Making Babies: Is There a Right to Have Children?

by Mary Warnock

Overview

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?
Mary Warnock steers a clear path through the web of complex issues underlying these questions. 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780192805003
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	10/30/2003
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	128
Product dimensions:	7.60(w) x 5.00(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

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

IntroductionTechniques of assisted reproductionWho pays? The right that no stone should be left unturnedWhat constitutes a right? Do people need to have children? A further look at the question of whether there can exist a right to do what is morally wrongThe moral status of the human embryoBack to infertility2. May doctors refuse treatment? The slippery slopeAre those who are not infertile entitled to assisted conception? Openness Why do homosexuals want children? The natural and the unnaturalThe search for securityIs fear a proper basis for moral judgement? Conslusions so farAre all methods of fertility treatment legitimate? Cloning: 1997-2001