Procreative beneficence and the prospective parent

Procreative Beneficence, Obligation, and Eugenics

The argument of Julian Savulescu’s 2001 paper, “Procreative Beneficence: Why We Should Select the Best Children” is flawed in a number of respects. Savulescu confuses reasons with obligations and equivocates between the claim that parents have some reason to want the best for their children and the more radical claim that they are morally obligated to attempt to produce the best child possible....

Procreative beneficence: why we should select the best children.

Eugenic selection of embryos is now possible by employing in vitro fertilization (IVF) and preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). While PGD is currently being employed for the purposes of detecting chromosomal abnormalities or inherited genetic abnormalities, it could in principle be used to test any genetic trait such as hair colour or eye colour. Genetic research is rapidly progressing into...

Therapeutic beneficence and placebo controls.

The Corporeal Aspect and Procreative Function

The crucial question in the abortion debate is not when human life begins. Even many pro-choice advocates, from early on in the history of their movement, have quietly acknowledged that human life begins at conception. This after all had been the consensus of the medical community until Roe vs. Wade in 1973. But in a strategy of deceit, well chronicled by Curt Young, the reality of human life b...

Sex selection and the procreative liberty framework.

The practice of sex selection for social reasons has raised serious criticism. Advocates of this practice, however, insist that objections to it are unfounded and that legal bans are ethically unjustified. Usually, proponents use a rights-based liberal approach as the framework to evaluate this practice. Under this framework, reproductive choice is a basic freedom and interference with individu...