Technology has come to dominate the modern experience of pregnancy and childbirth, but instead of empowering pregnant women, technology has been used to identify the foetus as a second patient characterised as a distinct entity with its own needs and interests. Often, foetal and the woman s interests will be aligned, though in legal and medical discourses the two patients are frequently framed as antagonists with conflicting interests.

This book focuses upon the permissibility of encroachment on the pregnant woman s autonomy in the interests of the foetus. Drawing on the law in England...

Technology has come to dominate the modern experience of pregnancy and childbirth, but instead of empowering pregnant women, technology has been used to identify the foetus as a second patient characterised as a distinct entity with its own needs and interests. Often, foetal and the woman s interests will be aligned, though in legal and medical discourses the two patients are frequently framed as antagonists with conflicting interests.

This book focuses upon the permissibility of encroachment on the pregnant woman s autonomy in the interests of the foetus. Drawing on the law in England...