Rethinking Regret

Antiabortionists in the United States have deployed the concept of “abortion regret” to justify the criminalization of abortion. To critique antiabortion arguments, I turn to Simone de Beauvoir’s The Ethics of Ambiguity . I draw on Beauvoir’s existential ethics to argue that moral decisions require the possibility of failure and regret, and that regret does not prove the inherent immorality of abortion. Ultimately, I show how Beauvoir’s ethics offers important philosophical resources to engage with the ambiguity of reproductive decision-making

Ambiguity · Criminalization · Existentialism · Harm · Immorality · Moral responsibility · Regret · Feminist Epistemology and Gender Studies · Reproductive Health and Technologies · Simone de Beauvoir and Sartre