Eugenics and the Ethics of Selective Reproduction

Modern biomedical science is capable of giving people more choice than ever before about what their future children will be like. Embryo selection techniques, for example, can enable people to choose the sex of their child, to avoid the birth of a child with a disability, or even to choose deliberately to create a disabled child. Such possibilities raise important ethical issues – questions about which of these choices, if any, are morally wrong – along with closely related questions about the extent to which law and regulation should restrict these areas of medicine. Each of the four essays in this volume tackles such questions. (1) What is eugenics? Which, if any, of our current practices actually are eugenic? Is ‘eugenics’ a helpful term to use when discussing human reproduction? (2) What moral objections are there to using embryo selection techniques to avoid disease and disability in our children? Are any of these objections really sound? (3) Should people who positively want to have a child with a disability (some members of the Deaf community, for example) be allowed to use embryo selection to achieve this? (4) Is choosing the sex of your future child wrong? Are there any circumstances in which people should be allowed to do this?