Making Babies Is There a Right to Have Children?

by Warnock, Mary

• ISBN13: 9780192803344
• ISBN10: 0192803344
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-09-26
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Is there a such thing as a universal right to have children? Should medical assistance to have children be available to everyone? Are all methods of assisted reproduction legitimate? The development of new reproductive technologies has spawned heated debate and deep controversy about how fertility treatments should be used clinically and by whom they should be controlled. Many individuals and groups claim access to assisted reproduction as an essential right--not only clinically infertile heterosexual couples, but also single women, gay couples, post-menopausal women, and career-oriented couples who wish to delay having children. Others argue that the simple desire to have children cannot be the sole criteria to determine whether assisted reproduction should be a human right. Furthermore, some object to providing fertility treatment on the basis of age, sexual orientation, or other lifestyle features. Mary Warnock steers a clear path through the web of complex issues underlying these divergent views. She analyzes what it means to claim something as a "right," examines the ethical problems faced by particular types of assisted reproduction, including artificial insemination, in-vitro fertilization, and surrogacy, and argues that in the future human cloning may well become a viable and acceptable form of treatment for some types of infertility.

Author Biography

Mary Warnock's work in academic philosophy includes the books Imagination, Memory, and Existentialism. Much of her career was spent at Oxford University, and she was later Mistress of Girton College Cambridge. She was made a life peer in 1985, and chaired the Committee of Enquiry into Human Fertilization and Embryology, whose report formed the basis of legislation in the United Kingdom. Her most recent book is her autobiography, Mary Warnock: A Memoir.

Table of Contents

Introduction	1	(2)
Techniques of assisted reproduction	3	(7)
Who pays?	10	(4)
The right that no stone should be left unturned	14	(3)
What constitutes a right?	17	(10)
Do people need to have children?	27	(3)
Can there be a right to do what is morally wrong?	30	(2)
The moral status of the human embryo	32	(6)
Back to infertility	38	(5)
May doctors refuse treatment?	43	(8)
The slippery slope	51	(3)
Interim conclusion	54	(1)
Are those who are not infertile entitled to assisted conception?	55	(9)
Openness	64	(4)
Why do homosexuals want children?	68	(2)
The natural and the unnatural	70	(8)
The search for security	78	(5)
Is fear a proper basis for moral judgement?	83	(2)
Conclusions so far	85	(2)
Are all methods of fertility treatment legitimate?	87	(10)
Cloning: 1997-2001	97	(5)
Would the cloning of humans be intrinsically wrong?	102	(7)
A rights-based morality	109