Last Wednesday, acclaimed biologist and writer Richard Dawkins, tweeted that if a fetus is diagnosed with Down Syndrome, the mother should abort it and try again, it would be immoral to bring it into the world if you have a choice. Obviously he got (and deserved) all sorts of backlash for that ridiculous remark. This response was my favorite: Julian Suvalescu, professor of practical ethics at Oxford, has advocated a position he calls “procreative beneficence.” He argues that given a choice, a parent should choose a child most likely to live the life with the greatest wellbeing—but knowing only that a fetus has Down syndrome is not enough to determine its wellbeing. “[Suvalescu’s] procreative beneficence does not in any simple way imply anything about fetuses with three copies of chromosome 21,” says Munthe. “It is perfectly consistent to argue that, had I some information that a future child of mine would grow up to be a splendid popularizer of evolutionary biology and effective critic of institutionalized religious bigotry, but also an inconsiderate and arrogant philosophical dilettante, and had the choice to have another child possessing the first two but lacking the latter traits, procreative beneficence may very well recommend that I chose this other child.”
Posted on: Fri, 29 Aug 2014 11:02:32 +0000
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