There can be no moral obligation to eradicate all disability.

John Harris argues that “it may be morally wrong to ‘choose’ to bring to birth an individual with any impairment, however slight, if a healthy individual could be brought to birth instead. ” 1 This is a strong and controversial statement but one that, at least initially, seems to fi t with many people’s intuitions about what sort of children to have, given the choice. It taps into our shared desire to protect our children where possible and give them as many opportunities as we can. Most of us would choose that our child be not disabled, and these shared intuitions and preferences to have children who are as “perfect” as possible seem to support Harris’s claim. However, it is important to explore Harris’s claim more fully. The reason that this claim must be further examined is that it is important to recognize that Harris’s claim is not about choosing the best for our children but about choosing which children it would be better to bring to birth. It is uncontroversial to say that we should do the best we can to enhance the welfare of existing people, particularly our own children. It is quite another claim to say that we should take steps to choose which children should be born, not because we worry about these children’s welfare but because we want to make what we consider to be a better society. In this article I show that, despite Harris’s overt commitment to equality, 2 this claim, if accepted, unavoidably confers a lower value on the disabled or impaired. If we have a moral obligation to choose against individuals with disability, not because of a concern for their own welfare but because a world without disability is a morally preferable place, then this inevitably places a lower value on those living with disabilities. The good news is that Harris cannot justify his claim, and thus the unappealing consequence of this claim can be dismissed with his argument about a moral obligation to have the best child possible. But exposing the fl aw in Harris’s argument is important; otherwise we are left with an intuitively appealing argument from a well-respected thinker that has consequences that are not only unappealing but offensive and dangerous if they become the basis for policy.