ArticleMonash bioethics review2026
What is pregnancy and what is disease? a critique of Smajdor and Räsänen's "is pregnancy a disease? a normative approach".
Article in Monash bioethics review, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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Abstract
Anna Smajdor and Joona Räsänen argue that pregnancy should be classified as a disease (In: Is Pregnancy a Disease? A Normative Approach, vol 51, 2025). But their argument faces a problem not yet raised by other critics (see In: Pregnancy, Pain and Pathology: A Reply to Smajdor and Räsänen, vol 51, 2025; In: No, Pregnancy Is Not a Disease, vol 51, 2025; In: Failing to Deliver: Why Pregnancy Is Not a Disease, vol 51, 2025). To classify a phenomenon, e.g., pregnancy, as belonging to a category, e.g., disease, one must characterize the category as well as the phenomenon. But Smajdor and Räsänen do neither. Indeed, they reject every apparent candidate theory of disease, and they do not define pregnancy. The closest they come to characterizing disease' is positing the converse of Quill Kukla's criteria for non-disease (In: Infertility, Epistemic Risk, and Disease Definitions, vol 196, 2019). The converse of Kukla's criteria are: (1) there is agreement and consistency between definitions, (2) a unified physical syndrome is present, (3) the risks are medical rather than social, and (4) the risks are not only 'risks' within a particular set of social values (In: Is Pregnancy a Disease? A Normative Approach, vol 51, 2025). Smajdor and Räsänen then claim that pregnancy meets these criteria. But contra what they argue, I show that pregnancy fails to meet these criteria, or that, at best, whether or not pregnancy meets some of them is not established. If Smajdor and Räsänen abandon even those suggested criteria, however, they have no basis for classifying pregnancy-whatever it is-in any way at all. On these grounds, I contend they have not shown that pregnancy should be classified as a disease.
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