Le Moyne College Calendar

While artificial womb technology (ectogenesis) is currently being studied for the purpose of improving neonatal care, Susan Kennedy, a candidate for the McNeil Professorship, contends that this technology ought to be pursued as a means to address the unprecedented rate of unintended pregnancies. But ectogenesis, alongside other emerging reproductive technologies, is problematic insofar as it threatens to disrupt the natural link between procreation and parenthood that is normally thought to generate moral obligations for biological parents. Kennedy will argue that there remains only one potentially viable account of parenthood: the voluntarist account, which construes parental rights as robust moral obligations that must be voluntarily undertaken. The problem is that this account mistakenly presumes a patriarchal divide between procreation and parenthood. Kennedy proposes a reframing of procreation and parenthood from a feminist perspective wherein gestational motherhood involves robust moral obligations that ought to be voluntarily undertaken. If this were the case, all gestational mothers would be, by definition, willing mothers. To make this happen, Kennedy argues that ectogenesis technology must be a widely available reproductive option.

For more information, contact Professor Ludger Viefhues-Bailey at [email protected].