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Brownlee, Kimberley. Being Sure of Each Other: An Essay on Social Rights and Freedoms
2020, Oxford University Press
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Added by: Deryn Mair Thomas
Publisher’s Note:

To survive, let alone flourish, we need to be sure of—securely tied to—at least one other person. We also need to be sure of our general acceptance within the wider social world. This book explores the normative implications of taking our social needs seriously. Chapter 1 sketches out what our core social needs are, and Chapter 2 shows that they ground a fundamental, but largely neglected human right against social deprivation. Chapter 3 then argues that this human right includes a right to sustain the people we care about, and that often, when we are denied the resources to sustain others, we endure social contribution injustice. Chapters 4–6 explore the tension between our needs for social inclusion and our needs for interactional and associational freedom, showing that social inclusion must take priority. While Chapters 5 and 6 defend a narrow account of freedom of association, Chapter 7 shows that the moral ballgame changes once we have made morally messy associative decisions. Sometimes we have rights to remain in associations that we had no right to form. Finally, Chapter 8 exposes the distinct social injustices that we do to people whom we deem to be socially threatening. Overall, the book identifies ways to change our social and political practices, and our personal perspectives, to better honour the fact that we are fundamentally social beings.

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Gheaus, Anca. Biological Parenthood: Gestational, Not Genetic
2018, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 96 (2):225-240
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Common sense morality and legislations around the world ascribe normative relevance to biological connections between parents and children. Procreators who meet a modest standard of parental competence are believed to have a right to rear the children they brought into the world. I explore various attempts to justify this belief and find most of these attempts lacking. I distinguish between two kinds of biological connections between parents and children: the genetic link and the gestational link. I argue that the second can better justify a right to rear.

Comment: This paper explores questions concerning the biological relevance of connections between parents and their children, ultimately arguing that the most important connection is gestational rather than genetic. The author also explores the way in which these claims allow us to challenge the status quo in relation to parental and custodial rights. Further, the authors examines how these conclusions may help in the assessment and settling of the more complex cases that have arisen as a result of developments in technology and medicine which allow a child to have more than two 'biological' biological parents. It would therefore be useful as further reading in the context of philosophical discussions of parental rights, the rights of children, and whether such rights are moral or political, as well applied or interdisciplinary contexts in which related philosophical questions arise, such as bioethics, legal theory, politics, and sociology (of the family, for example).

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Gheaus, Anca. The Best Available Parent
2021, Ethics 131 (3):431-459
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Added by: Deryn Mair Thomas
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There is a broad philosophical consensus that both children’s and prospective parents’ interests are relevant to the justification of a right to parent. Against this view, I argue that it is impermissible to sacrifice children’s interests for the sake of advancing adults’ interest in childrearing. Therefore, the allocation of the moral right to parent should track the child’s, and not the potential parent’s, interest. This revisionary thesis is moderated by two additional qualifications. First, parents lack the moral right to exclude others from associating with the child. Second, children usually come into the world as part of a relationship with their gestational mother; often, this relationship deserves protection.

Comment: This paper takes a position counter to the general philosophical consensus on the right to parent, instead defending a child-centred answer to the question, 'How does one acquire the moral right to parent?' in which the childrens' interests take precedence over potential parents. It would therefore be interesting to read and discuss in the context parental duties and rights, as well as the rights of children.

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Gheaus, Anca. The Right to Parent and Duties Concerning Future Generations
2016, Journal of Political Philosophy 24 (1):487-508
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Added by: Carl Fox
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Several philosophers argue that individuals have an interest-protecting right to parent; specifically, the interest is in rearing children whom one can parent adequately. If such a right exists it can provide a solution to scepticism about duties of justice concerning distant future generations and bypass the challenge provided by the non-identity problem. Current children - whose identity is independent from environment-affecting decisions of current adults - will have, in due course, a right to parent. Adequate parenting requires resources. We owe duties of justice to current children, including the satisfaction of their interest-protecting rights; therefore we owe them the conditions for rearing children adequately in the future. But to engage in permissible parenting they, too, will need sufficient resources to ensure their own children's future ability to bring up children under adequate conditions. Because this reasoning goes on ad infinitum it entails that each generation of adults owes its contemporary generation of children at least those resources that are necessary for sustaining human life indefinitely at an adequate level of wellbeing.

Comment: Novel approach to climate change and intergenerational justice. Article argues that we owe it to future generations to ensure that they have access to sufficient resources to realise their right to parent by providing an adequate life for their children. Would make interesting reading in a module on either environmental justice or on the family.

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Gheaus, Anca. The Right to Parent One’s Biological Babies
2011, Journal of Political Philosophy 20 (4):432-455
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Added by: Deryn Mair Thomas
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This paper provides an answer to the question why birth parents have a moral right to keep and raise their biological babies. I start with a critical discussion of the parent-centred model of justifying parents’ rights, recently proposed by Harry Brighouse and Adam Swift. Their account successfully defends a fundamental moral right to parent in general but, because it does not provide an account of how individuals acquire the right to parent a particular baby, it is insufficient for addressing the question whether and why there is a right to parent one’s biological child. Such a right is important because, in its absence, fairness towards adequate prospective parents who are involuntarily childless would demand a ‘babies redistribution’; moreover, in societies with entrenched histories of injustice there may be reasons of fairness for shuffling babies amongst all recent parents. I supplement the Brighouse-Swift account of fundamental parental rights by an account of how adequate parents acquire the right to parent their biological babies. I advance two arguments to this conclusion: by the time of birth, the birth parents will have already shouldered various burdens in order to bring children into existence, and are likely to have formed an intimate relationship with the future baby. Denying birth parents who would make at least adequate parents the right to keep their baby would be unfair to them and would destroy already formed parent-baby relationships which, I assume, are intrinsically valuable.

Comment: This paper explores questions related to what makes parenting in general legitimate and how individuals acquire the right to parent a particular baby. The author builds on existing discussions in the literature to construct a parent-centric account of why parent's have a protected interest in being the one's to raise their biological offspring. The author's account is intended to complement, rather than compete with, with existing child-centred (fiduciary) arguments. It would therefore be interesting to read and discuss in the context of parental duties and rights, as well as the rights of children.

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Priest, Maura. Transgender Children and the Right to Transition: Medical Ethics When Parents Mean Well but Cause Harm
2019, The American Journal of Bioethics. 19 (2): 45-59.
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Added by: Chris Blake-Turner
Abstract: In this article, I argue that (1) transgender adolescents should have the legal right to access puberty-blocking treatment (PBT) without parental approval, and (2) the state has a role to play in publicizing information about gender dysphoria. Not only are transgender children harmed psychologically and physically via lack of access to PBT, but PBT is the established standard of care. Given that we generally think that parental authority should not go so far as to (1) severally and permanently harm a child and (2) prevent a child from access to standard physical care, then it follows that parental authority should not encompass denying gender-dysphoric children access to PBT. Moreover, transgender children without supportive parents cannot be helped without access to health care clinics and counseling to facilitate the transition. Hence there is an additional duty of the state to help facilitate sharing this information with vulnerable teens.

Comment (from this Blueprint): Priest argues that the state should provide puberty-blocking treatment (PBT) for trans youth, even if their parents are not supportive. Priest’s argument is important partly because it avoids the issue of whether adolescents and children can give properly informed consent. This is a point that some of Priest’s critics seem to have missed (see, for example, Laidlaw et al. 2019. “The Right to Best Care for Children Does Not Include the Right to Medical Transition”, and Harris et al. 2019. “Decision Making and the Long-Term Impact of Puberty Blockade in Transgender Children”). Priest’s conclusion is founded instead on a principle of harm avoidance.

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