Moral and Legal Constraints on Human Reproductive Cloning (original) (raw)

The Wrongness of Third-Party Assisted Reproduction: A Natural Law Account

Children have an absolute right to be loved by their genetic parents and a strong prima facie right to be raised by them. This is because genetic parents, by virtue of their genetic connection to their children, have an intimate and permanent personal relationship to those children at the bodily level. As a result, the absence of genetic parents' love (understood as a high-priority commitment to the child's well-being) is a significant harm to children. This view presupposes that human beings are rational animal organisms. This essay provides a brief defense of this metaphysical premise, then explains the connection between that premise and the moral claim that genetic parents have an absolute obligation to love their genetic children. Except in cases of incompetence, this obligation can only be fulfilled by raising those children themselves. Donor conception is therefore always an injustice, because it intentionally deprives a child of the important right to be loved by his or her biological parents.

What is the harm in harmful conception? On threshold harms in non-identity cases

Has the time come to put to bed the concept of a harm threshold when discussing the ethics of reproductive decision making and the legal limits that should be placed upon it? In this commentary, we defend the claim that there exist good moral reasons, despite the conclusions of the non-identity problem, based on the interests of those we might create, to refrain from bringing to birth individuals whose lives are often described in the philosophical literature as 'less than worth living'.

The Morality of Embryo Use and the Argument for Precaution

The debate about the moral status of embryos has a long tradition in many western countries and is at issue not only with respect to stem cell research, but with respect to abortion or pre-implantation genetic diagnosis as well. Accordingly wide is the range of arguments presented in favor of the different views. Because of the intensive discussion of this question without any tendency towards a consensus, the debate is perceived as muddled. Therefore, it becomes more and more attractive to bring about a decision on an indirect way. One argument along these lines is the so called ‘argument for precaution’. It holds that in a situation with persisting doubts regarding the status of the embryo, we should treat embryos as if they were human beings as long as good doubts regarding their moral worth persist, since otherwise we run danger of killing a lot of human beings. This argument has become very popular in contemporary German debates. In this paper, I want to scrutinize this argument to see how well it works out and in how far it can help to find a decision in gridlocked debates like the one concerned with the moral worth of embryos. I try to show that it is difficult to make good sense of this very popular and widespread principle and that in its best formulation that can be found in German philosophy, it clearly collapses.

Worth and Welfare in the Controversy over Abortion – Christopher Miles Coope

The Philosophical Quarterly, 2008

children at all. I would not thereby conclude that people are morally obliged not to have children. More importantly, I certainly would not conclude that it should be a criminal offence to have them. If having children and if human reproductive cloning seem wrong from 'a global utilitarian perspective', so much the worse for utilitarianism, many would say. Shaw continues 'In the case of couples for whom cloning remains the "only" option, the case is more difficult, but cloning should not be permitted for [three] reasons: first, the parents' wish to have [a] child "like any other" is self-negating as a clone would de facto be different; secondly, the clone might suffer psychologically; and thirdly, cloning is not really the only option when there are thousands of children seeking adoption. It is this cumulation of specific and general potential harms which suggests that reproductive cloning ought to be forbidden' (p. ). These considerations may suggest to Shaw that reproductive cloning ought to be forbidden. They will not suggest it to everyone. Genetic Morality is a very well written and absorbing book. Arguments abound in it. I shall add it to the reading list of my final-year honours course on Issues in Medical Ethics.

Possible Persons and the Problem of Prenatal Harm

The Journal of Ethics, 2013

When attempting to determine which of our acts affect future generations and which affect the identities of those who make up such generations, accounts of personal identity that privilege psychological features and person affecting accounts of morality, whilst highly useful when discussing the rights and wrongs of acts relating to extant persons, seem to come up short. On such approaches it is often held that the intuition that future persons can be harmed by decisions made prior to their existence is mistaken as identity is a most fragile thing with even the smallest differences in the conditions under which we procreate affecting not the interests of distinct future persons, but the identities of those who will come to exist in the future. Within this paper I reject this view, holding that a subscription to these two accounts need not result in the conclusion that virtually all acts relating to possible persons are permitted. Further, I argue that such accounts may in fact allow a great deal more scope for the determination of prenatal harms than accounts of personal identity that privilege physical features. Finally, by interpreting claims regarding causal identity such as Parfit's Time Dependence Claim in terms of Counterpart Theory I suggest that a solution to the non-identity problem can be found in the acceptance of, as relevant in prenatal cases, three kinds of objective similarity relations: Biological, Environmental and Decisional counterpart relations.

Legal and Ethical Dimensions of Artificial Reproduction and Related Rights

2012

Recent years have illustrated how the reproductive realm is continuously drawing the attention of medical and legal experts worldwide. The availability of technological services to facilitate reproduction has led to serious concerns over the right to reproduce, which no longer is determined as a private/personal matter. The growing technological options do implicate fundamental questions about human dignity and social welfare. There has been an increased demand for determining (a) the rights of prisoners, unmarried and homosexuals to such services, (b) concerns over child's information and health needs, (c) claims for wrongful birth and wrongful life, (d) the role of donors and physicians, (e) posthumous reproduction etc. In addition, the role of national and international law has been emphasised for an efficient system of functioning and delivery. This paper is an attempt to explore the pressing claims to reproductive choices, coupled with a marked increase in demand for legislative intervention in India. I.