What are parents for?: Reproductive ethics after the nonidentity problem

Hastings Center Report

Volumn 40, Issue 2, 2010, Pages 37-47

  Prusak, Bernard G ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ADULT; ARTICLE; CONFLICT; DISABLED PERSON; ETHICS; FEMALE; GENETIC ENGINEERING; HUMAN; MALE; MORALITY; PARENT; REPRODUCTION; SOCIAL BEHAVIOR; SOCIOECONOMICS;

ADULT; CONFLICT (PSYCHOLOGY); DISABLED PERSONS; FEMALE; GENETIC ENGINEERING; HUMANS; MALE; MORAL OBLIGATIONS; PARENTS; REPRODUCTION; SOCIAL IDENTIFICATION; VALUE OF LIFE;

EID: 77952066507     PISSN: 00930334     EISSN: 1552146X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/hcr.0.0244     Document Type: Article

References (127)

1. J. Milton, Paradise Lost, ed. G. Teskey (New York: W.W. Norton, 2005), bk. 10, lines 743-45, p. 250.
2. F. Nietzsche, Die Geburt der Tragödie (Stuttgart, Germany: Philipp Reclam, 1993), ch. 3, p. 29.
3. Translated by W. Kaufmann as The Birth of Tragedy (New York: Random House, 1967), 42.
4. Job 3:3-5 (New Revised Standard Version).
5. P. Larkin, "This Be The Verse," in Collected Poems, ed. A. Thwaite (London, U.K.: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1998), 180.
6. The poem here concurs, interestingly, with the judgment of Adam contemplating the human condition after the fall, namely, bound by sin passed from generation to generation. "'But this shall not serve/,'" Adam says: "'All that I⋯ shall beget/Is propagated curse.'" See Paradise Lost, bk. 10, lines 727-29, p. 249.
7. But see D. Benatar, "Why It Is Better Never to Come into Existence," American Philosophical Quarterly 34 (1997): 345-55.
8. See for analyses of "wrongful life" that avoid the logical pitfalls surrounding this concept J. McMahan, "Wrongful Life: Paradoxes in the Morality of Causing People to Exist," in Rational Commitment and Social Justice: Essays for Gregory Kavka, ed. J.L. Coleman and C.W. Morris (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 215;
9. and A. Buchanan, D.W. Brock, N. Daniels, and D. Wikler, From Chance to Choice: Genetics and Justice (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 234-35.
10. D. Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 1984), 378.
11. See for defense of this supposition Parfit, Reasons and Persons, 351-55;
12. and McMahan, "Wrongful Life," 208-9.
13. J. Harris, Enhancing Evolution: The Ethical Case for Making Better People (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2007), 94. What sense does it make to say that it is in the interest of a child-to-be to be born? A child who does not yet exist does not have any interests! And what sense does it make to say that a child can be benefited by being brought into existence? Existence is not a better state for a child-to-be than nonexistence, when after all the child is not!
14. J. Harris, Wonderwoman and Superman: The Ethics of Human Biotechnology (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 1992), 71-72;
15. see also Enhancing Evolution, 95.
16. Compare Buchanan et al., From Chance to Choice, 249.
17. J. Harris, On Cloning (London, U.K.: Routledge, 2004), 88.
18. Harris, Enhancing Evolution, 94.
19. See also J. Harris, "Rights and Reproductive Choice," in The Future of Human Reproduction: Ethics, Choice, and Regulation, ed. J. Harris and S. Holm (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 1998), 34-36.
20. J. Harris, Enhancing Evolution, 159.
21. Compare J.A. Robertson, Children of Choice: Freedom and the New Reproductive Technologies (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), 122, on artificial insemination by donor and surrogacy, and 169, on cloning.
22. By the way, Harris speaks of the "'nonidentity' argument," not "problem," as Derek Parfit called it. See Harris, Enhancing Evolution, 153.
23. J. Glover, Choosing Children: Genes, Disability, and Design (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2006), 24.
24. Compare M. Warnock, "'The Good of the Child,'" Bioethics 1 (1987): 141-155, at 143-44.
25. A. Donagan, The Theory of Morality (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1977), 101.
26. Ibid.,
27. D.S. Browning, "Adoption and the Moral Significance of Kin Altruism," in The Morality of Adoption: Socio-Psychological, Theological, and Legal Perspectives, ed. T.P. Jackson (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2005), 57.
28. Browning cites texts of Aquinas, Maimonides, and Al-Ghazali. Compare, more recently, M. Midgley, "Rights-Talk Will Not Sort Out Child Abuse," in Children's Rights Re-Visioned: Philosophical Readings, ed. R.E. Ladd (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1996), 123.
29. M.J. Broyde, "Adoption, Personal Status, and Jewish Law," in The Morality of Adoption, ed. Jackson, 129.
30. General Court of Massachusetts, "An Act to Provide for the Adoption of Children (1851)," in Families by Law: An Adoption Reader, ed. N.R. Cahn and J.H. Hollinger (New York: New York University Press, 2004), 9-10.
31. See further S.B. Presser, "The Historical Background of the American Law of Adoption," Journal of Family Law 11 (1972): 443-516, especially 465-70.
32. It should finally be noted that the repudiation of full legal adoption does not necessarily entail the denigration of rearing children birthed by others. After all, the Hebrew prophets again and again enjoin care for the orphan. In Jewish thought, becoming "custodial parents" is a highly significant act, as it is "predicated on voluntary choice, which is the hallmark of all sacred covenantal relationships." See Broyde, "Adoption, Personal Status, and Jewish Law," 147. In Islam, the question appears to be more complicated. Like the prophets in the Hebrew Bible, the Koran enjoins care for orphans. Yet, as in Judaism, full legal adoption is prohibited, in Islam "by the Shari'a on the grounds of the Koran 33.4-5."
33. See D. Atighetchi, Islamic Bioethics: Problems and Perspectives (Dordrecht, Germany: Springer, 2007), 139. So-called testamentary adoption is not traditionally prohibited, yet in some Islamic countries it is understood to be.
34. See here L. Polgreen, "Overcoming Customs and Stigma, Sudan Gives Orphans a Lifeline," New York Times, April 5, 2008.
35. E. Bartholet, Family Bonds: Adoption and the Politics of Parenting (Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin, 1993), 181. By the way, it is worth noting that the traditional position that adoption can be justified only in extremis might work against the pleas of advocates of traditional morality that pregnant women consider adoption in place of abortion.
36. See here M.B. Mahowald, "Relinquishment and Adoption: Are They Genuine Options?" Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 5 (1996): 437-39, at 438-39.
37. L. Sowle Cahill, "Adoption: A Roman Catholic Perspective," in The Morality of Adoption, ed. Jackson, 167. It is true that, as Jeffrey Blustein observes, "there is an enormous variation among social practices of child rearing," which might be taken to suggest that it is possible to make too much of separating the birth parents and child; but the failure of the Israeli kibbutzim experiment appears to have weakened, not strengthened, what Mary Stuart Van Leeuwen and Gretchen Miller Wrobel call the theory of "the Platonic plasticity of parenting bonds."
38. See J. Blustein, "Child Rearing and Family Interests," in Having Children: Philosophical and Legal Reflections on Parenthood, ed. O. O'Neill and W. Ruddick (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 117,
39. and M.S. Van Leeuwen and G.M. Wrobel, "The Moral Psychology of Adoption and Family Ties," in The Morality of Adoption, ed. Jackson, at 9 and 7.
40. See further Plato's Republic, bk. 3, 415a-c, and bk. 5, 457d-461e.
41. See in this regard J. Robertson, "Surrogate Mothers: Not So Novel After All," Hastings Center Report 13, no. 5 (1983): 28-34.
42. The Baby M case is the prime exhibit. For two quite different takes, see L.B. Andrews, "Surrogate Motherhood: The Challenge for Feminists," Journal of Law, Medicine, and Health Care 16 (1988): 72-80;
43. and K. Pollitt, "The Strange Case of Baby M," The Nation 244, no. 20 (1987): 667, 682-86, and 688.
44. L.R. Kass, "The Meaning of Life - in the Laboratory," in Life, Liberty and the Defense of Dignity: The Challenge for Bioethics (San Francisco, Calif.: Encounter, 2002), 98.
45. Compare E. Page, "Donation, Surrogacy and Adoption," Journal of Applied Philosophy 2 (1985): 161-71, at 167;
46. and H.T. Krimmel, "The Case against Surrogate Parenting," Hastings Center Report 13, no. 5 (1983): 35-39, at 36-37.
47. I take Kass's reasoning to be that encouraging people to generate children for others to adopt would lead to baby markets because these children would be generated not as ends in themselves but as means to another purpose - namely, adoption by others. Once children are reduced to means, then they can logically be used for other purposes too, like profit-making in baby markets.
48. Kass, "The Meaning of Life - in the Laboratory," 98 and 100.
49. H.T. Krimmel, "Surrogate Mother Arrangements from the Perspective of the Child," Logos 9 (1988): 97-112, at 98.
50. I. Kant, Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, ed. K. Vorländer, 3rd ed. (Hamburg, Germany: Felix Meiner, 1965), 4:429, p. 52.
51. Translated by J.W. Ellington as Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, 3rd ed. (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett, 1993), 36 (trans. modified).
52. O. O'Neill, "Ending World Hunger," in Matters of Life and Death: New Introductory Essays in Moral Philosophy, ed. T. Regan, 3rd ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1993), 261.
53. Traditionally, one's immunity to violence has been considered to be conditional: one forfeits one's immunity by violating that of others and so may be forcibly resisted. See Donagan, The Theory of Morality, 84-85;
54. compare Aquinas, Summa theologiae II-II, q. 64, a. 2, ad 3.
55. V. Held, "Noncontractual Society: The Postpatriarchal Family as Model," in Feminist Morality: Transforming Culture, Society, and Politics (Chicago, Ill.: The University of Chicago Press, 1993), 195, 204. I put aside cases where an extended family member - say a cousin - carries a child for a couple who could not themselves bear.
56. Speaking of a child as one's own, by the way, need not be construed as making a property claim to that child. After all, even parents who pay a surrogate to birth a child cannot then turn around and sell that child at a profit. I realize, however, that the argument in the body of my paper appears to come at least perilously close to sanctioning baby selling, so long as one party to the transaction "values the child as an end." The question to consider is why baby selling is wrong, as no doubt it is. My reply is twofold. First, it is wrong, not because the transaction itself treats the baby merely as a means in a morally objectionable way, but because, once babies become items that can be "bought and sold," which is to say viewed as possessions, it becomes all the more likely that they will be mistreated as possessions. Second, if babies can be sold, why not somewhat older children? (What would the age limit be, and why one limit instead of another?) To be sold by one's "parents," as well as even to know and to fear that one could be sold by one's parents, could prove terribly destructive to children. I agree, then, with Lori Andrews that "baby selling is prohibited ⋯ in part because children need a secure family life and should not have to worry that they will be sold and wrenched from their family." See L. Andrews, "Surrogate Motherhood," 77.
57. See for an excellent literary example P. Roth, The Human Stain (New York: Random House, 2000), 175-77. It matters deeply to Coleman Silk's son Markie to know his origins; it seems to matter less, if at all, to Coleman's several other children.
58. A.P. Griffiths, "Child Adoption and Identity," in Philosophy and Practice, ed. A.P. Griffiths (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 277.
59. B.J. Lifton, "Shared Identity Issues for Adoptees," in Clinical and Practical Issues in Adoption: Bridging the Gap between Adoptees Placed as Infants and as Older Children, ed. V. Groza and K.F. Rosenberg (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1998), 37 (italics mine).
60. Lifton refers to E.H. Erikson, Identity: Youth and Crisis (New York: W.W. Norton, 1968).
61. Positive identity is characterized as "'a sense of psychological well-being, a feeling of being at home in one's body, of knowing where one is going, [and] an inner assuredness of anticipated recognition from those who count.'" See J. Triseliotis, "Identity Formation and the Adopted Person Revisited," in The Dynamics of Adoption: Social and Personal Perspectives, ed. A. Treacher and I. Katz (London, U.K.: Jessica Kingsley, 2000), 89,
62. who paraphrases Erikson, Identity: Youth and Crisis, 165.
63. Lifton, "Shared Identity Issues for Adoptees," 37.
64. K. Wegar, Adoption, Identity, and Kinship: The Debate over Sealed Birth Records (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1997), p. x. Note the title of Lifton's paper: "Shared Identity Issues for Adoptees."
65. See also, for similar criticism to Wegar's, M.A. Nolan and D.M. Grace, "Should Adopted Children Be Granted Access to the Identity of Their Birth Parents? A Psychological Perspective," Journal of Information Ethics 12 (2003): 67-79, at 70-71.
66. See Wegar, Adoption, Identity, and Kinship, 115, for a striking example.
67. See for a nice discussion J.B. Elshtain, "The Chosen Family," The New Republic, September 14 and 21, 1998, 45-54, at 52-54.
68. See also Wegar, Adoption, Identity, and Kinship, 2, 45, 52, 76, 123, and 131. To quote only this last page, search activists "have emphasized the biological determinants of feelings of kinship and characterized the need to search as a genetic and universal biological imperative."
69. S.-V. Brakman and S.J. Scholz, "Adoption, ART, and a Re-Conception of the Maternal Body: Toward Embodied Maternity," Hypatia 21 (2006): 54-73, at 61. In this regard, it is illuminating to note that it is simply false that all adopted persons find it necessary to set out on "the search" in order to come to "confidence in ⋯ inner continuity amid change," though nowadays, due to changing family and social expectations, "the pressure is on those who do not search to do so." See Triseliotis, "Identity Formation and the Adopted Person Revisited," 81.
70. See also G.M. Wrobel, H.D. Grotevant, and R.G. McRoy, "Adolescent Search for Birthparents: Who Moves Forward?" Journal of Adolescent Research 19 (2004): 132-51, at 133-34 and 148.
71. Brakman and Scholz, "Adoption, ART, and a Re-Conception of the Maternal Body," 62.
72. See again P. Roth, The Human Stain, 175-77.
73. See Brakman and Scholz, "Adoption, ART, and a Re-Conception of the Maternal Body," 62.
74. Wrobel, Grotevant, and McRoy, "Adolescent Search for Birthparents," 136.
75. O. O'Neill, "The 'Good Enough' Parent in the Age of the New Reproductive Technologies," in The Ethics of Genetics in Human Procreation, ed. H. Haker and D. Beyleveld (Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 2000), 41.
76. As Brenda Almond has put it, these relationships "provide a setting in which people accept a shared existence with [others] whose characteristics they [may] neither admire nor like." See B. Almond, "Human Bonds," in Applied Philosophy: Morals and Metaphysics in Contemporary Debate, ed. B. Almond and D. Hill (London, U.K.: Rout-ledge, 1991), 61.
77. See also Held, "Noncontractual Society," 206.
78. I owe the formulation of this contrast to Chelsea Gaudet. Compare M. Friedman, What Are Friends For? Feminist Perspectives on Personal Relationships and Moral Theory (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993), 209: "friendship is a kind of achievement. Those who would be friends must exert themselves actively to sustain their relationship."
79. O'Neill, "The 'Good Enough' Parent in the Age of the New Reproductive Technologies," 41.
80. For social-scientific support of these claims, see Triseliotis, "Identity Formation and the Adopted Person Revisited," 88-89;
81. and D.M. Brodzinsky, "A Stress and Coping Model of Adoption Adjustment," in The Psychology of Adoption, ed. D.M. Brodzinsky and M.M. Schechter (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 7. Brodzinsky reports that "adopted children, once they come to realize the implications of being adopted, not only experience a loss of their biological parents and origins, but also [experience] a loss of stability in the relationship to their adoptive parents." So one reason why it would be "better not to have been chosen, but given," is that it is better to grow up without any question that the parent-child relationship might be conditional, or that it might (once more) be broken.
82. O'Neill, "The 'Good Enough' Parent in the Age of the New Reproductive Technologies," 38.
83. It should further be noted that the maintenance of the relationship must not depend on unreasonable conditions; otherwise the offer of the relationship is meaningless.
84. Triseliotis, "Identity Formation and the Adopted Person Revisited," 88.
85. A student of mine once commented in class discussion that she did not like her grandmother much at all, but still loved her.
86. A. MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues (Chicago. Ill.: Open Court, 1999), 122.
87. See further S.M. Liao, "The Idea of a Duty to Love," The Journal of Value Inquiry 40 (2006): 1-22.
88. See on "constitutive" bad luck B. Williams, "Moral Luck," in Moral Luck: Philosophical Papers 1973-1980 (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 20-21;
89. and T. Nagel, "Moral Luck," in Mortal Questions (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 24-25 and 28.
90. See for documentation S.M. Liao, "The Right of Children to Be Loved," The Journal of Political Philosophy 14 (2006): 420-40, at 423-24. As Liao summarizes studies of children in institutions, "children who did not receive love but only adequate care became ill more frequently; their learning capacities deteriorated significantly; they became decreasingly interested in their environment; they failed to thrive physically by failing to gain height or weight or both; they suffered insomnia; they were constantly depressed; and they eventually developed severe learning disabilities" (423).
91. S. Keller, The Limits of Loyalty (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 124.
92. Compare, drawing from the Confucian tradition, P.J. Ivanhoe, "Filial Piety as a Virtue," in Working Virtue: Virtue Ethics and Contemporary Moral Problems, ed. R.L. Walker and P.J. Ivanhoe (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2007), 297-312, especially 303-5.
93. See Keller, The Limits of Loyalty, 125-26.
94. I disagree, then, with Liao's argument in "The Right of Children to Be Loved" seeking to vindicate this right, found in some international declarations, from the charge that it is merely a so-called manifesto right. Liao claims 1) that "human beings have rights to those conditions that are primary essential for a good life"; 2) that "being loved is primary essential for children to have a good life" as human beings (for which he provides much important documentation); and so 3) that, "therefore, children have a right to be loved" (422). To which it might be countered: the first premise is false. To begin with, would Liao want to claim that there is a right to health? For health, too, can be described as a condition "essential for a good life." Also, to proclaim a universal right to a good, without regard to whether there is a specifiable obligation-holder, is to cheapen the language of rights. In such circumstances, nothing can be claimed against anybody. For example, does an orphan have a right to be loved? If so, against whom does the orphan hold this right? See on these points O. O'Neill, Towards Justice and Virtue: A Constructive Account of Practical Reasoning (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 128-36.
95. See O. O'Neill, Towards Justice and Virtue, 145, who claims that "there are reasons for taking the distinction between obligations with and without counterpart rights as particularly important, structural forms of incompleteness [to call an obligation imperfect is at root to say that is incomplete in some way], and for holding that other interpretations of the terms 'perfect' and 'imperfect' are less significant."
96. See for an account of these other interpretations T.D. Campbell, "Perfect and Imperfect Obligations," The Modern Schoolman 52 (1975): 285-94.
97. See for a nice discussion of these distinctions O'Neill, "The 'Good Enough' Parent in the Age of the New Reproductive Technologies," 35-38.
98. D. Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. P.H. Nidditch, 2nd ed. (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 1978), bk. 3, pt. 2, sec. 1, p. 478.
99. O'Neill, "The 'Good Enough' Parent in the Age of the New Reproductive Technologies," 37.
100. See on "duties of virtue" W. Kersting, "Das starke Gesetz der Schuldigkeit und das schwächere der Gütigkeit. Kant und die Pflichtenlehre des 18. Jahrhunderts," Studia Leibnitiana 14 (1982): 184-220,
101. and I. Kant, Die Metaphysik der Sitten, ed. K. Vor-länder, 4th ed. (Hamburg, Germany: Felix Meiner, 1966), 6:390, p. 231.
102. Translated by M. Gregor as The Metaphysics of Morals (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press), 153. It is a good question, though, whether Kant could recognize a duty of affection, given his insistence that "love as an inclination cannot be commanded" and that morally worthy action is done from duty and not from inclination.
103. See the Grundlegung, 4:399, p. 17;
104. Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, 12.
105. Contrast Hume, Treatise, 479.
106. The reason can be put simply, but the subject is quite complex. I take for granted in this paper that parental obligations are acquired through causing the existence of a person, but this claim obviously needs qual-ification and elaboration. (For example, is causing a person to exist necessary or only sufficient for acquiring parental obligations? Must the relevant act be "voluntary"? If so, in what sense? And at what point in gestation does a person come to be generated?) Compare Kant, Metaphysik der Sitten, 6:281, p. 96;
107. The Metaphysics of Morals, 64;
108. and, more recently but along the same lines, J.L. Nelson, "Parental Obligations and the Ethics of Surrogacy: A Causal Perspective," Public Affairs Quarterly 5 (1991): 49-61.
109. Contrast, among others, G. Fuscaldo, "Genetic Ties: Are They Morally Binding?" Bioethics 20 (2006): 64-76; (Pubitemid 43382047)
110. and J. Millum, "How Do We Acquire Parental Responsibilities?" Social Theory and Practice 34 (2008): 71-93. Yet another question is just how good parents must seek to make children's lives. I would deny that parents have an obligation to maximize children's welfare, whatever that might mean; but here, too, a longer discussion is needed.
111. I deny, then, what Tim Bayne calls "the transfer principle, according to which it is permissible to alienate one's parental responsibilities (over neonates) to another individual (or institution) as long as one has good reason to think that they will carry out those responsibilities adequately," without need for further justification, such as that one is mentally or financially incapable of meeting these responsibilities. Bayne defends the transfer principle against James Lindemann Nelson's claim, like mine, that giving up a child is justified only in extremis, when parents are genuinely in no position to fulfill parental obligations. According to Nelson, the ground of this traditional position "is not so much ⋯ knowing that the biological parents can do a better job than possible replacements; it is more a matter of continually being at hand to answer for one's responsibilities." Bayne counters that the biological parents cannot guarantee that they will in the future be best placed to ensure that the child will be cared for (after all, the parents may be quite old); but this objection is vulnerable to the reply that these parents can commit themselves to seeking to be there for the child (with the implication that it is morally problematic to seek to have a child in old age or ill health).
112. See T. Bayne, "Gamete Donation and Parental Responsibility," Journal of Applied Philosophy 20 (2003): 77-87, at 82-83;
113. and Nelson, "Parental Obligations and the Ethics of Surrogacy," 60.
114. J.-J. Rousseau, Émile ou De l'éducation (Paris, France: Firmin-Didot, 1874), bk. 1, p. 22.
115. Translated by A. Bloom as Emile or On Education (New York: Basic Books, 1979), 49. It should be noted that Rousseau, who infamously abandoned his children, makes this statement "through bitter tears."
116. See for an extended discussion of state action to prevent conception H. Adams, Justice for Children: Autonomy Development and the State (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 2008), 117-53.
117. See also O'Neill, "The 'Good Enough' Parent in the Age of the New Reproductive Technologies," 44-45. O'Neill claims that, whereas "reproduction by the fertile [by ordinary means] can be prospectively prevented only by very grave infringements of personal liberty," reproduction through technological means "may be easier to limit ⋯ without comparably grave - or even any - restrictions on personal liberty, as is standard practice in fostering and adoption decisions."
118. Consider the titles of two of the more influential texts in Anglo-American bioethics defending the use of new reproductive technologies: J. Robertson, Children of Choice: Freedom and the New Reproductive Technologies,
119. and A. Buchanan, D. Brock, N. Daniels, and D. Wikler, From Chance to Choice: Genetics and Justice.
120. See B. Prusak, "Rethinking 'Liberal Eugenics': Questions and Reflections on Habermas on Bioethics," Hastings Center Report 35, no. 6 (2005): 31-42, especially 36. (Pubitemid 41751863)
121. See for critical discussion B. Prusak, "Not Good Enough Parenting: What's Wrong with the Child's Right to an 'Open Future,'" Social Theory and Practice 34 (2008): 271-91. It should be noted, however, that I would now amend the last several pages of this paper.
122. Robertson, Children of Choice, 165-66.
123. Compare (or contrast) Leon Kass on what we might expect of parents who decided "to clone a Rubinstein"; see L. Kass, "Making Babies: The New Biology and the 'Old' Morality" in Toward a More Natural Science: Biology and Human Affairs (New York: The Free Press, 1985), 68-69.
124. See for the beginning of an argument along much these lines H.L. Nelson and J.L. Nelson, "Cutting Motherhood in Two: Some Suspicions Concerning Surrogacy," Hypatia 4 (1989): 85-94. Whether a surrogate mother - traditional or gestational, to the extent that the distinction carries weight - is rightly understood as a parent is obviously a crucial question here; the same question needs to be asked of gamete donors as well.
125. See further on these matters Bayne, "Gamete Donation and Parental Responsibility";
126. Fuscaldo, "Genetic Ties";
127. and D. Benatar, "The Unbearable Lightness of Bringing into Being," Journal of Applied Philosophy 16 (1999): 173-80.