Dethroning Choice: Analogy,Personhood,and the New Reproductive Technologies

Davis v. Davis v. King, E-14496 (5th Jud. Ct., Tenn. 1989).

Great Britain, Department of Health and Social Security (chairman Mary Warnock), Report of the Committee of Inquiry into Human Fertilisation and Embryology (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1984).

Jones Owen D. , “Reproductive Autonomy and Evolutionary Biology: A Regulatory Framework for Trait-Selection Technologies,” American Journal of Law & Medicine, XIX (1993): At 601.

Veatch Robert , “Maternal Brain Death: An Ethicist's Thoughts,” JAMA, 248 (1982): 1102–03.

Robertson John A. , “Surrogate Mothers: Not So Novel After All,” Hastings Center Report, 13, no. 5 (1983): 28–34.

Bonnicksen Andrea , “Genetic Diagnosis of Human Embryos,” Hastings Center Report, 22, no. 4, Supp. (1992): At S5.

Robertson John , Children of Choice: Freedom and the New Reproductive Technologies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994): At 16.

When it comes to familial connections, it seems that people are not readily replaceable. That is why we laugh at W.C. Field's encounter with a distraught mother whose baby has just died. “No matter, Madam,” he leers, “I will gladly get you with another.”

For a more detailed account of this kind of argument, see Nelson Hilde Lindemann Nelson James Lindemann , The Patient in the Family (New York: Routledge, 1955): At ch. 5.

Sidgwick Henry , The Methods of Ethics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962): At 249. Sidgwick's argument is discussed in Jeffrey Blustein, “Child Rearing and Family Interests,” in Onoral O'Neill and Ruddick William , eds., Having Children (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979); discussion of Blustein on Sidgwick is found in Nelson James Lindemann , “Parental Obligations and the Ethics of Surrogacy: A Causal Perspective,” Public Affairs Quarterly, 5 (1991): At 51.

Kant Immanuel , Metaphysical First Principles of the Doctrine of Right, trans. Gregor Mary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991): At PA 281.

Id. at PA 336.

Schultz Marjorie Maguire , “Reproductive Technology and Intent-Based Parenthood: An Opportunity for Gender Neutrality,” Wisconsin Law Review, 1990 (1990): At 308–09.

Katz-Rothman Barbara , The Tentative Pregnancy: Prenatal Diagnosis and the Future of Motherhood (New York: Viking, 1986).

Foucault Michel , Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews & Other Writings, 1972–1977, ed. Gordon Colin (New York: Pantheon, 1980): At 98, 39.

Id. at 107.

Id. at 73–74.

Foucault Michel , “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews by Michel Foucault, trans. Bouchard Donald F. Simon Sherry (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977): At 153.

Foucault Michel , Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Sheridan Alan (New York: Vintage, 1979): At 29.

For excellent answers from the feminist ethics of care alone, see Held Virginia , “Non-Contractual Society,” in Hanen Marsha Nielsen Kai , eds., Science, Morality, and Feminist Theory (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 1987): 111–37; Ruddick Sara , Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989); Manning Rita , Speaking from the Heart: A Feminist Perspective on Ethics (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1992); and Tronto Joan C. , Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care (New York: Routledge, 1993).

See King Michael B. Pattison Pat , “Homosexuality and Parenthood,” British Medical Journal, 303, 3 Aug. (1991): 295–97.