Article Text
Abstract
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority’s (HFEA) recent restrictive recommendations on sex selection have highlighted the need for consideration of the plausibility of ethical arguments against sex selection. In this paper, the author suggests a parental virtues approach to some questions of reproductive ethics (including sex selection) as a superior alternative to an exclusively harm focused approach such as the procreative liberty framework. The author formulates a virtue ethics argument against sex selection based on the idea that acceptance is a character trait of the good parent. It is concluded that, because the argument presented posits a wrong in the sex selecting agent’s action that is not a harm, the argument could not function as a justification of the HFEA’s restrictive position in light of their explicit commitment to procreative liberty; it does, however, suggest that ethical approaches focused exclusively on harm fail to capture all the relevant moral considerations and thus that we should look beyond such approaches.
- HFEA, Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority
- sex selection
- virtue ethics
- parenthood
- procreative liberty
Statistics from Altmetric.com
Read the full text or download the PDF:
Other content recommended for you
- Sex selection and regulated hatred
- Sex selection for social purposes in Israel: quest for the “perfect child” of a particular gender or centuries old prejudice against women?
- No sex selection please, we’re British
- Bach to the future: response to: Extending preimplantation genetic diagnosis: medical and non-medical uses
- The virtues (and vices) of the four principles
- Getting beyond the welfare of the child in assisted reproduction
- Why sex selection should be legal
- Reproductive liberty and elitist contempt: reply to John Harris
- Good parents would not fulfil their obligation to genetically enhance their unborn children
- Multiplex parenting: IVG and the generations to come