Sonya Ringer

What is wrong with violence? This paper explores an under-recognized aspect of violence: its moral significance for parents. For many parents, raising children is part of what gives meaning, structure, and shape to their lives and senses of self—it is a reproductive project. I offer a substantive account of projects which explains their role in our moral lives; and I argue that we have an obligation not to undermine the permissible projects of others without good reasons. Violence harms children and thereby undermines the reproductive projects which they are central to. Thus, violence fails our obligation and is a pro tanto wrong in part for this reason. This is particularly salient to mothers who, taking a global and historical perspective, perform the vast majority of reproductive work. This account has revisionary implications for the autonomy of adult children, self-defense, criminal sanction, and the waging of war.

I defend the containment view—the position that a fetus is (1) merely contained by its mother and (2) an organism during pregnancy. I argue against the parthood view, which states that a fetus is part of its mother. To do so, I bring the personal identity literature—particularly animalism—to bear on the metaphysics of pregnancy literature. I propose that an adequate account of pregnancy must tell a coherent story about what happens at birth. I deploy three thought experiments, each modeled on classic remnant, fission, and transplant cases to demonstrate that the parthood view must make unappealing commitments to explain birth. Specifically, it is incompatible with standard accounts of human animal persistence. By contrast, the containment view offers a simple explanation.