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This paper comes out of a panel honoring the work of Anne Donchin (1940-2014), which took place at the 2016 Congress of the International Network on Feminist Approaches to Bioethics (FAB) in Edinburgh. My general aim is to highlight the contributions Anne made to feminist bioethics, and to feminist reproductive ethics in particular. My more specific aim, however, is to have a kind of conversation with Anne, through her work, about whether reproductive justice could demand insurance coverage for in vitro (...) |
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Having and raising children is widely regarded as one of the most valuable projects a person can choose to undertake. Yet many disabled people find it difficult to share in this value because of obstacles that arise from widespread social attitudes about disability. A common assumption is that having a disability tends to make someone unfit to parent. This assumption may seem especially relevant as a factor in decisions about whether to allow, encourage and assist disabled people to reproduce and (...) |
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Philosophers concerned with procreative ethics have long been puzzled by Parfit’s Non-Identity Problem (NIP). Various solutions have been proposed, but I argue that we have not solved the problem on its own narrow person-affecting terms, i.e., in terms of the identified individuals affected by procreative decisions and acts, especially future children. Thus, the core problem remains unsolved. This is a nagging concern for all who hold the common intuition that actions that harm no one are permissible. I argue against Harmon’s (...) |
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A crucial challenge for critical disability studies is developing an argument for why disabled people should inhabit our democratic, shared public sphere. The ideological and material separation of citizens into worthy and unworthy based on physiological variations imagined as immutable differences is what I call eugenic world building. It is justified by the idea that social improvement and freedom of choice require eliminating devalued human traits in the interest of reducing human suffering, increasing life quality, and building a more desirable (...) |
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Fertility specialists, adoption agents, judges and others sometimes take themselves to have a responsibility to fairly adjudicate conflicts that may arise between the procreative and parenting interests of people with disabilities and the interests that their children or potential children have to be nurtured, cared for and protected. An underlying assumption is that having a disability significantly diminishes a person's parenting abilities. My aim is to challenge the claim that having a disability tends to make someone a bad parent by (...) |
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Stigma taints individuals with a spoiled identity and loss of status or discrimination. This article is the first to examine the stigma attached to abortion and surrogacy and consider how law may stigmatize women for failing to conform to social expectations about maternal roles. Courts should consider evidence of stigma when evaluating laws regulating abortion or surrogacy to determine whether these laws are based on impermissible gender stereotyping. |
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Controversial and provocative, To Be Real is a blueprint for the creation of a new political force. |
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Debate concerning human enhancement often revolves around the question of whether there is a common “nature” that all human beings share and which is unwarrantedly violated by enhancing one’s capabilities beyond the “species-typical” norm. I explicate Thomas Aquinas’s influential theory of human nature, noting certain key traits commonly shared among human beings that define each as a “person” who possesses inviolable moral status. Understanding the specific qualities that define the nature of human persons, which includes self-conscious awareness, capacity for intellective (...) |
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This paper analyzes the underlying tendencies and attitudes toward reproductive medicine borrowing the Nietzschean concepts of nihilism: “death of God” with secularization; “will to power” with reproductive liberty and technological power; and the race of “supermen” with transhumanism. Medical science has advanced in leaps and bounds. In some way, technical innovations have given us unprecedented power to manipulate the way we reproduce. The indiscriminant use of medical technology is backed by a warped notion of human freedom. With secularization in the (...) |
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A common argument in favor of using reprogenetic technologies to enhance children goes like this: parents have always aimed at enhancing their children through upbringing and education, so why not use new tools to accomplish the same goal? But reprogenetics differs significantly from good childrearing and education, in its means, if not its ends. |
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It is commonly believed that disability disqualifies people from full participation in or recognition by society. This view is rooted in eugenic logic, which tells us that our world would be a better place if disability could be eliminated. In opposition to this position, I argue that that disability is inherent in the human condition and consider the bioethical question of why we might want to conserve rather than eliminate disability from our shared world. To do so, I draw together (...) |
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While many experts and organizations have recognized infertility as a public health issue, most governments have not yet adopted a public health approach to infertility. This article argues in favor of such an approach by discussing the various implications of infertility for public health. We use a conceptual framework that focuses on the dual meaning of the term ‘public’ in this context: the health of the public, as opposed to that of individuals, and the public/collective nature of the required interventions. (...) |
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There are substantial numbers of frozen embryos in storage that will not be used by those who produced them for their own fertility treatment. One option for such embryos is to donate them to others to use in their fertility treatment. There has been considerable debate about how this process should be organized. In the US, there are embryo adoption programmes that mediate between those relinquishing embryos and potential recipients. This is a form of conditional embryo donation, where the relinquishing (...) |
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In his 1979 lecture series now translated as The Birth of Biopolitics, Michel Foucault suggests that there is an important relationship between neoliberalism and the cluster of phenomena he had previously named “biopower.” The relationship between these two apparently very different forms of governmentality is not obvious, however, and Foucault does not explicate it. The question has become a pressing one for feminists because it underlies a set of issues surrounding the emerging field of “reprogenetics.” Feminists have been highly critical (...) |
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‘Liberal eugenics’ has emerged as the most popular position amongst philosophers writing in the contemporary debate about the ethics of human enhancement. This position has been most clearly articulated by Nicholas Agar, who argues that the ‘new’ liberal eugenics can avoid the repugnant consequences associated with eugenics in the past. Agar suggests that parents should be free to make only those interventions into the genetics of their children that will benefit them no matter what way of life they grow up (...) |
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Since the first sex reassignment operations were performed, individual sex has come to be, to some extent at least, a technological artifact. The existence of sperm sorting technology, and of prenatal determination of fetal sex via ultrasound along with the option of termination, means that we now have the power to choose the sex of our children. An influential contemporary line of thought about medical ethics suggests that we should use technology to serve the welfare of individuals and to remove (...) |
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In recent decades, the intertwining ideas of self-determination and well-being have received tremendous support in bioethics. Discussions regarding self-determination, or autonomy, often focus on two dimensions—the capacity of the patient and the freedom from external coercion. The practice of obtaining informed consent, for example, has become a standard procedure in therapeutic and research medicine. On the surface, it appears that patients now have more opportunities to exercise their self-determination than ever. Nonetheless, discussions of patient autonomy in the bioethics literature, which (...) |
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Advances in reproductive genetic engineering have the potential to transform human lives. Not only do they promise to allow us to select children free of diseases, they can also enable us to select children with desirable traits. In this paper, I consider two clusters of arguments for the moral permissibility of reproductive genetic engineering, what I call the Perfectionist View and the Libertarian View; and two clusters of arguments against reproductive genetic engineering, what I call the Human Nature View and (...) |
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A few decades ago, there was a lively debate on the problem of overpopulation. Various proposals to limit population growth and to control fertility were made and debated both in academia and in th... |
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There is a growing consensus that the offer of a reasonable compensation for oocyte donation for reproductive treatment is acceptable if it does not compromise voluntary and altruistically motivated donation. However, how to translate this ‘reasonable compensation’ in practice remains unclear as compensation rates offered to oocyte donors between different European Union countries vary significantly. Clinics involved in oocyte donation, as well as those in other medical contexts, might be encouraged in calculating a more consistent and transparent compensation for donors (...) |
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In 2015 a team of scientists used a new gene-editing technique called CRISPR-Cas9 to edit the genome of 86 non-viable human embryos. The experiment sparked a global debate on the ethics of gene editing. In this paper; I first review the key ethical issues that have been addressed in this debate. Although there is an emerging consensus now that research on the editing of human somatic cells for therapeutic purpose should be pursued further; the prospect of using gene-editing techniques for (...) |
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This article critically surveys the current bioethical and politico-philosophical debate about the ethical permissibility of a so-called ‘liberal eugenics’ and argues that neither the liberal argument for nor the liberal argument against human genetic enhancement is internally consistent as, ultimately, each ends up violating the very liberal principles it nonetheless pretends to defend. In particular, it will be shown that while the argument against a new eugenics necessarily entails a preemptive dehumanization of any potential enhanced form of life, the argument (...) |
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This article argues that parents have a special, shared duty to organize for collective action on climate change mitigation and adaptation, but not for the reason one might assume. The apparently obvious reason is that climate change threatens life, health and community for the next generation, and parents have a special duty to their children to protect their basic human interests. This argument fails because many parents could protect their children from these central harms without taking more general action to (...) |
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The aim of this paper is to criticise the well-discussed Principle of Procreative Beneficence (PB) lately refined by Julian Savulescu and Guy Kahane. First, it is argued that advocates of PB leave us with an implausible justification for the moral partiality towards the child (or children) reproducers decide to bring into existence as compared with all other individuals. This is implausible because the reasons given in favour of the partiality of PB, which are based on practical reason and common-sense morality, (...) |
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Has the time come to put to bed the concept of a harm threshold when discussing the ethics of reproductive decision making and the legal limits that should be placed upon it? In this commentary, we defend the claim that there exist good moral reasons, despite the conclusions of the non-identity problem, based on the interests of those we might create, to refrain from bringing to birth individuals whose lives are often described in the philosophical literature as ‘less than worth (...) |
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It is now possible to have a child without sexual intercourse. The history of this apparently new statement has been breefly synthetised.The new perspectives open ethical problems for the scientific community and a new social context for single women. |
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The identification and avoidance of disease susceptibility in embryos is the most common goal of preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). Most jurisdictions that accept but regulate the availability of PGD restrict it to what are characterized as ‘serious’ conditions. Line-drawing around seriousness is not determined solely by the identification of a genetic mutation. Other factors seen to be relevant include: impact on health or severity of symptoms; degree of penetrance (probability of genotype being expressed as a genetic disorder); potential for therapy; (...) |
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The screening of in vitro embryos resulting from in vitro fertilization treatment for chromosomal abnormalities has as a primary aim to help patients achieve a successful pregnancy. Most IVF centers will not transfer aneuploid embryos, as they have an enhanced risk of leading to implantation failure and miscarriage. However, some aneuploidies, such as trisomy-21, can lead to viable pregnancies and to children with a variable health prognosis, and some prospective parents may request transfer of such embryos. I present two cases (...) |
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Anthropogenic climate change is arguably one of the biggest problems that confront us today. There is ample evidence that climate change is likely to affect adversely many aspects of life for all people around the world, and that existing solutions such as geoengineering might be too risky and ordinary behavioural and market solutions might not be sufficient to mitigate climate change. In this paper, we consider a new kind of solution to climate change, what we call human engineering, which involves (...) |
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Is there any ethical justification for limiting the reproductive autonomy and not make assisted reproductive technologies available to certain prospective parents? We present and discuss the results of an interdisciplinary clinical ethics study concerning access to assisted reproductive technologies (ART) in situations which are considered as ethically problematic in France (overage or sick parents, surrogate motherhood). The study focused on the arguments that people in these situations put forward when requesting access to ART. It shows that requester’s arguments are based (...) |
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Debate over the relationship of law and bioethics is growing - what the relationship has been and what it should be in the future. While George Annas has praised law and rights-talk for creating modern bioethics, Carl Schneider has instead blamed law for hijacking bioethics and stunting moral reflection. Indeed, as modern bioethics approaches the 40-year mark, historians of bioethics are presenting divergent accounts. In one account, typified by Albert Jonsen, bioethics largely grew out of philosophy and theology, not law. (...) |
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The President's Council on Bioethics (PCB) has deepened ethical and policy debates with its more conservative slant on bioethical issues. In the process it has elicited both brickbats and exasperat... |
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ABSTRACT Does genetic relatedness define who is a mother or father and who incurs obligations towards or entitlements over children? While once the answer to this question may have been obvious, advances in reproductive technologies have complicated our understanding of what makes a parent. In a recent publication Bayne and Kolers argue for a pluralistic account of parenthood on the basis that genetic derivation, gestation, extended custody and sometimes intention to parent are sufficient (but not necessary) grounds for parenthood.1 Bayne (...) |
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Abstract:This paper considers the relevance of the concept of “eugenics,”—a term associated with some of the most egregious crimes of the twentieth century—to the possibility of editing human genomes. The author identifies some uses of gene editing as eugenics but proposes that this identification does not suffice to condemn them. He proposes that we should distinguish between “morally wrong” practices, which should be condemned, and “morally problematic” practices that call for solutions, and he suggests that eugenic uses of gene editing (...) |
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In a project The Hastings Center is now running on the future of prenatal testing, we are encountering clear examples, both in established law and in the practices of individual providers, of failures to respect women's reproductive autonomy: when testing is not offered to certain demographics of women, for instance, or when the choices of women to terminate or continue pregnancies are prohibited or otherwise not supported. But this project also raises puzzles for reproductive autonomy. We have learned that some (...) |
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Many countries are experiencing increasing levels of demand for access to assisted reproductive technologies. Policies regarding who can access ART and with what support from a collective purse are highly contested, raising questions about what state responses are justified. Whilst much of this debate has focused on the status of infertility as a disease, we argue that this is something of a distraction, since disease framing does not provide the far-reaching, robust justification for state support that proponents of ART seem (...) |
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This study is a contribution to the bioethical debate about new and possibly emerging reproductive technologies. Its point of departure is the intuition, which many people seem to share, that using such technologies to select non-disease traits – like sex and emotional stability - in yet unborn children is morally problematic, at least more so than using the technologies to avoid giving birth to children with severe genetic diseases, or attempting to shape the non-disease traits of already existing children by (...) |
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The aim of this paper is to scrutinize a contemporary standoff in the American debate over the moral permissibility of human reproductive cloning in its prospective use as a eugenic enhancement technology. I shall argue that there is some significant and under-appreciated common ground between the defenders and opponents of human cloning. Champions of the moral and legal permissibility of cloning support the technology based on the right to procreative liberty provided it were to become as safe as in vitro (...) |
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The rapid development of assisted reproduction technologies for the treatment of infertility appears to empower women through expanding their individual choice, but it is also creating new forms of suffering for them and their collaborators, especially in the context of transnational third-party reproduction. This paper explores the possibility of framing the ethical discourse around third-party reproduction by bringing attention to concerns of altruistic empathy for women who collaborate in the reproductive process, in addition to those of individualistic choice. This would (...) |
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I argue that pregnant women have a duty to refrain from behaviours or to allow certain acts to be done to them for the sake of their foetus if the foetus has a reasonable chance of living and being in a harmed state if the woman does not refrain from those behaviours or allow those things to be done to her. There is a proviso: that her refraining from acting or allowing acts to be performed upon her does not significantly (...) |
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The national ethical guidelines relevant to assisted reproductive technology have recently been reviewed by the National Health and Medical Research Council. The review process paid particular attention to the issue of non-medical sex selection, although ultimately, the updated ethical guidelines maintain the pre-consultation position of a prohibition on non-medical sex selection. Whilst this recent review process provided a public forum for debate and discussion of this ethically contentious issue, the Victorian case of JS and LS v Patient Review Panel [2011] (...) |
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Oocyte donation raises conflicts of interest and commitment for physicians but little attention has been paid to how to reduce these conflicts in practice. Yet the growing popularity of assisted reproduction has increased the stakes of maintaining an adequate oocyte supply and minimizing conflicts. A growing body of professional guidelines, legal challenges to professional self-regulation, and empirical research on the practice of oocyte donation all call for renewed attention to the issue. As empirical findings better inform existing conflicts and their (...) |
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Existing debate on procreative selection focuses on the well-being of the future child. However, selection decisions can also have significant effects on the well-being of others. Moreover, these effects may run in opposing directions; some traits conducive to the well-being of the selected child may be harmful to others, whereas other traits that limit the child’s well-being may preserve or increase that of others. Prominent selection principles defended to date instruct parents to select a child, of the possible children they (...) |
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An objection often is raised against the use of reproductive technology to create "nontraditional families," as in ovum donation for postmenopausal women or postmortem artificial insemination. The objection states that conceiving children in such circumstances is harmful to them because of adverse features of these nontraditional families. A similar objection is raised when parents, through negligence or willful disregard of risks, create children with serious genetic diseases or other developmental handicaps. It is claimed that such reproduction harms the children who (...) |
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