessing actual justification in this context, and far less epistemically reliable than it may be in other contexts. Consequently, the comparison with rates of post-natal regret is not at all illuminating.
Friday Oct. 16th, 2015 4:00 PM
5 Washington Pl Rm 202
New York, NY 10003
Open to the public; reception to follow.
