ABSTRACT
This opening chapter introduces the text, The Birth of Ethics: Phenomenological Reflections on Life’s Beginnings. Through the cadence of anecdote and reflection, ethics is presented as a fundamental phenomenon in the experiential encounter between parent and child. Even in the context of neonatal-perinatal medicine, where all manner of medical technologies and illnesses may potentially complicate this relation, ethics is already present before the moral question ‘what is to be done?’ is even asked. And yet, the birth of ethics is an enigma: How do ethics come into being when a child is conceived? How do the ethics of pregnancy differ from ethics encountered after birth? How does the phenomenon of the ethical relate to the phenomenon of the moral in decision making?
