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Futures of Reproduction pp 37–56Cite as

Reproductive Autonomy as Self-Making

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Part of the book series: International Library of Ethics, Law, and the New Medicine ((LIME,volume 49))

Abstract

I mentioned in the previous chapter that liberal eugenics relies on two principles to distinguish itself from previous historical manifestations of eugenics, the first of which is value pluralism and the second of which is individual liberty. These two principles are fundamentally interrelated: value pluralism presupposes and relies on the political liberty of individuals. It requires that individuals have the liberty to live in accordance with one’s own values and conceptions of the good. The protection of individual liberty also requires value pluralism; the principle of value pluralism helps to ensure a wide domain in which individuals can act without unjustified constraint on their liberty.

Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.1

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Notes

  1. 1.

    1Mill, John Stuart. 1989. On liberty and other writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 13.

  2. 2.

    Ibid., 16.

  3. 3.

    Harris, John. 1998. Rights and reproductive choice. In The future of human reproduction: Ethics, choice and regulation, eds. John Harris, and Soren Holm, 22. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

  4. 4.

    Harris, John. 2007. Enhancing evolution: The ethical case for making better people. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 74.

  5. 5.

    Harris. Enhancing evolution, 74.

  6. 6.

    See Sparrow, Robert. 2008. Is it ‘every man’s right to have babies if he wants them’? Male pregnancy and the limits of reproductive liberty. Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 18(3):280–282. On the distinction between honouring and promoting, see Baron, Marcia, Phillip Pettit, and Michael Slote. 1997. Three methods of ethics: A debate. Malden: Blackwell; Pettit, Phillip. 1989. Consequentialism and respect for persons. Ethics 100(1):116–126.

  7. 7.

    Harris. Enhancing evolution, 76.

  8. 8.

    Dworkin, Ronald. 1977. Taking rights seriously. 1st edn. London: Duckworth.

  9. 9.

    Ibid., 269.

  10. 10.

    Ibid., 271.

  11. 11.

    Ibid., 273.

  12. 12.

    Dworkin, Ronald. 1993. Life’s dominion: An argument about abortion and euthanasia. London: HarperCollins Publishers, 160–168.

  13. 13.

    Harris. Rights and reproductive choice, 35; Harris. Enhancing evolution, 78.

  14. 14.

    O’Neill, Onora. 2002. Autonomy and trust in bioethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 61–62, 66.

  15. 15.

    Harris. Enhancing evolution, 76.

  16. 16.

    Dworkin. Life’s dominion, 224.

  17. 17.

    Ibid., 238–239.

  18. 18.

    Berlin, Isaiah. 2002. Two concepts of liberty. In Liberty, ed. Henry Harris. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  19. 19.

    Robertson, John A. 1994. Children of choice: Freedom and the new reproductive technologies. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 24.

  20. 20.

    Also see his more elaborate discussion of the importance of biological connection in his defence of ‘modern traditionalism’ in Robertson, John A. 2003. Procreative liberty in the era of genomics. American Journal of Law and Medicine 29(4):450–452.

  21. 21.

    Robertson. Children of choice, 22–23.

  22. 22.

    Ibid., 30.

  23. 23.

    Ibid., 167.

  24. 24.

    Ibid., 149.

  25. 25.

    Ibid., 150–172, passim.

  26. 26.

    Ibid., 167.

  27. 27.

    Robertson. Procreative liberty in the era of genomics, 446.

  28. 28.

    Robertson. Children of choice, 23.

  29. 29.

    Foucault, Michel. 1987. The use of pleasure: The history of sexuality. Vol. 2. (trans: Hurley, Robert). London: Penguin, 6.

  30. 30.

    Foucault, Michel. 1993. About the beginnings of the hermeneutics of the self. Political Theory 21(2):203.

  31. 31.

    It should be noted that Foucault distinguishes between ethics and morals, where the latter refers more directly to codes and rules, and the former refers to a way of being or ethos. See Foucault. Use of pleasure, 25.

  32. 32.

    Ibid., 27.

  33. 33.

    Ibid., 28.

  34. 34.

    Ibid.

  35. 35.

    See Han, Béatrice. 2002. Foucault’s critical project: Between the transcendental and the historical (trans: Pile, Edward). Stanford: Stanford University Press, esp. 149–187; for further discussion of the conception of the relation of self to self that Foucault relies upon and the tensions that it introduces into his work.

  36. 36.

    See, Macherey, Pierre. 1998. Foucault: Ethics and subjectivity. In In a materialist way: Selected essays, ed. Warren Montag, 96–107. London: Verso.

  37. 37.

    Foucault, Michel. 1984. The ethics of concern for the self as a practice of freedom. In Ethics: Subjectivity and truth, essential works of Michel Foucault, 1954–1984, ed. Paul Rabinow, 291. London: Penguin.

  38. 38.

    Foucault. Use of pleasure, 22; my emphasis.

  39. 39.

    Rose, Nikolas. 1999. Powers of freedom: Reframing political thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 87.

  40. 40.

    Foucault, Michel. 2008. The birth of biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France 1978–1979 (trans: Burchell, Graham). Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 42.

  41. 41.

    Berlin. Two concepts of liberty, 181.

  42. 42.

    Patton, Paul. 1989. Taylor and Foucault on power and freedom. Political Studies 37:262.

  43. 43.

    Ibid.

  44. 44.

    Foucault. The ethics of concern for the self as a practice of freedom, 285.

  45. 45.

    Ivison, Duncan. 2007. Rights. Durham: Acumen, 186–196.

  46. 46.

    Foucault. Use of pleasure, 11.

  47. 47.

    Foucault. Use of pleasure, 23–24.

  48. 48.

    See Harris. Enhancing evolution, 89, 145, 189.

  49. 49.

    See especially Oksala, Johanna. 2005. Foucault on freedom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Ziarek, Ewa Plonowska. 2001. An ethics of dissensus: Postmodernity, feminism and the politics of radical democracy. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

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  1. Centre for Values, Ethics and Law in Medicine and Unit for History and Philosophy of Science, University of Sydney, Camperdown, New South Wales, 2006, Australia

    Catherine Mills

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Mills, C. (2011). Reproductive Autonomy as Self-Making. In: Futures of Reproduction. International Library of Ethics, Law, and the New Medicine, vol 49. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1427-4_3

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