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Barnes, Elizabeth. Valuing Disability, Causing Disability
2014, Ethics, 125 (1): 88-113.
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Added by: Rochelle DuFord
Abstract: Disability rights activists often claim that disability is not - by itself - something that makes disabled people worse off. A popular objection to such a view of disability is this: were it correct, it would make it permissible to cause disability and impermissible to cause nondisability (or impermissible to 'cure' disability, to use the value-laden term). The aim of this article is to show that these twin objections don't succeed.

Comment: This text intervenes in the debate over whether disability, itself, makes someone worse off (the mere-disability/bad-disability debate). It could serve as a clear introduction to the sorts of arguments that support the view that disability is a bad-making feature of someone's life, and contains easily understood counter-examples to that view. It has a place in a course covering disability, impairment, bioethics, autonomy, and social minorities.

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Bortolotti, Lisa, John Harris. Disability, Enhancement and the Harm-Benefit Continuum
2006, In John R. Spencer & Antje Du Bois-Pedain (eds.), Freedom and Responsibility in Reproductive Choice. Hart Publishers
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Added by: Simon Fokt, Contributed by: Nils-Hennes Stear
Abstract:

Suppose that you are soon to be a parent and you learn that there are some simple measures that you can take to make sure that your child will be healthy. In particular, suppose that by following the doctor’s advice, you can prevent your child from having a disability, you can make your child immune from a number of dangerous diseases and you can even enhance its future intelligence. All that is required for this to happen is that you (or your partner) comply with lifestyle and dietary requirements. Do you and your partner have any moral reasons (or moral obligations) to follow the doctor’s advice? Would it make a difference if, instead of following some simple dietary requirements, you consented to genetic engineering to make sure that your child was free from disabilities, healthy and with above average intelligence? In this paper we develop a framework for dealing with these questions and we suggest some directions the answers might take.

Comment: This is a paper that gives an account of enhancement and disability in terms of one's relative position on a harmed and benefitted continuum, and defends enhancement on completely general moral grounds according to which the pro tanto duty to enhance is the same as the pro tanto duty not to disable. It pairs well with criticisms of the 'new eugenics', such as Robert Sparrow's 'A Not-So-New Eugenics' (2011) and more generally with consequentialist or specifically harm-based accounts of moral obligation.

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Inmaculada de Melo-Martin. Rethinking Reprogenetics: Enhancing Ethical Analyses of Reprogenetic Technologies
2017, New York: Oxford University Press
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Added by: Björn Freter
Publisher's Note: Reprogenetic technologies, which combine the power of reproductive techniques with the tools of genetic science and technology, promise prospective parents a remarkable degree of control to pick and choose the likely characteristics of their offspring. Not only can they select embryos with or without particular genetically-related diseases and disabilities but also choose embryos with non-disease related traits such as sex. Prominent authors such as Agar, Buchanan, DeGrazia, Green, Harris, Robertson, Savulescu, and Silver have flocked to the banner of reprogenetics. For them, increased reproductive choice and reduced suffering through the elimination of genetic disease and disability are just the first step. They advocate use of these technologies to create beings who enjoy longer and healthier lives, possess greater intellectual capacities, and are capable of more refined emotional experiences. Indeed, Harris and Savulescu in particular take reprogenetic technologies to be so valuable to human beings that they have insisted that their use is not only morally permissible but morally required. Rethinking Reprogenetics challenges this mainstream view with a contextualised, gender-attentive philosophical perspective. De Melo-Martín demonstrates that you do not have to be a Luddite, social conservative, or religious zealot to resist the siren song of reprogenetics. Pointing out the flawed nature of the arguments put forward by the technologies' proponents, Rethinking Reprogenetics reveals the problematic nature of the assumptions underpinning current evaluations of these technologies and offers a framework for a more critical and sceptical assessment.

Comment: This book could be used in a variety of upper division undergraduate and graduate courses including those in bioethics, philosophy of technology, contemporary moral issues, science, technology, and society, and philosophy of medicine. It critically assesses the arguments of those who enthusiastically support reprogenetic technologies from a feminist perspective that takes science and technology to be value-laden and gendered.

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Lotz, Mianna. Procreative reasons relevance: on the moral significance of why we have children
2009, Bioethics 23(5): 291-299.
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Added by: Simon Fokt
Abstract: Advances in reproductive technologies – in particular in genetic screening and selection – have occasioned renewed interest in the moral justifiability of the reasons that motivate the decision to have a child. The capacity to select for desired blood and tissue compatibilities has led to the much discussed 'saviour sibling' cases in which parents seek to 'have one child to save another'. Heightened interest in procreative reasons is to be welcomed, since it prompts a more general philosophical interrogation of the grounds for moral appraisal of reasons-to-parent, and of the extent to which such reasons are relevant to the moral assessment of procreation itself. I start by rejecting the idea that we can use a distinction between 'other-regarding' and 'future-child-regarding' reasons as a basis on which to distinguish good from bad procreative reasons. I then offer and evaluate three potential grounds for elucidating and establishing a relationship between procreative motivation and the rightness/wrongness of procreative conduct: the predictiveness, the verdictiveness, and the expressiveness of procreative reasons.

Comment: This text is best used in teaching on procreative rights and the ethics of abortion. Since it is rather specialised, we recommend offering it as further reading in undergraduate applied ethics modules, but would suggest making it a required reading in postgraduate teaching.

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Paul, L. A.. What You Can’t Expect When You’re Expecting
2015, Res Philosophica 92 (2):1-23 (2015)
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Added by: Andrea Blomqvist
Abstract: It seems natural to choose whether to have a child by reflecting on what it would be like to actually have a child. I argue that this natural approach fails. If you choose to become a parent, and your choice is based on projections about what you think it would be like for you to have a child, your choice is not rational. If you choose to remain childless, and your choice is based upon projections about what you think it would be like for you to have a child, your choice is not rational. This suggests we should reject our ordinary conception of how to make this life-changing decision, and raises general questions about how to rationally approach important life choices.

Comment: Good to use as a shorter introductory reading to L.A. Paul's work and how to make decisions about life choices. It could be used in a module on decision making, or imagination.

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