 Pregnancy and birth can be approached from many philosophical angles. Pregnancy raises interesting issues in philosophy of law, such as the appropriate legal status of the fetus and whether pregnancy ought to be legally classified as a disability. Some authors have discussed pregnancy in phenomenological terms, and others have used pregnancy and/or birth as a springboard for more theoretical reflections on the nature of selfhood, care, embodiment, and personal identity. In this article, however, we will focus on pregnancy and birth insofar as they are treated as medical processes and situated within a medical context. (The boundary around this topic is necessarily imperfect, since medical, legal, metaphysical, experiential, and other contexts intersect. For instance, one cannot responsibly examine the ethics of treating the fetus as a medical patient without at least considering the legal ramifications of doing so.) For better or for worse, in most developed countries, including the United States and Canada, normal pregnancy and birth are highly ‘medicalized’. Furthermore, it is not uncommon for women to experience problems during pregnancy that require medical care and intervention. The medical management of both ‘normal’ pregnancies and those that face complications raises a variety of complex ethical issues, and these will be our topic.