The Lack of an Obligation to Select the Best Child: Silencing the Principle of Procreative Beneficence

Herissone-Kelly, Peter N orcid iconORCID: 0000-0002-3292-5273 (2017) The Lack of an Obligation to Select the Best Child: Silencing the Principle of Procreative Beneficence. In: Parental Responsibility in the Context of Neuroscience and Genetics. International Library of Ethics, Law, and the New Medicine (69). Springer, Switzerland, pp. 153-166. ISBN 978-3-319-42834-5

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Abstract

This chapter aims to show that prospective parents are not bound in their reproductive decision making by a principle of procreative beneficence. That is, they have no obligation (as Julian Savulescu, the principle’s originator, famously thinks they have) to choose the possible child, from a range of possible children they might have, who is likely to lead the best life. I will summarise and clarify the content of previous papers of mine, in which I argue that since the sorts of considerations that underlie the principle of procreative beneficence do not constitute reasons when viewed from a perspective that it is fitting and appropriate for a prospective parent to take up, there can be no requirement for prospective parents to be moved by those considerations.


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