Reply to Buckner

Abstract

In “Sterilization, Privacy, and the Value of Reproduction” I argued that the capacity to reproduce is not important, and is not protected by any right to privacy, so that if involuntary sterilization is impermissible, it is not because of any “right to procreate.” But I pointed out that sterilization which, given present technology, and perhaps any technology, involves an invasion of the body, does seem to violate the right to privacy in what I distinguished as the third sense of that right. Professor Buckner evidently thinks that interference with procreative capacity is itself a “moral violation.” Since he denies my argument is sound, even though conceding that my logic is valid, he presumably holds either that the capacity to procreate is important or that interference with this capacity is a violation of the right to privacy. I cannot see, however, that he has shown either of these possibilities to be true.