Imagining a fetus

insights from talking with pregnant women about their decisions to undergo open-uterine fetal surgery

Mark J. Bliton

pp. 393-415

in: Toombs (ed), Handbook of phenomenology and medicine, Berlin, Springer, 2001

Abstract

For more than ten years now I have been engaged in clinical ethics consultation and, from the start, I have maintained an abiding concern to think through a method inherent to these activities. Two recommendations from the work of Edmund Husserl continue centrally to inform my pursuits. The first involves Husserl's (1960, p. 7) suggestion that philosophers, "each for himself and in himself," should at first "put out of action all the convictions we have been accepting up to now." This suggestion also includes an invitation to "immerse ourselves" in the "scientific striving and doing" (Husserl, 1960, p. 9). For my part, this attitude of "immersing" pertains to the world of clinical medicine, specifically the moral experiences and difficulties that arise in that context. Crucial to this activity is adopting a rigorous reflective attitude, even while becoming immersed in the activities and practices that occur in clinical settings (Bliton and Finder, 1999, pp. 72–75).

Cited authors

Husserl Edmund