Safe and effective methods of preconception gender selection through flow cytometric separation of X- and Y-bearing sperm could greatly increase the use of gender selection by couples contemplating reproduction. Such a development raises ethical, legal, and social issues about the impact of such practices on offspring, on sex ratio imbalances, and on sexism and the status of women. This paper analyzes the competing interests in preconception gender selection, and concludes that its use to increase gender variety in a family, and (...) possibly for selecting the gender of firstborn, might in many instances be ethically acceptable. (shrink)

Reliable medically assisted sex selection which does not involve abortion or infanticide has recently become available, and has been used for non-medical reasons. This raises questions about the morality of sex selection for non-medical reasons. But reasonable people continue to disagree about the answers to these questions. So another set of questions is about what the law should be on medically assisted sex selection for non-medical reasons in the face of reasonable disagreement about the morality of sex selection. This paper (...) sketches a way of thinking about what the law should be, and concludes, contrary to what the law is in many places, that medically assisted sex selection for non-medical reasons ought to be legal. (shrink)

The country's leading libertarian scholar sets forth the essential principles for a legal system that best balances individual liberty versus the common good.

In this volume, Feinberg focuses on the meanings of "interest," the relationship between interests and wants, and the distinction between want-regarding and ideal-regarding analyses on interest and hard cases for the applications of the concept of harm. Examples of the "hard cases" are harm to character, vicarious harm, and prenatal and posthumous harm. Feinberg also discusses the relationship between harm and rights, the concept of a victim, and the distinctions of various quantitative dimensions of harm, consent, and offense, including the (...) magnitude, probability, risk, and "importance" of harm. (shrink)

Preconception sex selection for non-medical reasons raises serious moral, legal and social issues. The main concerns include the threat of a sex ratio distortion due to a common preference for boys over girls, the charge of sexism, the danger of reinforcing gender stereotypical behaviour in sex selected children, and the fear of a slippery slope towards creating designer babies. This paper endeavours to show that none of the objections to preconception sex selection is conclusive and that there is no justification (...) for denying parents the right to choose the sex of their prospective children. (shrink)