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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- 1.
When talking about prospective parents, I will throughout use the pronouns “she” and “her”. This is only for the sake of ease, and to avoid the repeated use of unwieldy constructions such as “he or she” and “his or her”.
- 2.
For a (justified) complaint that there is something implausible about the claim that we ought to do what he have most reason to do, see Hotke (2014). In what follows, I tacitly adopt Ben Saunders’ “charitable” interpretation of Savulescu as holding that we morally ought to do what we have most moral reason to do. See Saunders (2014).
- 3.
It seems to me, incidentally, that there is an unremarked flaw in Savulescu’s example, though not one that damages the point he wishes to make about the existence of non-person-affecting wrong. That is, there presumably is a particular set of individuals whose lives are made worse by the occurrence of the accident: namely, the individuals alive at the time that it happened, in so far as they were subject to much more worry and concern than they would have been had the unsafe reactor not been opened. I am not sure that that level of worry could realistically be compensated for by their having previously had greater opportunity to stay up late, or by the novelty of having sex later in the evening.
- 4.
If it is difficult to see how these two propositions differ in content, compare the two claims “It is equally the case that Michael and Gertrude are tall”, and “It is the case that Michael and Gertrude are equally tall”. The former may be true while the latter is false.
- 5.
The rejection of PPB does not entail that there are no situations in which a better-life embryo B ought to be selected over a worse-life embryo A. Suppose, for example, that A*’s life would be likely to be of such poor quality that it would not be worth living. In such a case, A ought not to be selected. But the reason for choosing B over A in such a situation would not be that B*’s life would be better than A*’s. Instead, it would simply be that B* would be the only one of the two possible future persons whose life would be worth living.
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Herissone-Kelly, P. (2017). The Lack of an Obligation to Select the Best Child: Silencing the Principle of Procreative Beneficence. In: Hens, K., Cutas, D., Horstkötter, D. (eds) Parental Responsibility in the Context of Neuroscience and Genetics. International Library of Ethics, Law, and the New Medicine, vol 69. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42834-5_10
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