Consciousness and interests

But there is more to say here: even if no child would ever be conscious (her brain state would not be reversed or ‘grown out of’), rights and interests would still be infringed. Not all interests are experienced as such by the subject1––4: much exploitation takes place of those who die without ever learning how they were exploited. Objective interests concern objective benefits, of which the subject may or may not be aware. To press children into service in this way would violate bona fide objective interests in respect for their lives (they are destroyed by the ‘harvesting’) and their fertility (they are made to conceive without their consent). What should be a gift to be guarded over decades—the sexual-reproductive potential of a child—is snatched here at the earliest opportunity, while the bearer is unceremoniously discarded. The child is unaware throughout, and far from circumventing, this helps to define the wrong done to her.

Forcing parenthood

So what does this analogy have to do with this paper's topic: reproduction using gametes derived from embryonic stem cells (including iterative reproduction via successive generations of embryos)?5^–7 I want to claim that it is wrong to force embryos into parenthood (here, ‘pure genetic’ parenthood), just as it is wrong to force a brain-damaged baby or child who, unlike most embryos, does not even have unobstructed long-term, let alone short-term, consciousness potential.4 ,8 The analogy would of course be closer if the child were killed by harvesting her eggs, but in any case, posthumous reproduction is still reproduction—which is why some women want to reproduce with their dead partner's sperm. And posthumous reproduction will include cases where immature gametes, whether from adults or from children, are coaxed to become more mature. To argue that, for example, an aborted fetus cannot be a genetic parent because she dies before her eggs are matured and fertilised is to miss the point: posthumous genetic parenthood is no less real—and certainly no less controversial—where the gamete source dies at a younger age. No-one, of any age, should, morally speaking, be made to conceive without her knowledge or consent. That also applies to the pre-menarche ‘women’6 from whom eggs could be harvested postnatally, then matured and fertilised. These are real gametes, although artificially matured in their later stages.

Embryonic parenthood

Should we say that, in contrast, early embryos could not be genetic parents because the gametes used would need to be developed from much less specialised cells? In fact, the embryos’ claim to be genetic parents is, if anything, clearer than the claim of adults from whom ips cells and then gametes or gamete-like parts could be derived. Producing gametes is not something towards which somatic cells are already oriented, such that this outcome promotes the functional end of those cells (as opposed to, perhaps, the fertility of their owner). There is no sense in which, say, a skin cell is functionally geared to the production of a gamete. In contrast, just as immature gametes naturally mature, though researchers can speed up the process, an embryo's cells are naturally, functionally geared to producing, among other things, gametes for later reproduction. Again, this process can be speeded up and parts of it omitted and replaced—and herein lies the problem, as what is omitted is not just the physical maturation but the entire courtship, love and wishing-well, consensual sex and commitment structures9^–11 by which one generation passes on in due form to the next. Embryonic reproduction is an ugly ‘forcing’ of the rich and slow process by which our ancestors met, came together (often via marriage) and had children, who then had children of their own. The blind reproduction of genomes—or blind insofar as the bearers are concerned—would replace the passing on of family stories, guidance and advice, love and care. The riches that should last for a lifetime are instead wrested from the youngest possible sources, and generations skipped through in months that should take decades to achieve.

Discovering parenthood

It is worth noting that an embryo used in such a way could, in fact, survive the reproduction process if she were biopsied to obtain the cells before herself being brought to term. We might ask: should she not then, at least, be acknowledged as the genetic mother of the child conceived? What if, as an adult, she wished to meet that person—her near-contemporary in age? What if he/she wished to meet her? And when could the embryo become a genetic mother, if not when the gametes derived from that individual's cells were fertilised in vitro?

We do not become parents by learning that we are parents; rather, we discover a parenthood we already have, at least in genetic terms. If a parent dies while still a child herself, that parent's biography is tragically cut short, but nonetheless remains a biography, as the case we began with shows. It would be strange indeed to claim that at some point during the biography of a surviving embryo (when she is 3? When she is 10?) she becomes a genetic parent of an already-existing child. Social parenthood may be acquired postnatally on both sides, such as via choices to adopt; the same cannot be said of the immediate genetic link with those our gametes help conceive.

Status of embryo

But, it may be objected, embryos are different from born individuals and have a different moral status. True, they look different; however, they are what we remain: individual human organisms.2^–4 ,8 ,12 ,13 Neither their appearance nor their extreme immaturity precludes in any way their objective, morally significant stake in their own survival and well-being. Embryos are made, as we adults are, of cells, but their cells, like our own, work in concert for the good of the living whole: a whole that develops as it carries out a complex internal programme, without ceasing to be the organism it is. Fertilisation is one way, though only one way (twinningⁱ and cloning are other ways) for this very special, rational-type organism to be conceived (in this case, sexually reproduced).

Robert Sparrow, who defends conception via embryonic stem cells, has acknowledged that the embryo, which he rightly calls an (individual?) human being or organism, is itself ‘brought to term’—though he refers confusingly to ‘the individuals who develop from these embryos’ who might suffer ill health ‘as a result of the circumstances of their conception’ (my emphasis).6 As individual human organisms, human embryos can and do carry objective interests in benefits appropriate to the (rational) kind of being they are. Such benefits include life, health and procreation in human and humane ways.9 ,10 We wrongly violate these interests when a human individual of any age is forced to conceive and valued only for that purpose.

It is extraordinary to claim, as does Sparrow, that reproduction via cells from embryos would bypass any concerns about reproductive autonomy and the need to defend what Sparrow terms ‘mate choice’.6 Why so, any more than reproduction via pre-menarche ‘women’, or the unconscious ‘women’ with whom we began? The embryo too has a body, a life and a fertile orientation calling for respect: in fact, the same body, life and fertile orientation as the older child's, just at a very much earlier stage. Unconscious or not, the embryo has a stake in her own future, long or short as it may be,8 and more generally in serious and equal respect from her fellow human beings.

Surviving offspring and parents

Sparrow has suggested that one advantage of reproduction in vitro would be that, unlike an adult gamete donor, the embryo could not be thought by surviving offspring to have abandoned him or her.7 Yet while the embryo made to reproduce posthumously cannot be said to abandon any offspring, the same cannot be said of the embryo's adult parents who surrender her to be so deployed. If a surviving embryo-conceived child feels ‘cast adrift on the world’ by genetic grandparents who allowed all this to happen to his genetic mother, can this feeling be dismissed 7 as unreasonable?

Finally, it is hard to see much force in Sparrow's claim that harm to standard gamete donors can be avoided by in vitro reproduction because the genetic parents (or rather ‘placeholders’7) are never born and therefore cannot experience ‘significant distress’7 at lack of contact with the offspring. To repeat: human beings can have objective interests in things of which we are unaware. Deprivation of the offspring of our gametes—our own genetic offspring—is still deprivation, even if we die, as some adult parents die, without knowing we are so deprived.

As mentioned earlier, an embryo could survive reproduction if she were born following cell biopsy. Perhaps someone could explain to the adult former embryo forced apart from her offspring, whom she may be vainly seeking, after her forced reproduction that in contrast, no-one's interests would have suffered had she only been destroyed when that offspring was conceived.