Can You Do Harm to Your Fetus? Pregnancy, Barriers, and the Doing/Allowing Distinction

When pregnant persons do not behave in the way deemed optimal for their fetus, they are often framed as doing harm. This framing acts as a justificatory bypass for defenses of widespread expectations of pregnant persons, allowing such defenses to avoid substantial questions about special obligations in pregnancy. Our main claim is that this justificatory bypass is unwarranted: in many cases either the pregnant person does not count as doing harm or substantive questions about special obligations cannot be avoided. Our secondary claim is that direct engagement with these substantive questions is unlikely to justify widespread expectations on pregnant people.