Everyone should be ‘pro-abortion’ when the patient is a child, UBC scholars argue
When a child becomes pregnant, treating her as an adult overlooks potential medical harms and ethical duties involved. UBC scholars argue that a child’s best interests make abortion the appropriate standard of care.
When the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the constitutional right to abortion care in 2022, several states enacted abortion bans. That legal shift raised a question that has received little focused attention: What do physicians, judges and parents owe to an impregnated child?
University of B.C. philosophy professor Dr. Kimberley Brownlee (KB) and co-author Alyssa Izatt (AI), a PhD candidate in philosophy, answer that question unequivocally in their forthcoming paper in Ethics.
How should we think about the ethical responsibilities to a pregnant child?
KB: Both sides of the abortion debate overlook that this is a child. She should not be compelled to continue a pregnancy, but neither should she be treated as an autonomous adult whose right to choose overrides all other considerations. Her best interests as a child must be central.
AI: An impregnated girl must be treated differently than an adult. Even on the strongest anti-abortion view, a child’s position is distinct. She is owed protection and care. On the progressive side, framing abortion purely as a matter of choice also misses something important: A child may need help making decisions, and those responsible for her care may need to decide in her best interests.
Your paper views a child’s impregnation as a ‘malady’. Why is that?
KB: Calling it a malady foregrounds the harms of gestating during childhood. Pregnancy is the second leading cause of death among girls aged 15 to 19 worldwide.
AI: Younger adolescents face elevated risks of complications such as preeclampsia and anemia. Beyond the physical risks, there are higher rates of depression, substance use, poverty and repeat pregnancies. Seeing impregnation as a serious medical harm clarifies that adults responsible for a child’s care have a duty to intervene, just as they would with other threats to her health and future.
In what ways do current laws and medical guidelines treat impregnated children as adult women?
AI: Adolescent pregnancy guidelines often present abortion, adoption and motherhood as three equivalent options. That framing assumes a level of maturity and life-readiness many children do not have. In no other context do we ask children to make decisions of such magnitude.
KB: Some abortion bans also collapse the distinction between girls and women by defining a woman as any female human being, regardless of age. The real-world consequences are stark. In one case we discuss, a 12-year-old who was raped could not access abortion care because of state restrictions. She gave birth and entered seventh grade as a mother.
How do you use the analogy of child organ donation to support your argument?
AI: We chose organ donation to grant the strongest case to those who believe abortion is about saving a life. Imagine a 14-year-old who could save her sister’s life by donating part of her liver. Strict safeguards would apply: The risk must be low, it must be a last resort, she must not be exploited and it must serve her long-term interests. In practice, this is rarely permitted even for older teens. What is striking is that we have robust protocols to protect children in organ donation cases but no comparable protocol for impregnation.
If your recommendations were adopted, how would law and policy change?
KB: The first step would be to stop womanizing children. Policymakers and clinicians should speak clearly about girls as children and recognize their right to a childhood free from adult burdens.
Medical guidance would shift away from presenting three equivalent options and toward recognizing that adequate care for a child includes abortion care, grounded in her best interests, her rights as a child and her protected status in decision-making.
When we are talking about children, the usual labels of pro-life and pro-choice fall apart. Given the serious risks and lifelong consequences involved, we should be neither pro-life nor pro-choice. We should be pro-abortion when the patient is a child.
Featured Researcher
Alyssa Izatt
PhD Candidate, Dept. of Philosophy
