Child versus childmaker : future persons and present duties in ethics and the law / Melinda A. Roberts.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Roberts, Melinda A., 1954-

Series:

Studies in social, political, and legal philosophy

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Human reproductive technology--Moral and ethical aspects.

Human reproductive technology.

Cloning--Moral and ethical aspects.

Cloning.

Reproductive Techniques.

Philosophy, Medical.

Ethics, Medical.

Morals.

Cloning, Organism.

Medical Subjects:

Reproductive Techniques.

Philosophy, Medical.

Ethics, Medical.

Morals.

Cloning, Organism.

Physical Description:

xv, 235 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Lanham : Rowman & Littlefield, [1998]

Summary:

The legal and moral claims of some biological parents and other "childmakers", including users of the new reproductive technologies, have been considered to excuse conduct that is harmful or potentially harmful for children. It makes our lives, as adults, far simpler if we do not have to take into account the needs and interests of children as we strive for recognition of our own issues and concerns, but there are occasions in which we might find ourselves at risk for solving our own problems on the backs of our children. In this exceptionally well-argued book, M. A. E. Roberts analyzes a variety of specific situations in which such claims might be made. She concludes that there are no excuses for ignoring the needs and interests of our children when we formulate solutions that will affect them. This book is certain to be of interest to anyone concerned about family law, medical ethics, and social justice.

Contents:

1 What Is the Person-Affecting Intuition? 1

1.1 The Basic Idea 1

1.2 What Matters? 3

1.3 What Else Matters? 10

1.4 Who Matters? 10

1.5 People Who Now Exist: "Existing" People 12

1.6 People Who Never Exist: "Merely Possible" People 13

1.6.1 The Choice Not to Reproduce: A First Test Case 13

1.6.2 A "Weakly" Person-Affecting View 14

1.7 People Who Will But Do Not Yet Exist: "Future" People 14

1.7.1 Choices That Affect Future People's Lives: A Second Test Case 14

1.7.2 How Can We Have Obligations Toward People Who Do Not (Yet) Exist? 15

1.7.3 How Do We Distinguish Between Future People and Other Possible People? 17

1.7.4 If Determinism Is False, Then How Can We Meaningfully Assert Obligations Toward Future People? 17

1.7.5 Heyd's Narrow "Person-Affecting" Approach 18

1.8 Broome's Inconsistency Argument 22

1.9 The Nonidentity Problem 22

1.9.1 What Is the Problem? 22

1.9.2 A Person-Affecting Reply to the Nonidentity Problem 24

1.9.3 Another Version of the Nonidentity Problem: A Third Test Case? 27

1.10 Wrongful Life 29

1.11 Human Cloning and Other New Reproductive Technologies 32

2 Is the Person-Affecting Intuition Inconsistent? 45

2.1 The Intuition 45

2.2 Broome's Teleological Approach 46

2.3 Broome's Formulation of the Person-Affecting Intuition 48

2.4 Broome's Inconsistency Argument 49

2.5 A Problem with Broome's Formulation of the Person-Affecting Intuition 50

2.6 A Person-Affecting Sense of "X Is at Least as Good as Y"? 52

2.7 Personal Wronging 54

2.7.1 Failing to Maximize Is Sometimes, But Not Always, a Sufficient Condition for Personal Wronging 55

2.7.2 Failing to Maximize as a Necessary Condition of Personal Wronging 56

2.7.3 Wronging the Nonexistent? 56

2.7.4 Theory of "Fair Distribution" 57

2.7.5 Retribution and Equalization 61

2.7.6 Summing up Personalism 62

2.8 Is Deprived Deprived in C? 65

2.9 Two More Cases 66

2.9.1 Complex Reproductive Trade-Offs 66

2.9.2 Infinite Populations 70

2.10 Objections to Personalism 71

2.10.1 Are Suppositions Regarding When Someone Has Been Wronged Question Begging? 71

2.10.2 Does Personalism Violate Pareto-Plus? 71

2.10.3 Does Personalism Violate the Independence Axiom? 74

2.11 Pain and Sin 78

3 The Nonidentity Problem 87

3.1 What Is the Nonidentity Problem? 87

3.1.1 Causing Pain and Saving Lives 87

3.1.2 Causing Pain and Creating Lives 89

3.1.3 The "Precariousness" of Existence 89

3.1.4 The Nonidentity Problem 90

3.2 Three Nonidentity Cases 91

3.2.1 The "Depletion" Case 91

3.2.2 The "Slave Child" Case 92

3.2.3 The "Pleasure Pill" Case 93

3.3 A Person-Affecting Account of the Nonidentity Cases 94

3.3.1 An Appeal to "Doing the Best One Can" 94

3.3.2 An Equivocation 96

3.3.3 More Nonidentity Cases: Parfit's "Two Medical Programs" Case 98

3.4 A Counterfactual Interpretation of the Nonidentity Problem 101

3.5 A Probabilistic Interpretation of the Nonidentity Problem 103

3.6 Nonidentity Victims, Fairness, and Personal Wronging 108

3.7 The Case of the Fourteen-Year-Old Girl and the Problem of Future Mistakes 110

3.8 A Totalist Solution to the Nonidentity Problem 111

3.8.1 "Same Number" and "Different Number" Nonidentity Problems 112

3.8.2 A Problem for Totalism: The Choice Not to Reproduce 113

3.8.3 A Second Problem for Totalism: The Choice of the "Lesser" Child 115

3.9 A Deontic Solution to the Nonidentity Problem 117

3.9.1 Restricted Lives and Acting "Wrongly Toward" Future People 117

3.9.2 A Problem for the Deontic View: The Choice of the "Lesser" Child 118

3.10 Reproductive Trade-Offs: When Producing the Child Is Bad for Others 119

3.10.1 A Further Problem for Totalism 119

3.10.2 A Person-Affecting Account of Reproductive Trade-Offs 121

3.11 The Repugnant Conclusion 122

3.11.1 The Case of Distinct Populations 122

3.11.2 The Case of Overlapping Populations: The "Repugnant" Version of the Repugnant Conclusion 123

3.11.3 The Difference between Personalism and Totalism 126

3.11.4 Another Look at Infinite Populations 126

3.11.5 Feldman's Concept of Adjusted Utility 127

4 Wrongful Life 135

4.1 The Value of Life 135

4.2 Personalism and the Law of Negligence: Common Ground 137

4.2.1 The Requirement of Personal Wronging 137

4.2.2 The Requirement of a Discernible Effect 138

4.2.3 The Rejection of Aggregative Efficiency as Primary Value 138

4.3 What Is an Action for Wrongful Life? 141

4.3.1 The Theory of Wrongful Life 141

4.3.2 Examples of Wrongful Life Claims 143

4.4 When Does Life Itself Constitute a Harm? 145

4.4.1 Obstacles to Establishing Harm 145

4.4.2 The Value of Nonexistence 148

4.4.3 The Value of a Flawed Existence 150

4.4.4 The Comparison to Nonexistence, Three Examples, and One Problem 151

4.5 A Person-Affecting Account of Wrongful Life 154

4.6 The Problem of the Baseline and the Modal Test of Harm 158

4.7 The Problem of Deflected Ill-Being 164

4.8 Logical Objections to Wrongful Life 167

4.8.1 A Problem of Consistency? 167

4.8.2 A Problem with Reference? 169

5 Human Cloning 179

5.1 The New Reproductive Technologies 179

5.2 The Question of Harm to Children 181

5.2.1 Who Matters? 181

5.2.2 Robertson's Defense of the New Technologies 183

5.3 Human Embryonic Cloning 186

5.3.1 Defining the Issues: Abortion and the "Dignity" of the Human Embryo 186

5.3.2 Robertson's Defense of Embryonic Cloning 188

5.4 The Critique 190

5.4.1 Who Needs Cloning? 190

5.4.2 A Person-Affecting Statement of the Critique 192

5.4.3 Benefits to Infertile Couples and the Question of Fairness 195

5.5 Are Children Harmed by Cloning? 198

5.5.1 The Implications of the Harm Issue 198

5.5.2 The Issue of Psychosocial Distress 199

5.5.3 The Control Issue; or, What Is Good for the Goose ... 200

5.6 Human Somatic Cloning 203

5.7 Cloning and the Constitution 206

5.7.1 The Adult's Right of Procreative Liberty 206

5.7.2 The Child's Right of Privacy and Equality 207

5.7.3 Policy Implications 209

5.8 Commercial Surrogacy and Other New Technologies 210.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 221-226) and index.

ISBN:

084768900X

0847689018

OCLC:

38557300