"... the most thorough attempt to understand pregnancy available. It speaks particularly to the issue, whether we should understand pregnancy as a normal episode in the life of a woman, or some sort of alien intrusion, as Judith Jarvis Thomson does in her defense of abortion. Anyone interested in the abortion issue, or any of the other biomedical and social issues surrounding human reproduction, should read it carefully. All earlier work on the abortion issue, including my Ethics of Homicide and David Boonin's widely admired Defense of Abortion could be improved by a consideration of Watt's work." - Philip E. Devine
"Watt's monograph will be of most interest to readers interested in a brief, wide ranging coverage of topics of moral significance connected with conception, pregnancy and childbirth that articulates a point of view often closely aligned with Catholic scholars, but without making reference to specifically religious ideas or claims." - Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
"... a fascinating and frustrating book ... Watt is asking vitally important questions that tend to be side-lined in mainstream bioethics." - Anna Smajdor, BioNews
"The insights of this book are profoundly important ... Especially innovative is the explication of four ways to view pregnancy, namely, the uni-personal, the neighborly, the maternal, and the spousal...Highly recommended." - R. Mary Hayden Lemmons
"Though I suspect few will agree with Watt on every point, she makes her arguments clearly and carefully and within this relatively short volume she explores a wide range of issues some of which I have never seen discussed anywhere else. Most readers will find something to challenge existing views and to stimulate fresh thought about the ethics of pregnancy." - Trevor Stammers, The New Bioethics
"Helen Watt has written a brave and provocative book--one sure to shake up many people's closely held 'certainities' about the ethical issues surrounding pregnancy. In a style that is at once both accessible and rigorous, Watt addresses dimensions of human reproduction and pregnancy that have been heretofore ignored or shortchanged. One may disagree with some of Watt's conclusions, but she has shown us what it will take to develop a morally consistent and thorough view about the complexities of our social and mammalian nature." - Susan Dwyer, University of Maryland, USA
