Why parents have no duty to select 'the best' children

Clinical Ethics

Volumn 2, Issue 3, 2007, Pages 149-154

  Scott, R ^a  

^a KING'S COLLEGE LONDON   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 84992863217     PISSN: 14777509     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1258/147775007781870083     Document Type: Article

References (16)

1. The relevant part of s.1(1)(1) of the Act reads: ‘Subject to the provisions of this section, a person shall not be guilty of an offence under the law relating to abortion when a pregnancy is terminated by a registered medical practitioner if two registered medical practitioners are of the opinion, formed in good faith… (d) that there is a substantial risk that if the child were born it would suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities as to be seriously handicapped.’
2. HFEA and HGC. Outcome of the Public Consultation on Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis, 18 June 2001, Rec. 11
3. I have discussed aspects of these issues in e.g. Scott R. The uncertain scope of reproductive autonomy in preimplantation genetic diagnosis and selective abortion. Med Law Rev 2005;3:291
4. Savulescu J. Procreative beneficence: why we should select the best children. Bioethics 2001;15:413
5. This has recently been recognized by the HGC in its report Making Babies: Reproductive Decisions and Genetic Technologies (2006) para 7.42
6. Savulescu J. op cit ref 4:413
7. But note that on 8 September 2005, the HFEA granted a licence to the Newcastle Centre at LIFE for the use of embryos for research into mitochondrial disease. This would involve some manipulation of embryos
8. Buchanan A, Brock D, Daniels N, Wikler D. From Chance to Choice: Genetics and Justice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000:247
9. Savulescu J, op cit ref 4:425; first emphasis mine, second in original
10. Wilkinson S. Selecting for disability and the welfare of the child. In his Choosing Children: the Ethics of Selective Reproduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming. Wilkinson discusses non-person- affecting principles in the context of Derek Parfit's ‘Same Number Quality Claim’: ‘[T]he Same Number Quality Claim cannot on its own justify banning selecting for disability, because this would entail (absurdly, or at least unpalatably) an “in principle” commitment to forcing parents to have the “best possible” child in all cases’. For the purposes of my discussion, I ignore the further and as yet unresolved implications of the Same Number Quality Claim, which are pointed out by Wilkinson: ‘This in turn seems to rely on the Impersonal Total Principle which… entails the Repugnant Conclusion’. Parfit expresses this conclusion as follows: ‘For any possible population of at least ten billion people, all with a very high quality of life, there must be some much larger imaginable population whose existence, if other things are equal, would be better even though its members have lives that are barely worth living’(Parfit D. Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984: 388). Generally, philosophical debate has not yet found a way to avoid this conclusion
11. HGC, op cit ref 5, para 1.25. This is in fact in the context of a discussion about manipulating the genetic make-up of a given embryo, but the point would seem to apply also in the non-person-affecting sense
12. Savulescu J, op cit ref 4:413
13. Glover J. Choosing Children: Genes, Disability and Design. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006:54
14. For examples of scholars arguing for a gradualist account of some kind, see e.g. Feinberg J. Abortion (1979) in his Freedom and Fulfillment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992:37); Kennedy I. A Woman and her Unborn Child, in his Treat Me Right (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992:364): Dworkin R. Life's Dominion: An Argument about Abortion and Euthanasia (London: Harper Collins, 1993)
15. Savulescu J. Deaf lesbians, ‘designer disability,’ and the future of medicine. BMJ 2002;325:771-3, 771, 772
16. Savulescu J. op cit ref 4:425, my emphasis